Yooka-Laylee review

There's a lot of negative reviews and disappointment surrounding Yooka-Laylee. Overall, I think the mid-70 scores its gotten are very fair, which is a bit disappointing being a spiritual sequel to one of the greatest games ever made. But if you are a fan of old-school 3D platformers, you should enjoy Yooka, especially if you don't go into it with extremely high expectations.
I'm an extremely hardcore fan of the Banjo series, and I've been thinking a lot about why it just doesn't live up to the older games' standards, so this is my opinion of Yooka-Laylee compared to them.

First off, the positives:

The music is fantastic, as one would expect.
The worlds and character design are fantastic. Graphically, I think the whole game is beautiful, even if it has that "Unity look".
The controls are fantastic. The controls feel like it was designed to be speedran, and that's a great thing for casual play as well. Rolling kind of gimps your controls a little, but it's part of the design; of course it's harder to control when you're balancing on a ball. I think the camera was overall fine, except maybe while flying.
All of the moves are useful, easy to activate, and make sense for the characters (they're chameleon/bat-related).
I quite enjoyed the game, and it was a joy to 100% it, being a bit starved for a game of this type. But, there's just so much that could have been better. There's a lot missing that would make it a timeless classic, like BK and BT are to so many people.

I'll start off talking about some of the Kickstarter stretch goals, which I feel hindered the game, since they doomed them to have to soullessly copy some key elements of BK/BT.

[b][u]A boss in every level[/u][/b]
Tooie did it better.
One thing about Tooie's bosses is that entering them is exciting. From going all through Targitzan's Temple to reach the totem himself, to entering Davy Jones' locker (literally), to visiting Mumbo only to have him suddenly attack you, these bosses are very memorable. Reaching the bosses in this game just don't feel that way at all. It's just another pagie. (The fourth world's boss is a nice exception.)
The bosses also feel more formulaic, pretty much just "hit them when they're vulnerable three times, they fire more at you in between each time". Some of Tooies' are like that as well, I suppose, and so is practically every Mario boss in recent history. Sad, really...

[b][u]Quiz shows[/u][/b]
Kazooie and Tooie did it WAY better.
Furnace Fun is absolutely excellently designed, with the multiple paths you can take on the board, the different square types, the minigame challenges, the Joker questions, etc.
Tower of Tragedy is a more straight-forward competition against Grunty and her sisters. It's a bit lengthy, but the flavor behind it is great, and Tooie is such a big game that there's so many questions to ask you. Competing against AI, you want to buzz in as soon as you know the answer; a lot of questions are designed to trick you so that if you buzz in before they're done being read, the options aren't what you expected.
The quiz in Yooka removes all of the fun, all of the choice, and there's three of them throughout the game for some reason, keeping the question pool for each time pathetically small. Some of the questions are about your game file as well, which is a neat idea, but it's a bit bullshit; you can be asked what your current game time is, and one of the wrong answers could be only 2 minutes off of the correct time. It's extremely slow paced, and you literally just walk in a straight line towards the exit when you get a question right. It's like they heard people loved the end-game quiz segments in the Banjo series, and boiled it down to "answer questions about the game correctly to move on", missing out on what made them fun.

[b][u]Transformations[/u][/b]
Kazooie and Tooie did it better.
All of the transformations are used solely for what they're intended for... which for most of them, is only 1 or 2 pagies. In Kazooie, the croc could harmlessly move in the swamp filling the level; the walrus could do the same in ice water; the bee had infinite flight and could step in snarebears and brambles. These gave them some use in doing things other than "the thing only the transformation can do".
Tooie has a lot more transformations, some being great and others being much more limited. A great example is the van, whose infinite health makes it fun to drive through Witchyworld in, and the submarine with its enemy-freezing sonar and infinite torpedoes is great to use in JRL. Rampaging in TDL as the daddy T-rex is great, and the bee once again shines in a level filled with floating islands.
Level 1 and 2's transformations are literally used for one pagie. You'd think a snow plow in an ice level would have a bit of plowing to do to open up paths and things, much like the Detonator did in Tooie; but no. Level 3 and 5's are water-only (and not in a huge underwater metropolis like the submarine), immediately limiting their use, and level 4's has infinite flight... except you learn infinite flight on your own, and the transformation moves slower and turns worse.

[b][u]Arcade minigames[/u][/b]
Nuts & Bolts did it better. Ha.
Every level has a "retro" arcade game, made by Rextro the polygonal scanlined dinosaur, to play for 2 pagies. Ignoring the games themselves, there's a massive flaw here, breaking game design 101: You have to play the exact same thing twice for no reason. The first time is to clear the game; the second time is to beat a high score. You have to play it a second time even if you beat the high score the first time. Ugh.
These arcade games are pretty much universally despised it seems. Personally I liked the racing game a lot; it's the only one where the goal is a fast time instead of a high score within a fixed time limit, and it controls like Top Ride from Kirby Air Ride. The other four are either boring, overly long, and easy, or boring, overly long, and frustrating. With the hate these have gotten, it makes me wonder how much playtesting this game had...
But the weird part is more that these aren't retro arcade games at all; they're fully 3D, using the same models as the rest of the game. They're more like Mario Party minigames, and they'd be good as multiplayer games (which they are), but just don't work very well in the solo mode. I think we were all expecting something more like Hero Klungo Sssavesss Teh World, an 8-bit minigame programmed by Klungo in Nuts & Bolts. The only control is jump. The tiny game screen is surrounded by overly elaborate art reminiscent of Mega Man cover art. The level design is amateurish and random. And the game might randomly crash at any time. And yet, it's absolutely fantastic. Everyone loves this minigame, so much that it got a sequel in the DLC. It's incredibly good at being purposely bad, and because it's purposely bad, it's designed in a way that's fun.
The Rextro minigames just... aren't fun. They're slow autoscrollers that feel painful to sit through. And what little enjoyment I might have had playing them was ruined knowing that I'd have to do the exact same thing again.

Minecart segments were a stretch goal too, but I quite like them, unlike some people. Finding Kartos in each level made me excited, it was something to look forward to! I just wish the minecart's shot didn't go in a straight line and instead traveled along the curved track, so it could actually hit things in front of you how you'd expect.

Now, onto some other aspects of the game that fall flat.

[b][u]Enemies[/u][/b]
Everything did it better.
Surprisingly, I haven't seen this put down in other reviews. Yooka-Laylee has 5 enemies that appear in every world:
1. A basic enemy that takes one hit, and is reskinned differently in each world
2. A bee that shoots stingers at you; there's a couple upgraded versions as you go
3. A pair of googly eyes that takes control of objects around you
4. A sentry that shoots lasers if you get in its line of sight
5. A jellyfish, the only underwater enemy
That's it. This is pathetic. It's absolutely inexcusable. There are single worlds in BK/BT that have more unique enemies than this entire game has, and they fit the worlds much more. Treasure Trove Cove, for example, has crabs that flip over (or can be beaten in one hit for an extra health), clams that steal and eat your eggs and feathers, mines that chase you down in the water, treasure chests with teeth that open and close, and the extremely memorable and terrifying Snacker. It all fits perfectly, it all sticks in your mind. This game's enemies certainly stick in your mind, because you never run into anything new.
The biggest letdown is the googly eyes; this idea is beautiful, making fun of Rare's tendency to just put googly eyes on inanimate objects to have them be a character. The issue is that, no matter if it takes control of a totem, a treasure chest, a skull, or a toilet, it does the exact same thing: Spin at you. If every object had a unique attack when they take control, that would make more sense, and make the enemy 10 times more interesting.

[b][u]Characters[/u][/b]
Kazooie and Tooie did it better.
Yooka-Laylee just doesn't have many characters involved in its challenges. The most memorable characters are honestly the Pagies themselves; some of them talk to you before or after you get them, and they're written very well! But for having 25 pagies per level, the low number of unique characters you run into is a huge letdown.
As an example, Gobi's Valley has Gobi, Jinxy, Trunker, Rubee, the Ancient Ones, you could even include Grabba and King Sandybutt.
Terrydactyland has the Unga Bungas, the Oogle Boogles, the Rocknuts, Terry, the Styracosaurus family, Dippy, Chompa, and you can even talk to the basic dinosaur enemy as the baby T-rex (he teaches you how to roar!)
Yooka has some nice one-off characters, like a hot tub hidden deep in an ice cavern that's low on bubbles, and an enemy that's civilized and doesn't attack you (he's wearing a top hat!), but then it also has Generic Slot Machine #1, 2, 3, and 4. The random memorable characters like Loggo or Nabnut or the Prospector or George and Mildred Icecube are part of what really made BK/BT shine, and they have SO many of them. This game doesn't have a Character Parade like BK and BT because it wouldn't have enough to fill the time.

[b][u]Recurring Characters[/u][/b]
Kazooie, Tooie, and Nuts & Bolts did it better.
I'm fine with the main characters that appear in every world; Rextro, Dr. Puzz, Kartos. It's like Mumbo and Humba. I'm talking about the NPCs that appear in multiple worlds for no discernable reason other than laziness.
Kazooie has a great example of a recurring character; Gobi. You chase Gobi all around his own valley to ground pound his hump and use whatever's inside. He runs off to the final world of the game to get away from you, and you do the same thing to him then. Then he runs off all the way to Tooie and continue the chase there.
Tooie has a few great ones as well, like Canary Mary and the alien family. Tooie of course also has a lot of recurring characters from Kazooie.
The recurring characters in Yooka are just... there, again, completely identical. Part of the problem I think is that it doesn't matter if you've ever seen them or interacted with them in the previous worlds; they don't act like they know you, because the devs couldn't have known if you've ever talked with them before. They're just always there, and it feels less like a good re-use of characters and more just recycling.
In Nuts & Bolts, the main cast of characters give you the different Jiggy challenges, but in each world, the characters have their own separate "role" in that world. For example, Boggy is a janitor in Banjoland, but in Terrarium of Terror, he's an alien. Pikelet, the hub area's police chief, can appear as a boss, a coach, or a mercenary. Their look is different each time.


[b][u]Forced Backtracking[/u][/b]
Tooie did it better.
If you're exploring Yooka's worlds in-depth, you're going to very quickly run into things that you can't do yet. It makes you want to just rush through the worlds and get all the moves, then come back and clean things up. But there's a major issue: Flying. You gain the ability to fly at will. This eliminates a lot of the platforming challenges in earlier levels completely. But the game is designed to make you want to go learn it (and everything else) before you scour the levels to clear them out. Combining at-will flying with forced backtracking was a terrible idea.
I also don't really like just running into things in earlier levels that require you to learn a move in a future level. I feel that this was more justified in Tooie because of how Tooie's worlds were all inter-connected. The game's 8 worlds have a ton of exits between each other, and you can help characters or trigger things in one world and they have an effect in another. The best example of this is the final level, Cloud Cuckooland, which takes place in the sky above the other 7 worlds; if you fall to your death in this level, you can see a birdseye view of the entire continent. This helped justify a lot of the backtracking in Tooie.


These are the main points I had in mind. There's a lot more critiques I have with this game, which all boil down to one simple summary: It feels rushed. It lacks the polish and detail that went into Kazooie and Tooie, and made them games that stand up to the test of time. With another year of dev time, I think a lot of these problems with Yooka-Laylee could have been fixed. As it is, I hope the next big game trying to recapture that N64 magic (probably A Hat in Time) meets the expectations more.