While
Banjo-Kazooie has long been crystallized as one of the best games of all time in the 3D platforming canon, Banjo-Tooie has had a much washier critical reception through the years.
Kazooie was hailed for its whimsical atmosphere and tight, dense level design, both of which are purposely eschewed by its sequel. Tooie was an absolutely massive release in its day, still one of the most content-packed games in the Nintendo 64's library, with a huge interconnected world, hundreds of collectibles, cinematic boss fights, tons of mini-games, and notably, oddly dark in tone. According to multiple
Rare developers, Banjo's sophomore adventure was intended to be their answer to
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time [ゼルダの伝説 時のオカリナ], much the way Banjo-Kazooie was (perhaps more successfully) Rare's answer to
Super Mario 64 [スーパーマリオ64]. And this shows clearly in Tooie's design ethos,
whose fundamental gameplay style feels a lot closer to sprawling action-adventure titles rather than the simpler, segmented 3D platformer style of its predecessor.Even from the opening minutes, continuing a few years after the events of BK, the game abruptly establishes how the tenor will be quite different this time around. The formerly welcoming Spiral Mountain starts the game in ruins, and its jolly intro tune from the first game has been replaced with an ominous minor key remix, a pattern that continues for most the game's dreary (yet still excellent) soundtrack by
Grant Kirkhope. Death is weirdly abundant, from the immediate demise of one of your companions (even if largely played for dark humor), to a creepy zombified king (that dearly frightened many a kid!), and many new side characters that frankly come off as more morbid and off-putting than helpful. Much of Tooie's world seems as if it outright exists to hurt you, rarely committing to a feeling of comfort or safety, with even once-friendly faces like the Jinjos now interspersed with demonic little impostors. The game liberally employs a lot of creepy atmospheres in its world design, with levels variously themed around condemned carnivals, dystopian factories, deep waters, cultish temples, and numerous dark cave subareas throughout. Many of these levels are still thematically interesting, a few stand-outs are especially captivating, although broadly trend to the more drab side of environment choices.
It all strikes a strange chord, as this is still a slapstick game about a silly bear and bird running around collecting honeycombs and jigsaw puzzles, yet much of the world is still designed to be a bit unsettling. And I can see how that can rub some people the wrong way, considering the happy-go-lucky atmosphere of the first game is a huge part of its bright, colorful, nostalgic appeal. I similarly associate my childhood memories of this game being one of mostly surrealness, mystery, and slight unease, in sharp contrast with BK and the joyful Christmas feel of Freezeezy Peak or easygoing warmth of Treasure Trove Cove. For modern adult players, this might not mean as much, but the lack of childlike wonder probably informs a large part of the game's lasting perception two decades later.
But outside of just vibes, the truly defining way in which Tooie departs from Kazooie is its absurdly expanded scale: both in terms of world size and gameplay scope. You retain all your abilities from the first game (why don't more games do this?!), while unlocking a whopping 20 more moves through this game, from new items, different egg ammunition types, first-person aiming and swimming abilities, and maybe most impactful, the ability to split up Banjo and Kazooie which introduces two new completely unique movesets and playstyles. Transformations into different animals and objects are also back, and without spoiling the specifics of individual levels, they're all hilarious and fun to play.
Between it all, the overall amount of world traversal options is incredible, and probably Tooie's strongest feature. Even the normal bird-and-bear movement feels amazing and fluid, improving upon the already enjoyable movement of the first game, deepening player control with free-moving rolls, cliff grabs, better jump and glide options, and impressively, underwater movement that actually isn't half-bad for a platformer. It can be a blast just running and jumping around the game's spacious game worlds in all the ways the game has to offer.
Individually, levels are all easily twice the physical size of Kazooie's, with less focus on technical platforming and routing collectibles, and much more about broad exploration and puzzle-solving. Note collection is now permanent (unlike Kazooie which required you to grab all notes without dying), meaning level navigation has a lot less running through fixed note paths and more about finding every nook and cranny crammed into the game's nine levels. Backtracking, controversially, is part of the core game loop: not only are later abilities required to collect many jiggies in earlier worlds, but there's also many neat level crossovers, where completing events in one level can make physical changes to others. A few jiggies are basically fully-formed questlines, some even requiring you to hop through tasks in several different worlds to finally earn your meager reward.
In line with this new gameplay design, the courses are almost all cleverly interconnected now, with unlockable shortcuts between levels letting you navigate between them without having to go back to the hub world.
The actual execution of these are varied. The shortcuts are conceptually neat, and form a cohesive and lively lore to the world that's absent from the first game with the way the levels interact with each other. But structurally, they don't always feel necessary, and unfortunately it's often faster to just warp out of the world than to use many of these shortcuts. Most shortcuts end up being used for a single side quest and never entered again, rarely providing that sweet feeling of utility and connectiveness that a well-designed
metroidvania is able to provide. It's fun in a worldbuilding sense to learn that, say, the pollution from the lagoon level is being dumped from a sewage pipe in a later factory level that you can switch off, and it's satisfying to close these loose ends from earlier locales. But it feels like your progression through these worlds would remain largely the same whether this connection had been put in the game or not.
I think, overall, many won't find Banjo-Tooie as lovable as the first game. Age hasn't been the kindest on the game either, as while the game was once a technical marvel, with its insanely large explorable world, mind-boggling amount of new content, and some of the strongest graphics ever coded on
Nintendo 64 hardware, it also lacks much of what made its predecessor so timeless.
I still like Banjo-Tooie a lot. But comparatively more of what Tooie has to offer consists merely of intriguing novelty - whether it's cool world connections, slightly tedious backtracking quests, mundane puzzles, weird first-person shooter sections, mini-games that are fun once or twice - and just isn't quite as much of a joy to revisit as is the tightly-focused platforming perfection of Kazooie.
Obviously it has it's flaws, but isn't it kind of hilarious that such a sarcastic and goofy game might genuinely have the most detailed and immersive atmosphere of any game on the 64? It seriously rivals the two 64 Zeldas on this front.