Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest

The character of Donkey Kong is not what makes a Donkey Kong Country game. I realize this might sound silly considering his name is in the title of the series, but Donkey Kong isn't a playable character in both sequels to Donkey Kong Country for the SNES. Because of this, I had assumed that the sequels were lackluster affairs, so I had only played the first one for the longest time. In retrospect, avoiding the Donkey Kong Country sequels due to having a lack of the titular character was ridiculous. I still can’t think of a reason as to why Rare would omit Donkey Kong completely from two major entries in his own series. As it turned out, Rare’s baffling decision was not a detriment to the franchise. Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest proved that Donkey Kong was not an essential ingredient to the franchise, despite it maintaining his namesake. The sequel expanded on all of the elements of the first game and refined it to the point where Donkey Kong Country 2 is the quintessential DKC experience, and I also feel quite foolish for depriving myself for as long as I did. Donkey Kong Country 2 is widely considered the best game in the series, with a few naysayers favoring the first game. I fall into the former category, plus I consider Donkey Kong Country 2 to be one of the greatest 2D platformers of all time. All things considered, DKC2 isn’t a whole lot different from the first game, yet I don’t sing the same praises for DKC1. It would be easy to just credit Rare for buffing out the cracks of the first game like any game developer is supposed to do for a sequel, but these improvements are very abstruse. I am not declaring DKC2 as the best game tentatively as I’m confident in my opinion. DKC2 has all of the hallmarks that made the first game a standout title, but the subtle changes are what elevates it above the rest.

Rare’s focal point when developing Donkey Kong Country was rather to expand on the “country” part of the title instead of the “Donkey Kong” aspect. The world of the first game was a sprawling, rural landscape composed of humid jungles, musty caves, snowy peaks, and a smattering of other geographical environments. Donkey Kong hadn’t had much limelight since he first appeared in his eponymous arcade game in 1981. The developers at Rare figured that since Donkey Kong was an ape, placing him in a pastoral setting made sense. The choice in setting wasn’t just implemented to complement Donkey Kong’s animalistic persona. The developers went to great lengths to make every level sublime with the gorgeous pre-rendered graphics, kinetic platforming, and a mesmerizing soundtrack. These are the elements needed to craft a Donkey Kong Country game, not Donkey Kong himself.

Stating that Donkey Kong isn’t present over the course of DKC2 isn’t entirely true. Rescuing Donkey Kong from King K. Rool’s slimy clutches is the main mission of DKC2. How anyone subdued a burly ape-like Donkey Kong to hold him hostage is beyond me, but I suppose the same was done to King Kong, another iconic ape figure that is a hundred times the size of Donkey Kong. Diddy Kong’s quest or “kong quest” (I went through the entire game before I noticed the pun in the title) is to ascend the perilous peak of Crocodile Isle, the homefront of King K. Rool and the kremlings. Diddy of course can’t venture off on this daunting journey by his lonesome. He is joined by Dixie Kong, a female simian of vague relation to Diddy Kong. Are they cousins? Siblings? Romantic partners? There’s no carnal monkey love in this game, so their relation to one another is irrelevant. The only dynamic between them that does matter is how they work as a platforming duo. Considering Dixie Kong has ousted Donkey Kong from his own franchise, the stakes are high with Dixie Kong as a playable character.

I’m happy to say that Dixie Kong is my favorite character in the Donkey Kong Country series. This is due to one simple but incredibly useful mechanic: her gliding feature she can do with her blonde ponytail. It always feels comfortable using this technique to traverse the levels in this game, and it also covers a lot of ground. It’s difficult to say if replacing Donkey Kong with Dixie Kong is an overall improvement because both characters are totally different. This gives Dixie Kong a drastically different dynamic with Diddy Kong by proxy, and I’m not entirely sure if this new dynamic is better or worse than it was with Donkey Kong. In the first game, the dynamic was the contrasting sizes between the two characters. Donkey Kong was the strapping one with the ability to defeat bigger enemies while Diddy was much more agile and could jump higher due to his smaller stature. Ponytail glide moves aside, Dixie Kong is the same size as Diddy Kong. I’ve been told that Diddy moves slightly quicker than Dixie, but this was never evident to me while playing. The polar opposite proportions between Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong is what gave the duel platforming of the first game its relative depth that Diddy and Dixie don’t have. However, DKC2 manages to compensate for this. While the size differences between Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong are well implemented into the gameplay of the first game, sections in which not having a specific Kong would unfairly doom the player. The sections that require the unique talents of Dixie Kong are only to access bonus stages, and the same goes with the character-specific barrels. Playing as either Kong in DKC2 is completely even, so the player has a total choice over which Kong to put in front to suit their playstyle. Their similar sizes also lend to the new throwing mechanic. The select Kong can hoist the other on their back to either throw them upward to access new heights or to throw them across a gap. The more evenly matched dynamic here between the characters gives the player more leeway in traversing the levels rather than the forced character implementation of the first game. In saying that, the only thing that’s keeping me from playing as Dixie Kong for the entire duration of the game is being hit and having to use Diddy Kong.

The Kongs aren’t the only playable characters with more precedence than the titular ape. The animal buddies are a returning feature that is much more enterprising than it used to be. In the first game, animal buddies were present in most levels in the game as vehicles that would aid the Kongs either move quicker through a level or jump higher. The animal buddies were all fun to use once in a while and they counted as helpful collateral when the Kongs were hit. They were also playable without the Kongs in many bonus levels for gaining extra lives. I’d argue that the animal buddies were underutilized in the first game due to their aid being a novelty instead of a necessity. They couldn’t really offer anything totally out of the Kong’s reach. The animal buddies in DKC2 are much more useful than they were and have a presence that makes them feel like secondary characters instead of tools.

Returning animal buddies like Rambi and Enguarde still offer their backs to give the Kongs a lift, but come with their own special attributes that give them way more utility. Rambi can do a rhino charge move to demolish a blocked-off entrance, and this move can also precariously catapult the player past a good chunk of the level, zooming past kremlings like a jungle autobahn. Squawks offered his talents as a flashlight in the first game, but now he’s passed that job off to an anglerfish named Glimmer onto bigger and better things. Squawks can now use his wings to soar past levels with a myriad of hazards, usually lifting the Kongs up in the air with his talons. Rattly and Squitter are new animal buddies, and they are huge improvements to the animal buddies from the first game that did not return. Rattly is a rattlesnake gifted with a jumping ability uncharacteristic of any rattlesnake I’m familiar with. Nevertheless, he reaches heights higher than Winky ever did. Squitter is a tarantula with four pairs of bitchin’ sneakers on each of his eight legs. He has the most interesting utility of all the animal buddies in that he can shoot webs as projectiles and thicker webs to use as platforms. He can access heights with his webs reaching up so far as the edge of what graphical space the game will allow (I’d also like to point out that tarantulas shoot webs from their feet, not their mouths. Realistically, Squitter would just be filling his shoes with webs). All of these features prove the animal buddies to be incredibly useful in more ways than just bicycles composed of flesh and blood and being vehicles for corny bonus stages.

It’s fantastic that the animal buddies have such a large presence in this game because they are on the frontlines almost as much as both Kongs. There are many levels that are designated entirely to playing as one of the animal buddies. Some of these animal buddy levels are also some of the hardest levels in the entire game. Slime Climb is a level with Rattly that utilizes his super jump move to the best of his ability, having the player aim his jumps accordingly to avoid the ascending slime hazard. Web Woods is the Squitter level with swathes of bottomless hazards so tense that it’s enough to make any player’s sphincter clench. Squawks even gets his own boss battle all to himself, spitting nuts at a giant zinger like a multi-directional shooter. Animal Antics, one of the bonus levels in the game, is a gauntlet of using every single animal buddy to the best of their abilities. It’s also widely considered to be the most difficult level in the game, so the developers definitely wanted the animal buddies to be considered playable characters with their own stakes in the game. One might argue that the heavy presence of the animal buddies is too distracting from the core gameplay, but I think it broadens the overall scope of the series. The animal buddies are supposed to give the jungle background of DKC some depth with their presence, exotic animals that make up the foreground of a jungle setting. Their more substantial roles here do a wonderful job at expanding on the “country” aspect of the series, making it seem as if Donkey Kong is not the center of the series.

If Donkey Kong was a playable character, he’d still be a fish out of water. The setting is no longer DK Isle with its comforting familiarity. Every single inch of the mountainous Crocodile Isle is riddled with the influence of King K. Rool and his reptilian underlings. The Kongs are infiltrating enemy territory instead of Kremling influence slowly adulterating DK Isle as was the case for the first game. The atmosphere of Crocodile Isle is consistently more hostile than the tropical sunsets accompanied by the sounds of frogs and other noisy wildlife found on DK Isle. Opting out of the jungle setting of DKC1 may be another instance of the franchise losing itself once again, but this was just another part of the “country expansion” directive the developers strived for. The overall setting of DKC2 may not be as cohesive as the jungle setting of the first game, but the individual levels are far more consistent with a particular theme. Gangplank Galleon is a pirate-themed level in which the sublevels consist of either running from the bow to the stern or a ship or an epic ascent to the mast. The kremlings either walk on wooden legs or wear bandanas to add to the pirate theme. It’s a theme that’s certainly warranted considering King K. Rool’s fight in the last game took place on a pirate ship. Maybe the kremlings are legitimate pirates and Crocodile Isle is like their Skull Keep. Crocodile Cauldron is a diamond mine surrounded by lava. Krem Quay is a dingy swamp and Gloomy Gulch is an eerie place engulfed by fog and strong autumn winds. The most interesting place is Krazy Kremland, an amusement park built by the Kremlings on the territory of zinger hives. The more contained theming of each level DKC2 makes them feel more consistent in tone. The first game would introduce a random jungle environment whenever it felt like it, no matter the place in the game. The jungle setting may have felt more appropriate for Donkey Kong, but repeating this for the sequels would have fatigued the series. The only setting that is guilty of randomly being implemented here in DKC2 is the bramble areas. They occur every so often in every level starting from Krem Quay and showcase the staple barrel mechanic present in every game of the series. The accompanying track for these levels, “Stickerbrush Symphony” is maybe the best track in the entire series, but the barrel mechanic of these levels is nauseating.

Progressing through all of these themed places will give the player a sense of the game’s difficulty curve compared to the first game. There are no longer any steep pikes in difficulty like “Mine Cart Madness” and there are no unfair blindspots to catch the player off guard. Extra lives are also more plentiful due to the carnival bell feature at the end of each level with a range of prizes. Despite all of this, DKC2 is the hardest game in the SNES trilogy. Some of the levels later in this game made me want to nuke Crocodile Isle out of pure spite, but that’s just the thing. The game has an incredibly smooth difficulty curve that naturally increases as the player progresses through the game. The challenge comes from stacking upon what the player has already experienced without any cheaply implemented tactics. Gangplank Galleon almost acts as a tutorial level, comfortably nestling the player into the experience and netting more experienced players with a bevy of extra lives. Crocodile Cauldron is slightly harder than the preceding level just as Krem Quay is slightly harder than the level that preceded it. In my experience, the game starts to ratchet up the difficulty around Krazy Kremland. It’s a tough, but fair difficulty curve throughout. Unlike the first game, saving and traveling to another level costs coins, so the player can’t use saving and traveling to easier levels to farm for lives as a crutch. Surviving the onslaught present in DKC becomes more imperative as a result.

The bosses were definitely the biggest detriment to the first Donkey Kong Country. With the exception of the final fight against King K. Rool, each boss at the end of every level was a laughably pitiful experience. It saddens me to say that the bosses in DKC 2 are only a slight improvement from the bosses of the first game. Their designs are more interesting this time, as are the means to defeat them. Some standouts are Kleever in Crocodile Cauldron and the giant zinger boss with Squawks. However, I am not amused by Kudgel’s predictable attack patterns nor the incorporeal, reskinned Kreepy Crow. These fights are mostly only an improvement on the first game’s bosses which isn’t setting the bar too high. King K. Rool is once again the only truly formidable foe. His outfit is more extravagant as opposed to his animalistic nakedness from the first game. He’s fully adopted the pirate persona, wearing a regal captain’s uniform and donning the typical black pirate hat with a skull and crossbones. His fight is a multi-phased affair of carefully dodging erratic patterns of cannonballs and colored gasses that warp the player’s controls. It’s a fight that will make the player’s brow sweat, and he doesn’t even try to execute another cheap fakeout (although the first cannonball he shoots back at the player might catch someone off guard).

Once Donkey Kong is rescued, the adventure is far from over. Our favorite geriatric primate Cranky Kong will once again be disappointed in the Kong’s performance just like any crotchety old man is with their kin. The extra features needed to satisfy Cranky Kong and fully complete the game aren’t just a matter of finding misplaced collectibles. The Kong’s must brave the challenges of the “Lost World”, the inner sanctum of Crocodile Isle, acting as a secret bonus realm like “Star Road” from Super Mario World. To access this bonus world, the Kong’s have to pay Kudgel at a toll marked by a crocodile icon on the map of each sublevel. The player has to pay a whopping 15 kremcoins achieved from bonus stages in the main levels to access each level in the Lost World. Having to do this is the pinnacle of a completionist-level slog and isn’t much fun. There is an option to fight Kudgel instead, but it will just result in him batting you off with his giant club. Considering the tedium of collecting each Kremcoin, I’d rather just whoop his ass five different times. Each level in the lost world is fairly challenging with a steady difficulty build increasing as the player progresses, similarly to the base game. Once you’ve completed every level, it ends with a more demanding version of the final boss fight against King K. Rool in another location. It’s hard to tell whether or not Cranky Kong will truly be satisfied with the player once they’ve endured each level of Lost World, but the player should certainly feel more than accomplished (and incredibly exhausted).

Ironically, the best game in the Donkey Kong Country series doesn’t even have Donkey Kong in it (his unorthodox role as a damsel in distress withstanding). The first game was made to give Nintendo’s first breakout star another breath of relevancy after lying dormant for so long. In the process, the developers created this immaculate, rural world to support the ape appropriately. The developers made an odd decision to expand on the world instead of expanding on accompanying Donkey Kong with different aspects. The developers knew the core of Donkey Kong Country was the graphical style, the challenging gameplay, and the strength of the different settings. Maintaining this core with Diddy Kong, Dixie Kong, and the animal buddies proved to be just as exceptional, improving on aspects lacking from the first game as a stellar sequel should. It’s also apt that I compare DKC2 with Super Mario World in the last paragraph to illustrate comparisons between two landmark SNES platformers. Declaring DKC2 as the best Donkey Kong Country game is not a controversial sentiment, but I consider Donkey Kong Country 2 to even surpass the ever-iconic Super Mario World in every aspect. Hell, Donkey Kong Country 2 might even be the greatest game on the SNES and the greatest 2D platformer of all time.

Terrible. Worse than DKC1 in every way. Visually it looks worse, overloaded, downright ugly at times. Enemies are either a lousy recycling of the originals or some overthought new nonsense (crocodiles in lava, what?). There is less clarity, in general, as a sequel it tries to "add to the original" by complicating everything and ends up being a mess. Movements are less clear, less precise. Objects (coins, barrels, etc.) look awful. The animals are lame, why change a frog for a snake that jumps? The coin system is a terrible idea. And the music has less character. I understand they had to try something different, but this hinted secrets are just annoying, almost taunting. Levels in general are less memorable. Difficulty is the icing on the cake.

Baita sequência, melhora tudo do original. Mas também é mais difícil e. pra mim. frustrante além da conta. Essa experiência muito baseada em repetição me irrita. e gostaria que as fases fossem um pouco mais abertas.

Mas não dá pra negar a qualidade do level design, trilha sonora, dentre tantos outros pontos destacáveis.

Me chamou muita atenção a forma como o gameplay se altera com os animais, e a adição da Dixie é MUITO bem-vinda também, já que o Donkey Kong era o único grande problema do primeiro jogo.

The thing I loved so much about the 90s were that the classic platformers always got sequels that improved so much on the originals, Crash Bandicoot 2, Spyro the Dragon 2, Rayman 2, Sonic 2, Gex 2. Donkey Kong Country 2 improves on the original in every way, the levels are designed better, there are less frustrating moments, and Dixie controls a little better than Donkey. Its a fairly basic platformer and still has tons of hard and challenging moments, especially later in the game, but we get less of the annoying cart levels and this game feels longer and has a bigger variety. There are some annoyances, the game does still have a number of cheap levels where you'll have to memorize things and play by trial and error, there's the annoying barrel level where you have to shoot yourself out of the barrel's on time perfectly, and the boss fights in this game are still pretty annoying and frustrating, but to be honest, the game is a lot more tolerable and dying in this game is less of a chore than the previous game. This game is just bigger, has better variety, gives you more control and use of the animal buddies, and has better level design. Sure some things haven't aged well, but its still fun to play and with 2 players it can be a real blast.

This game's great. It looks even better than the first DKC, has an catchier, more vibrant, and overall just amazing soundtrack, and has a ton of gameplay variety, feeling even fresher than the original. This is thanks partly to the continued tactic of levels having their own gimmicks, and also thanks to increased interactivity between the two player characters. Dixie's hover ability is so much fun, and I love being able to chuck Dixie/Diddy around. Overall, even though I miss playing as Donkey Kong himself, I would mostly call this an excellent sequel.

But despite the increased polish in gameplay and presentation over the original, I have to dock its score half a point. The gameplay is somewhat hampered for me by the fact that, well, it's really damn hard. The first game got difficult at the second half, but this one starts hitting you with some tough levels well before the halfway point and generally keeps getting more and more brutal. Like that game, this one has obstacles that frequently come too fast to properly react to, though the level design can still be devious without being cheap too. Still, this one pushes the anger factor a bit too high for me sometimes. I can't stand it when I feel like a game level tricked me into dying. Remember that boss battle where you're a bird spitting rocks at a big bee and you have to land your rocks on its stinger, which is easier said than done since the bird has sloppy, floaty controls and your rocks fly in an arch? Tedious bullshit. And those long thorn levels? Awesome music, but frustrating as hell. Not to mention, the save system now requires you to collect two of a certain kind of coins per level to save more than once per hubworld. (Note that there are multiple types of coins to collect; I would call this Rareware's first collect-a-thon.) Unless you feel like hunting for these coins, be prepared to be stuck replaying some annoyingly difficult levels until you can stumble upon more coins or inch your way to the next save station.

Overall, very solid game, but not recommended for players lacking in skill or patience.

One of Rare's crowning achievements and pure poetry to the 2D platforming genre. Donkey Kong Country 2 took every aspect of the original Donkey Kong Country and improved upon it greatly! Starring Diddy Kong and his girlfriend Dixie, a tag team much more dynamic than Donkey Kong and Diddy. Dixie's gliding hair mechanic adds an extra layer of complexity to the controls and Rare designed each level with this in mind so that it could not be exploited to make the game easier. I still preferred to play as Diddy because he was much quicker and had more precise controls, his roll attack in particular had impressive range and if used off of a ledge it would allow for longer more impressive jumps. In this game Donkey Kong actually gets kidnapped by King K Rool, errrr..... Captain K. Rool..... I can't remember if they were the same person or brothers..... But anyway, DK is held hostage atop the very menacing Crocodile Island and it's Diddy and Dixie's job to scale the island and save Donkey!

Crocodile Island is a pretty large contrast to that of DK Island from the first game. This pirate dystopia is very much like a theme park, fit with large pirate ships, volcanoes, roller coasters, haunted houses, and dangerous bee colonies. Everything about this world is heavily inspired, from the interesting array of locations you visit to the hilariously awesome enemies you battle. There's pirates with swords, hooks, cannons! Floating goblins, rabid cats, kamikaze dudes wearing explosive barrels! The bosses are great too; from a giant pirate crow to a ghostly inanimate sword, to the epic-ness that is the battle with captain K. Rool. The game also introduces two of the coolest animal buddies in the series, Rattly the rattlesnake (with his crazy jumping abilities!) and Squitter the Spider (who can create platforms using his webs). The animal buddies are used much more frequently in this game and are actually integral for completing many levels, like....... Web Woods 0_o ........

Ahem, the level designs are very much on point and creative. I noticed that Rare experimented with levels that have a greater sense of vertical to them. Again the enemy assortment and emphasis on buddies added lots of variety but Rare also added level specific obstacles that kept things very fresh, like throwing in strong winds to f*** with your directional control, hot air balloons that sink unless kept full of air, toxic waters that slowing rise and chase you (........Toxic Tower 0_o .........) just to name a few. As a result of these additions, Donkey Kong Country 2 is notorious for being a very challenging game, and I would absolutely agree that this is the hardest of the original DKC trilogy! But it's a very fair challenge and one that allots an enormous amount of satisfaction once you've completed it! It's also one of the longer games at 7 areas (including the lost world where you must find all of the game's hidden DK coins to advance in). So it's quite the value package!

Also noteworthy is the game's famous soundtrack, handled entirely by David Wise. This very passionate, tuneful, and emotional soundtrack suited the ambience and themes of the game's world incredibly well. This music is often very immersive with its weather and environmental sound effects. Just listen to classics like the emotional Stickerbrush Symphony, the mystical Forest Interlude, the very percussive Mining Melancholy, and the triumphantly menacing Krook's March, and it might not be hard to see why this is such a heavily regarded soundtrack and my personal favourite videogame soundtrack of all time! :3

This is a truly magnificent game in nearly every regard, and it'll go down as one of Rare's finest games. This is a must own for any platforming fanatic, a classic in every sense of the word! ;D