This one feels like one of the more ambitious, but still really jank and ultimately pretty bad unlicensed, Chinese pirate games. The levels are visually unclear, especially on a shitty Game Boy screen, due to too much detail in the backgrounds and a lack of contrast with the characters and important objects.
It also feels a bit all-over-the-place with environments even from the first world on. You're in the jungle, you find a secret shortcut that you swim through for no reason, then you're in the snow, another shortcut has you on a classic Donkey Kong arcade style construction site for literally a second, then back to the jungle, back to the snow, onto a DKC2 ship... etc.
All in World 1. And all that without there being anything really interesting happening with the levels. Not to mention the leaps of faith and really janky barrel sections they immediately hit you with as well.
But the worst part is probably the controls and overall physics. It's just not fun to do anything and often you take damage or die for really stupid reasons. The roll doesn't always actually defeat enemies, doesn't accelerate satisfyingly, doesn't do the "coyote time" thing with mid-air jumping after rolling, instead you hold A to awkwardly float in mid-air for a second without that making any sense, the bouncing doesn't feel right, the momentum makes no sense... it just isn't very fun and overall just feels like an utter slog.
I somewhat respect what they were trying to do and I also do like the fact that the game isn't trying to be a direct conversion of DKC but instead is its own thing with its own unique ideas here and there, but none of that helps when I just don't enjoy playing it.
In contrast, Donkey Kong Land 2 did a much better job of delivering a stripped-down version of the DKC2 experience, even if it did lose some of its own unique identity in the process. But at least it's fun and can even be a more-or-less worthy substitute for the SNES version for those who wanted to play it on the go or simply didn't have access to that version.
It also feels a bit all-over-the-place with environments even from the first world on. You're in the jungle, you find a secret shortcut that you swim through for no reason, then you're in the snow, another shortcut has you on a classic Donkey Kong arcade style construction site for literally a second, then back to the jungle, back to the snow, onto a DKC2 ship... etc.
All in World 1. And all that without there being anything really interesting happening with the levels. Not to mention the leaps of faith and really janky barrel sections they immediately hit you with as well.
But the worst part is probably the controls and overall physics. It's just not fun to do anything and often you take damage or die for really stupid reasons. The roll doesn't always actually defeat enemies, doesn't accelerate satisfyingly, doesn't do the "coyote time" thing with mid-air jumping after rolling, instead you hold A to awkwardly float in mid-air for a second without that making any sense, the bouncing doesn't feel right, the momentum makes no sense... it just isn't very fun and overall just feels like an utter slog.
I somewhat respect what they were trying to do and I also do like the fact that the game isn't trying to be a direct conversion of DKC but instead is its own thing with its own unique ideas here and there, but none of that helps when I just don't enjoy playing it.
In contrast, Donkey Kong Land 2 did a much better job of delivering a stripped-down version of the DKC2 experience, even if it did lose some of its own unique identity in the process. But at least it's fun and can even be a more-or-less worthy substitute for the SNES version for those who wanted to play it on the go or simply didn't have access to that version.