I wrote about this game a few years ago, idk if I agree with everything but it might be interesting: https://meloshantani.wordpress.com/2017/10/27/banjo2/

Last I played this (2017) I liked it! Good balance of levels that manage to stay navigable, reasonable # of goals and things to find, some fun revisiting with abilities, and the hub world's secrets are still neat. Some recent indie collectathons (like hat in time) feel like their movesets are too acrobatic, causing their levels to balloon confusingly in size by mashing together Super Mario 64 acrobatics-ism and Banjo-Kazooie-collecting-ism. The relative slowness of banjo works to the game's advantage, keeping them manageable. I think Banjo-Tooie had some problems with levels getting too big or having too many screen transitions.

The later levels in Banjo do get a bit unmanageable if you're trying to 100% notes, but outside of that goal it feels fun to learn about the levels and get around.