Yooka’nt keep a good duo down - Yooka Replaylee Review
Developer: Playtonic Games | Platform: PS5 |
Playtime and Platinum: 12:15
The story is well known now but bears repeating – developers from Rare (of Banjo Kazooie fame) split off to form Playtonic. Their project was a successor to the bear and bird known as Yooka Laylee. It became one of the biggest Kickstarter campaigns of all time but the final product proved to be a disappointment – poor mechanics, barren worlds, a lack of polish and charm. It was competent enough and playable but that was about it. Playtonic would not be deterred though and later announced Yooka Replaylee – not so much a remake but a second attempt at the idea. This time around, it’s a night and day difference in quality from top to bottom.
Due to the nature of this game as not quite a remake, I’ll unfortunately be making a lot of comparisons to the original game as it’s the easiest way to highlight the improvements and what's good about the game. That and having played the original, it’s near impossible to divest from my experience with it in relation to the new.
The story follows Yooka the Chameleon and Laylee the bat. Their adventure begins with the recently saved One Book being absored into a giant funnel atop Hivory Industries. The boss of Hivory Towers, the villainous Capital B intends to use it’s pages to take over the world. The only problem is that the pages are scattered. Luckily Yooka and Laylee are here to help collect them. The story follows the same beats as the original with some more refinement,
A lot of Yooka-Replaylee’s changes are very much improvements but not everything has been applied equally, meaning some of the game is objectively better than the original, some of it gets a little lost in the mix. Take the hub world, Hivory Towers. Once a directionless sprawling mess, it is now a well designed, slightly expanded hub with much better signposting of where to go. The games new fast travel system is helpful but renders the clever shortcuts in the Tower a little moot. That’s probably the main example of a change that was implemented - not poorly but suffers as a consequence.
Each of the games five main worlds are vastly improved too. Each level is free to explore from the get go. Originally the player would be allowed a portion of the level to explore but could later expand it. The result was the base level feeling incomplete and the expanded version being too vast by comparison. You’d think the levels would be too vast from the get go now but that’s where things have changed for the better. I don’t think I’m saying anything controversial when I say it seems like Yooka-Replaylee has taken some design notes from Super Mario Odyssey.
Levels previously had 25 Pagies (Stars, Jiggies, Dragon Eggs, etc) that were awarded for various tasks. These couldn’t be tracked in game nor did they have any fanfare when collecting. Some pagies were just also genuinely not fun to find. Replaylee bumps this number up to 50 per level (and the hub also from 20 to 50), makes them more fun to find with new challenges and remade old ones, gave them some fanfare when collected and offers both a map and checklist on how to find them. Sure, 18 of the 50 in each stage are from consistent challenges throughout the game but the remainder are just as fun to find. Changes were also made to the Quills. These were a more numerous collectible type that suffered from being in awkward or unintuitive locations, this issue has been rectified and their purpose changed. Quills are now joined by the respawning Coins which help fill up the levels. Quills are spent at Trowzer for special power-ups (Not moves this time, they’re all avaliable from the start) while Coins are used at the terrifying Vendi for Tonics which alter how the game is played and a whole range of outfits.
Kartos and his mine cart stages are still a bit poor, bosses have been improved but they’re still nothing special, it’s Rextro who got the biggest glow-up. Previously Rextro’s stages were minigames like a small RC racing track or an endless runner that felt cheap and unenjoyable. Now all the Rextro minigames are different levels of the same minigame where you control Rextro in little platform puzzle levels that remind me of Captain Toad. These are great fun and I’m glad there’s extra ones in the hub world to enjoy.
As expected, the dialogue is as witty as ever but the voices are thankfully not quite as agitating to listen to (I don’t have a reference or comparison, they just didn’t annoy me this time around). NPC'‘s reappearing for multiple stages now when they previously only appeared in one or two levels helps cement them as actual characters rather than strange designs that didn’t fit. Even the enemies have new designs to fit each of the areas, a little detail that goes a long way.
My main criticism of the game if you can even consider it is that it’s so insistent that you don’t even play the game. The original game needed 100 of the 145 to fight the final boss, in Replaylee, it’s 120 of the 300. That’s 68.97% vs 40%. It’s quite a big difference. I’d be fine doing a lot less of the original. In Replaylee, I had enough to fight the final boss before I even entered the third level of five. Of course I still played all of them. My final count was 248 of 300 (and 710 of 750 Quills).
Some of the core issues remain like Level 4 not being very good and now the game is a bit too easy to complete but Yooka-Replaylee is a wonderful time and probably the best example of a remake I’ve ever seen. It easily brings a 5/10 game up to something like an 8/10. It’s not perfect but I have high hopes for a sequel.
