This is another game I rented as a kid, liked well enough, but never finished at the time and never got back to. With the recent resurrection of Dinosaur Planet (this game's N64 original version) via dumped files and Project64, I resolved to finally play through this game to the end. Luckily, it isn't a particularly hard to find game here or terribly expensive. I got some 96% of the content done and beat the Japanese version over the course of a couple days (like 15 or 16 hours).
Star Fox Adventures sees our titular hero on the orders of General Pepper to aid the extremely troubled Dinosaur Planet. Due to an invasion of the other kingdoms by General Scales, the planet has broken apart due to him disrupting the magical energy fields the planet is (apparently literally) overflowing with. Dinosaur Planet is, unsurprisingly, populated by various tribes of talking dinosaurs, the prince of the Earth Walkers (triceratops) ends up becoming Fox's companion on this adventure. Many remarked upon this at the time and have since, but it's a very un-Star Fox-y story that is at times irritating but overall inoffensive in setting up the stakes and core action. Oddly enough, despite this being the Japanese version, there is no Japanese voice acting, with only (even for the time, kinda amazingly terrible) English voice acting accompanied by Japanese subtitles.
The gameplay plays a lot like what it is: a long-lost Rare N64 title. From the level designs to the dialogue writing to the sheer aesthetics, this really does feel like a distant cousin to things like Banjo-Tooie and DK64. Mechanically, you're going through a fairly linear 3D Zelda-sort of action adventure game, with a slew of items to aid you along with the magic staff Fox uses to beat up dinosaurs and even blast magic at them! The prince of the Earth Walkers, Tricky, is also an important mechanic to use as you guide him around to have him dig up stuff for you, but he's ultimately not actually that invasive or important a mechanic. He's there, sure, but Resident Evil 4 this is not. He usually just teleports around to wherever you need him, and it's a clever way to minimize inventory management outside of some more complicated inventory system (which the game does manage to have regardless, just not in some Ocarina of Time-like menu screen :b).
This is much more a kin of Rare's rougher N64 titles though, and in the efficacy of its overall design I'd rank it more along more decisive titles like Jet Force Gemini and Banjo-Tooie than any of their greats. For such a linear game, the signposting can be shockingly rough at times, and even when you know where to go, walking from place to place takes ages. The combat, while quite cinematic in an impressively flashy way, is ultimately super button-mashy and gets very boring and uninteresting fast. The dungeon lengths and designs are never really awful but not ever super inspired, and are definitely more mid-/low-tier Zelda fare. None of the design is outright terrible (save for one awwwwwful joystick balancing mini-game around the game's midpoint), but it really does beg to be polished up in certain places.
The game also has some Star Fox flying segments awkwardly put into it as cool novelties/wastes of time when you go between the planet and the broken-off segments, and in a weird turn they even are used for the final boss fight. This game was a totally different game that had Star Fox put into it to help the GameCube release sell better, and these segments are very underwhelming and feel as slapped in to the gameplay loop as they indeed are. The final boss especially is a really weird choice, as it suddenly demands you start using a skill set the game has barely instilled in you at all, and the final boss ends up being pretty bad as a result. Boss fights aren't exactly the game's strong suit to begin with, but the final boss was definitely my least enjoyed out of the handful present.
Presentation-wise, it really is like an N64 game with GameCube graphics. It all looks fine and, Fox himself looks quite nice as a character model. The music is pretty damn good, as one would expect from even a not so great Rare game, but the Star Fox tunes feel super dissonant with the game's score otherwise in a way I didn't really dig. The game can hit some pretty bad framerate dips when you get to areas with lots of enemies and water, but it's never anything that prevents play, and even those dips I did get were very uncommon.
Verdict: Hesitantly Recommended. This game is overall sorta the epitome of "fine", and while you probably won't hate it, I can't really see many people loving this game. If you can get it for cheap and the premise interests you (like it did me), then I'd say it could be worth your money, but I think for most people, they'll ultimately feel like their time was better spent elsewhere. While a neat historical curiosity, outside of some of the awful VA, Star Fox Adventures doesn't really manage to be all that memorable for being anything but a disappointing (i.e. not a successor to Star Fox 64) Star Fox game.
Star Fox Adventures sees our titular hero on the orders of General Pepper to aid the extremely troubled Dinosaur Planet. Due to an invasion of the other kingdoms by General Scales, the planet has broken apart due to him disrupting the magical energy fields the planet is (apparently literally) overflowing with. Dinosaur Planet is, unsurprisingly, populated by various tribes of talking dinosaurs, the prince of the Earth Walkers (triceratops) ends up becoming Fox's companion on this adventure. Many remarked upon this at the time and have since, but it's a very un-Star Fox-y story that is at times irritating but overall inoffensive in setting up the stakes and core action. Oddly enough, despite this being the Japanese version, there is no Japanese voice acting, with only (even for the time, kinda amazingly terrible) English voice acting accompanied by Japanese subtitles.
The gameplay plays a lot like what it is: a long-lost Rare N64 title. From the level designs to the dialogue writing to the sheer aesthetics, this really does feel like a distant cousin to things like Banjo-Tooie and DK64. Mechanically, you're going through a fairly linear 3D Zelda-sort of action adventure game, with a slew of items to aid you along with the magic staff Fox uses to beat up dinosaurs and even blast magic at them! The prince of the Earth Walkers, Tricky, is also an important mechanic to use as you guide him around to have him dig up stuff for you, but he's ultimately not actually that invasive or important a mechanic. He's there, sure, but Resident Evil 4 this is not. He usually just teleports around to wherever you need him, and it's a clever way to minimize inventory management outside of some more complicated inventory system (which the game does manage to have regardless, just not in some Ocarina of Time-like menu screen :b).
This is much more a kin of Rare's rougher N64 titles though, and in the efficacy of its overall design I'd rank it more along more decisive titles like Jet Force Gemini and Banjo-Tooie than any of their greats. For such a linear game, the signposting can be shockingly rough at times, and even when you know where to go, walking from place to place takes ages. The combat, while quite cinematic in an impressively flashy way, is ultimately super button-mashy and gets very boring and uninteresting fast. The dungeon lengths and designs are never really awful but not ever super inspired, and are definitely more mid-/low-tier Zelda fare. None of the design is outright terrible (save for one awwwwwful joystick balancing mini-game around the game's midpoint), but it really does beg to be polished up in certain places.
The game also has some Star Fox flying segments awkwardly put into it as cool novelties/wastes of time when you go between the planet and the broken-off segments, and in a weird turn they even are used for the final boss fight. This game was a totally different game that had Star Fox put into it to help the GameCube release sell better, and these segments are very underwhelming and feel as slapped in to the gameplay loop as they indeed are. The final boss especially is a really weird choice, as it suddenly demands you start using a skill set the game has barely instilled in you at all, and the final boss ends up being pretty bad as a result. Boss fights aren't exactly the game's strong suit to begin with, but the final boss was definitely my least enjoyed out of the handful present.
Presentation-wise, it really is like an N64 game with GameCube graphics. It all looks fine and, Fox himself looks quite nice as a character model. The music is pretty damn good, as one would expect from even a not so great Rare game, but the Star Fox tunes feel super dissonant with the game's score otherwise in a way I didn't really dig. The game can hit some pretty bad framerate dips when you get to areas with lots of enemies and water, but it's never anything that prevents play, and even those dips I did get were very uncommon.
Verdict: Hesitantly Recommended. This game is overall sorta the epitome of "fine", and while you probably won't hate it, I can't really see many people loving this game. If you can get it for cheap and the premise interests you (like it did me), then I'd say it could be worth your money, but I think for most people, they'll ultimately feel like their time was better spent elsewhere. While a neat historical curiosity, outside of some of the awful VA, Star Fox Adventures doesn't really manage to be all that memorable for being anything but a disappointing (i.e. not a successor to Star Fox 64) Star Fox game.