Yooka-Replayee Review

I played the original Yooka Laylee around the time it came but I wasn't into collectathon platformers back then. I remembered it as the "overshadowed by a Hat in Time" game. I never even knew there was going to be an updated re release that would overhaul the original game almost a decade down the line. The changes is what brought me to this version at all. It sounded weirdly intriguing.

As a whole, this version of Yooka Laylee is decent but nothing really special. What I find amusing is that it sort of feels like it's Banjo Kazooie is aping off Jak and Daxter: the Precursor Legacy. Examples being how all your moves are avaliable for you to use at the start of the game, making the obvious jab that there is autosave after getting a collectible unlike Banjo, how there are dual analog controls, and even more efficient menus tracking collectibles. This game does have a map along with the collectibles list. It did feel satisfying slowly checking it off even I don't need to get them all to beat the game.

Other than that, it's about what you expect form a the kind of game in the genre. You can bash the game for being derivative considering the original game was hyped for being by the developers of Banjo Kazooie but it didn't provide much new ideas of it's own and all the new ideas it did have were so bad this version changed it.

The moment to moment gameplay is enjoyable, exploring levels and finding pagies so you unlock more worlds. Platforming controls feel solid and the moveset feels good enough that the act of getting around in the world doesn't feel like a chore. I did enjoy running around the map and slowly unlocking most of the pagies I felt like getting. Most of the time, the clues are simple enough where there isn't a need for too much use of a walkthrough

They double the amount of pagies you can get meaning you do a good chunk of the game very quickly without needing to explore other levels but that's been a thing with the genre, the main difficulty comes from 100%ing it.

The combat can be a little too easy since you have an upgrade later in the game that can be make short work of most enemies which was supposed to be unlocked later but it did feel good to hit those enemies. Getting a game over is almost too hard except for maybe the bosses but the battle in the first world was the hardest before the final boss.

The final boss is where the game ramps up in difficulty due to how the boss himself can hit you while obscured off screen while trying to deal with area of effect electricity hazards and then later needing to deal with fodder enemies all at the same time. It took a number of tries to get past this part where everything before this I didn't die much at all. It was surprising since the rest of the game was on the easy side.

Overall, that's Yooka Replayee. It's a competent and enjoyable collectathon platformer. There is nothing it does extraordinarily well but nothing that really annoys when playing it either. I mainly wanted to play since I got it at a reduced price for owning the original and wanted to quickly get a game out of the way.