PARACHUTE INSTRUCTOR: I don't think you know what you're doing! You need a parachute; that's a backpack! BANJO: Don't worry! BANJO: Kazooie? OH! [SUBTITLES BY CLOUDCONNECTION] Banjo-Kazooie was a massive success, and was another in a series of hit games that Rare developed for the Nintendo 64, thanks in part to heavy promotion by Nintendo. Plus, it was a property that Rare could call their own, rather than one owned by somebody else. As such, a sequel was inevitable, and Rare began development right after Kazooie came out. Gregg and Steve Mayles, Chris Sutherland, and Grant Kirkhope all returned to work on the sequel, as well as Ed Bryan, an artist and character designer on Banjo-Kazooie, and the addition of Steve Malpass, a developer who was also the voice of Fox McCloud for Super Smash Bros. Melee and Star Fox Adventures. While another team at Rare, which included people that worked on Banjo-Kazooie, was busy finishing up Donkey Kong 64, the Banjo team got to work creating the sequel, which they called Banjo-Tooie. The developers incorporated several features they wanted to have in the first game, but couldn’t because of memory restrictions or a lack of time, including some levels and a multiplayer mode. Rare wanted the game to come out
in 1999, but because of how massive the game was shaping up to be, they pushed it back to November 20th, 2000. The game was considerably bigger in terms of both design and the number of features, and was a little bit darker than its predecessor, but it was still more of the
platforming and item collection
action that players loved. Banjo-Tooie sold around 1.49 million units and received similar critical praise as Banjo-Kazooie, but perhaps because Rare released three collection-based platformers within the span of two-and-a-half years, there was a general consensus that Rare wasn’t innovating enough, instead just relying on the same tropes they used in Banjo-Kazooie and Donkey Kong 64. This ultimately contributed to a negative view of collectathons that continues to exist to this day. But is Banjo-Tooie just another Rare collectathon, or did the improvements and additions Rare made give the sequel a leg up over Banjo-Kazooie? Well, considering Banjo-Tooie is one of my favorite games of all time, and I played Tooie long before playing Kazooie, you can guess what I think about that, but let’s try to be fair here. I grew up playing Banjo-Tooie, and I’ll admit, I have a bias towards it from the get-go. There are several reasons why I think it’s the better game, and certainly I’ll be going over them, but I’m also aware of the aspects that are irritating to deal with or that Banjo-Kazooie did better. I want to give Tooie a balanced critique while also explaining why I view it as the superior game, and also explore how the game fares as its own instead of just comparing it to Banjo-Kazooie. Once again, I’m playing the Xbox version for this video, and there’s no major content changes this time except the addition of Stop n’ Swop, which we’ll discuss later. The biggest improvements in this port are the removal of lag and heavily reduced load times. The N64 version has a terrible frame rate in many areas, which makes the original version a sluggish chore to play, but the Xbox port runs silky smooth. The only real problem with this port is some audio synchronization issues during the cutscenes; specifically the music, which gets out of sync because it was designed around the lag and load times of the N64. This leads to moments in the intro cinematic where the tone of the scene is ruined by the wrong section of the music playing. [OMINOUS VILLAIN MUSIC] [SILLY BANJO MUSIC] Other than that, the game runs fine, so with that all cleared up, let’s first look at the story. Banjo-Tooie takes place two years after Banjo-Kazooie, with the heroes of the last adventure living peacefully following the defeat of Gruntilda the Witch. Banjo, Kazooie, Mumbo Jumbo, and Bottles the Mole are enjoying a friendly game of poker on a dark, stormy night. You Banjo-Kazooie fans might be wondering: where’s Banjo’s sister Tooty? Well, that’s a good question. Meanwhile, Grunty’s monster assistant Klungo, who I forgot to mention in the last video, has been trying to rescue Grunty from her rocky situation, when suddenly, Grunty’s sisters Mingella and Blobbelda, show up and destroy the boulder that Grunty’s been under for two whole years. You Banjo-Kazooie fans might be wondering: where’s Grunty’s sister Brentilda? That’s another good question. Unfortunately for Grunty, spending two years trapped under a rock has not been kind to her, since she’s now nothing more than a skeleton. Now that she’s free, however, Grunty plots her revenge against Banjo and Kazooie. She uses a magic spell to completely destroy Banjo’s house, with most of the occupants getting to safety, but unfortunately, Bottles is caughtin the crossfire and is killed. No joke, he literally dies. That’s his ghost. Banjo and Kazooie set off on another adventure to stop Grunty once and for all, and head off to explore the rest of the island they live on, known as the Isle O’ Hags. They seek assistance from the leader of the Jinjos, King Jingaling, who gives them their first Jiggy and opens up the path to the rest of the island. However, Grunty’s sisters have built a device that sucks the life force out of anything it touches, and they demonstrate its power by blasting King Jingaling’s throne room, turning him into a zombie. Grunty wants to blast the entire island and completely suck the life out of it, but the machine needs to charge up before it can do that, and this charge-up period conveniently lasts long enough for Banjo and Kazooie to stop Grunty’s plan and have their climactic rematch. This story isn’t any more complex when you get down to it; it’s still about Banjo and Kazooie fighting against Gruntilda the Skeleton, which still works fine. The only thing in this story I don’t like is that Grunty doesn’t speak in rhymes anymore, because her sisters call it annoying, which is especially insulting considering they speak entirely in Yoda talk. Tooie’s story appeals to me more, though, because of its darker tone. Banjo-Kazooie was a fun, happy adventure that was a little cynical when it needed to be. Banjo-Tooie cranks up the cynicism tremendously, as these characters are much more jaded and often break the fourth wall. When Bottles dies, Kazooie’s first response is “Well, he wasn’t the most popular character in Banjo-Kazooie anyway.” That kind of attitude is littered all-throughout this game, like a lot of platformers from this era, but rather than relying on zany characters or pop culture references, Banjo-Tooie has a more relaxed, snarky, and appropriately British style of humor. It’s also a lot more adult than Banjo-Kazooie, because this game has a lot of innuendos. Banjo-Kazooie had a few crude jokes, but Tooie ramps up the dirty humor and sexual references quite a bit; not enough to be distracting, but it’s certainly something you can’t ignore. I’d still classify Banjo-Tooie as a family-friendly game, despite the less cheerful attitude, but if you thought Banjo-Kazooie was too childish, then you’ll definitely appreciate Tooie’s humor. The game’s humor is pushed to the forefront a lot, too, because there are so many characters to interact with, much more than in Banjo-Kazooie. We have some returning favorites from the first game, including Gobi the Camel and the lazy polar bear Boggy, as well as a plethora of new characters. There are about 150 characters in Banjo-Tooie, more than double the size of the first game. This means that there’s much more dialogue in Banjo-Tooie, which I don’t mind because the writing is really good, and these characters all have fun personalities and designs that make them stand out. The side characters have a lot more to say this time around, so you get a better understanding of them just by talking to them, and like in Banjo-Kazooie, the character animations and voice design help with that as well. Tooie’s cast is more fleshed out than Kazooie’s, thanks to the bigger emphasis on characters as quest-givers or puzzle elements, which naturally means they have more dialogue. It helps the game’s setting feel more like a living, breathing world rather than merely a collection of isolated levels, which is also augmented by the world design - more on that later. Also contributing to this are the graphics and sound design, which are once again marvellous. Just like the game’s mood, the graphics are a bit darker, and I mean that in two ways. First, the color palette features darker shades and more gritty textures, with less bright colors and environments, and second, the game’s improved lighting creates a much larger contrast between each area. Banjo-Tooie is one of the best-looking N64 games; my only complaint is that because of the new lighting system, some dark areas are a little bit... too dark. It’s a bit hard to see in some areas without turning up the brightness and contrast on your TV, so fair warning if you decide to play this game. The game has another fantastic soundtrack that continues the trend of energetic songs while adjusting the pace and tone to match the darker aesthetics. The music is overall slower and less playful than Banjo-Kazooie’s, a fitting choice given the game’s atmosphere, but the differences aren’t so drastic that it doesn’t feel like a Banjo soundtrack; it changes just enough to be diverse without feeling detached. And the compositions here are some of my favorites; I could listen to some of these songs for days, and again, they perfectly match the areas and situations they’re used in. I was curious which soundtrack I would find better between Kazooie and Tooie after playing them back-to-back, and, well, I like Tooie’s music more, but personal feelings aside, these soundtracks are on the same level to me. Kazooie’s is more upbeat and catchy while Tooie’s is more down-to-earth and mellow, but both of them are great soundtracks, so I’m not even going to compare them; it just comes down to your own preferences. So the story, graphics, and music underwent a bit of a change, but what about the gameplay? You still play as Banjo and Kazooie, and the controls haven't changed much. Banjo seems to move a little faster and has a bit more weight to him, but it’s fairly negligible. The duo still have all the moves they learned in Banjo-Kazooie when you start the game, so you don’t need to relearn any of them. You begin again in Spiral Mountain where you can revisit Bottles’ molehills if you need a refresher course or if this is your first Banjo game. While the moves themselves behave mostly as they did before, there have been some updates that help refine Banjo’s moveset. The Claw Swipe has been removed and exchanged for a version of the Rat-a-tat Rap, which has a longer range and allows Banjo to turn when using it. You can also now turn while using the Roll attack, and it takes significantly less time to recover momentum if you don’t jump out of it. And Banjo can also turn around with the Beak Barge, which actually makes it much more useful as an attack. The Beak Buster can now move slightly in the air after launching it if your aim isn’t just right, which allows you to land on ledges just out of reach if you time it properly. Finally, the Beak Bomb no longer locks your direction, so you can adjust your angle while soaring through the air, and you can hold this move for much longer. With these changes, Banjo-Tooie controls more smoothly than Kazooie, and the characters handle beautifully for this type of game. That’s the basic moveset, but just like Banjo-Kazooie, you’ll be learning new abilities as you play, and there are a TON of them. You only gained a handful of moves in Kazooie, but there are over 20 to learn in Tooie. The first move you learn is the Egg Aim, which allows you to fire eggs in first-person. You rely on precision egg-shooting a lot more in Tooie, so being able to aim in first-person is absolutely worthwhile, and later, you’ll also be able to fire eggs while flying and while swimming, which are your best attacks in the air and underwater. Speaking of eggs, in addition to the Blue Eggs, there are four new types of eggs you can collect; Fire Eggs, which set enemies and objects on fire, Grenade Eggs, which blow up when they hit something and are absolutely broken, Ice Eggs, which freeze enemies and cool down heated obstacles, and Clockwork Kazooie Eggs, which hatches a tiny, motorized Kazooie that you can move around and then detonate to damage enemies with smaller hitboxes. With these new projectiles, the Blue Eggs are basically unnecessary except for maybe one instance, especially since the enemies are more powerful in this game. Combine these new egg types with the first-person aiming, and you’re basically fully equipped to deal with every threat already. And while we’re talking about first-person aiming, you’ll learn the Breegull Blaster early on, which allows you to enter areas where the game just straight up becomes a first-person shooter. You move around as Banjo using Kazooie like a gun, and you travel through mazes that contain enemies or objectives to complete. It controls alright, and you can use each egg type, plus the Beak Bayonet once you learn it, which acts as a simple stab attack. Honestly, though, I don’t see the point of these sections; it’s way too much of a departure from the basic controls, and because there aren’t that many times where you use this move, you don’t have the proper amount of time to get used to how it plays. It just seems like Rare is reminding us, “hey, we made GoldenEye and Perfect Dark” rather than putting a new spin on Banjo’s gameplay. Moving on, another helpful ability is the Grip Grab, which lets Banjo hold onto ledges. This feature wasn’t really necessary in Banjo-Kazooie, but here, you’ll absolutely need it to reach tall platforms and shimmy across gaps. Another new move is the Bill Drill, a variant of the Beak Buster where Kazooie drills into the ground, which can break down tough objects such as boulders, but it’s way too slow to be a reliable way to hurt enemies. The Talon Torpedo lets you launch Kazooie underwater, where she can destroy objects with her face on it, but isn’t useful otherwise. Finally, there are two new shoes that you learn about in the middle of the game; the Springy Step Shoes, which allow you to perform a super high jump, and the Claw Clamber Boots, which lets you climb up specifically-marked walls. Those are the moves that Banjo and Kazooie learn together, but one of the selling points of Banjo-Tooie is that you can split up the two characters and control them separately. Once you learn how to use them, Banjo can use these Split Up Pads to send Kazooie out of his backpack, and you can use the pads to switch between Banjo and Kazooie. Banjo controls no differently than usual except you can’t use any abilities that require Kazooie, obviously. That means no Talon Trot, no Rat-a-tat Rap, no Eggs, et cetera. You might think that sucks, and well, yeah, it kinda does. I’ll admit that solo Banjo isn’t the greatest in terms of maneuverability, and his new moves don’t do much to make him more interesting. Banjo’s moves all revolve around the use of his backpack to perform new actions, which is a clever idea. The Pack Whack is pretty awesome, as it allows him to attack enemies by swinging his backpack around, but because you can jump out of this move even if you’re already in the air, you essentially gain a double jump which you can use to take shortcuts and get around hazards. While this is technically not an ability, it makes getting around as Banjo much more manageable. Beyond this, the only move that has any real use is the Snooze Pack, where Banjo regains health by taking a nap. Since Banjo can’t use the Wonderwing to prevent damage on his own, this move comes in handy if you find yourself low on health. The other moves are entirely situational. The Taxi Pack lets Banjo carry specific objects and characters inside his backpack and dump them out somewhere else, the Shack Pack allows him to enter small spaces and protects him from harmful liquids, and the Sack Pack allows him to travel on hazardous ground tiles. All of these are just used for getting around obstacles and collecting Jiggies and have no uses beyond that. Kazooie runs much faster than Banjo and can still fly, use Shock Jump Pads, and shoot eggs, but she can’t swim underwater and is less suited for tight platforming. She can learn the Wing Whack attack both on the ground and in the air, which can also act as an additional hover, and can also be combined with the Leg Spring, a backflip that gives Kazooie a big vertical boost, and the Glide which allows her to... well, glide without the use of Red Feathers. These moves are much better than Banjo’s, and playing as solo Kazooie is a lot of fun. She’s different enough from solo Banjo and the duo together to keep her gameplay interesting. The only other move she learns is Hatch, which lets Kazooie hatch eggs; again, situational. That’s a lot of moves to learn, and yeah, a good portion are gimmicky or have little use, which is a stark contrast to Banjo-Kazooie, where every move was at least somewhat helpful beyond when you absolutely needed them. I’ll defend some of these moves, like the Grip Grab, the various new eggs, and Kazooie’s solo abilities, but the others are what I like to classify as “puzzle-exclusive,” AKA abilities that are only in the game so the player can solve puzzles rather than building upon the characters’ movesets. However, Rare did a good job mapping out these controls on both the N64 and Xbox versions. There’s a lot of maneuvers you can perform, but you aren’t required to memorize complex inputs in order to execute them. Most of the collectibles from Banjo-Kazooie are back, and it’s still your duty to grab as many as you can. Jiggies, Honeycombs, Eggs, Red and Gold Feathers, and Empty Honeycomb Pieces all return and act as they did in Kazooie. Jiggies are still the main goal, and they still unlock new levels, though the process of unlocking them is a bit different. When you have enough Jiggies, you enter Jiggywiggy’s Temple and need to complete a jigsaw puzzle, just like Bottles’ puzzle minigame in Banjo-Kazooie. It’s more involved than unlocking worlds in Kazooie, and rather than finding a unique puzzle location, all you have to do is travel to Jiggywiggy’s Temple. I didn’t necessarily mind searching for puzzles in Kazooie, but I think having one area where every level can be unlocked is just more convenient. Notes also return, but rather than open up areas of the hubworld, they’re used to purchase new moves, which are taught to you by Jamjars, Bottles’ drill sergeant brother who takes over his role seeing as how he... you know, died. In Banjo-Kazooie, you collected each Note individually, but in Tooie, you collect them in bunches of five, as well as a Treble Clef in each world worth 20 notes. This consolidation is nice, but because Banjo-Tooie’s Note distribution is more sparse, the worlds can sometimes feel a little empty. You can also still collect Extra Honeycomb Pieces, but to gain the extra health, you need to turn them in to Honey B. on the overworld. Jinjos return as well, but they act differently than in Banjo-Kazooie. Instead of collecting all the Jinjos in a level to get a Jiggy, the Jinjos are separated into families based on their color. The locations of each Jinjo are always the same, but their colors are randomized for each playthrough, based on a set of 33 unique patterns. There will always be eight Purple Jinjos in the game, for example, but which position they’re in will be different each time. If you collect all the Jinjos of one color family, they’ll give you a Jiggy. I actually really like this change, since it gives the Jinjos more of a distinction as their own collectible, rather than just being the 10th Jiggy in each world. Another new addition are the Minjos, which look exactly like regular Jinjos but will attack you if you get too close. Kind of a neat way to trick the player, but I know this game well enough to know where all the real Jinjos are, so the Minjos don’t pose a threat to me anymore. As for new collectibles, the most essential are Glowbos, which replace the Mumbo Tokens. You can bring these Glowbos to Mumbo, who is actually a playable character this time around. He kinda sucks for moving around, though; he’s slower than Banjo, his jumping isn’t as tight, and his only attack is this dinky little magic stick that takes way too long to kill anything, but he can use these Mumbo Pads, which perform context-specific actions depending on which one you’re using, mostly just removing a hazard or unlocking a new area. There’s no reason to play as Mumbo over Banjo or Kazooie except for when you need to use a Mumbo Pad, and overall, he feels pretty underutilized. As for transformations, that duty has been passed on to a new character, Humba Wumba, who has a magic pool that transforms Banjo into various forms once you put a Glowbo into it. These transformations are still not very engaging; the only ones I like are the Submarine, which controls great underwater and shoots an infinite supply of missiles, and it has this sonar attack that can... er, freeze octopuses? The T-Rex is also kinda cool; it comes in two sizes, Baby T-Rex and Daddy T-Rex. They don’t have a lot of uses, but I like their design a lot; something about a T-Rex in giant shorts with a backpack on just makes me laugh. Finally, the Bee returns and now has the added ability to shoot stingers, which is a nice addition. The Washing Machine is also back, and rather than just change Banjo’s model, it has its own physics and can shoot underwear at enemies, but playing as this thing is not very fun. Other than that, these transformations are just kinda boring. The Stony fits in small spaces, the Dynamite Plunger hurts itself when you attack, the Van is invincible, and the Snowball grows in size as it gains health. The transformations are more unique conceptually than the ones in Banjo-Kazooie, but they didn’t address the issue of them being too situational. Even the transformations I like aren’t as fun as Banjo and Kazooie, and rarely do they feel like a natural substitution for Banjo’s moveset. Lastly, there’s the Cheato Pages, which you can bring to the Cheato Book in Spiral Mountain in exchange for a cheat code. Once again, you enter these codes at the proper place and then turn them on at your leisure. The first two cheats double your egg and feather counts, which is more beneficial here because you use them much more often. The third cheat eliminates fall damage, and the fourth cheat automatically restores your health, and these cheats make the game way too easy. I can maybe understand wanting to get rid of fall damage, especially in the later levels, but having infinitely respawning health is just plain cheating. ...hey, wait a min- Finally, if you collect every Cheato Page, you unlock this jukebox which lets you listen to every song in the game. That might seem like a lame reward, but back in the days where you didn’t have entire soundtracks posted on YouTube, this was a pretty cool feature. But let’s not forget about Stop n’ Swop, which, again, was implemented in the Xbox version. If you have a Banjo-Kazooie save file with the Stop n’ Swop itemscollected stored on your console, you can bring those items to Heggy on the Isle o’ Hags. She’ll hatch the eggs for you, which unlocks bonus content. Now, some of this content was in the N64 version, because while Rare scrapped Stop n’ Swop, they hid these Game Paks in the game which contain two eggs and the Ice Key. The two eggs, plus an additional egg in Heggy’s Shed that Kazooie could hatch, unlocks homing eggs, Jinjo as a multiplayer character, and the Breegull Bash, a hilarious but ineffective move where Banjo grabs Kazooie and slams her into the ground. So yeah, that move in Smash Ultimate where Banjo just straight up breaks Kazooie’s back? Yeah, he’s been doing that since 2000. The Ice Key unlocks a vault that contains the Mega-Glowbo, which you can bring to Humba Wumba in the Isle o’ Hags. Doing so unlocks the Dragon transformation, which turns Kazooie into a fire-breathing dragon. Her peck attack is replaced with fire breath, and with this transformation, Kazooie has unlimited fire eggs, which are nice and all, but it isn’t a spectacular reward. I really love Dragon Kazooie’s design, though; the green color is a nice change from Kazooie’s red color scheme while still being distinguishable from Banjo. As for the other Stop n’ Swop eggs, they unlock a gamer pic, a Banjo-Kazooie Xbox theme, and something called Stop n’ Swop II. Oh, boy; so in the Xbox port, you don’t need to hunt down the Game Paks for Stop n’ Swop anymore, because you already have their respective items. But they’re still in the game, and breaking them open reveals the Gold, Silver, and Bronze eggs, which are part of a feature named Stop n’ Swop II. What do these eggs do? I have no idea. My guess is that Stop n’ Swop II is just a joke by the developers, making fun of the mystery that surrounded the original Stop n’ Swop. The game teased players to come back for Banjo’s 20th anniversary, which was in 2018, to find the answers, but, uh, nothing happened that year, so... who knows? And no, I highly doubt the Banjo Smash reveal was what they were talking about; that seems like way too much of a coincidence. The only other secret in the game worth talking about is a game mode that was never released titled Bottles’ Revenge. Rare had an idea for a co-op multiplayer mode where Bottles’ spirit would change into Devil Bottles, who would be controlled by a second player. Devil Bottles could control enemies by hovering over them, and the second player would try to either kill Banjo or help him defeat other enemies. The company abandoned this mode as they couldn’t finish debugging it before the game’s release, but the code is still in the N64 game, so via Gameshark, you can try it out yourself. It really isn’t anything special, mostly because it was never completed, but it is an interesting concept nonetheless. So yeah, Banjo-Tooie definitely has a LOT more things to do than Banjo-Kazooie, and when you factor in how Jiggy collection works this time around, the game just grows even bigger. There’s less of a focus on pure platforming when it comes to collecting Jiggies, because very few of them are out in the open. Most are awarded to you for solving puzzles, defeating bosses, or helping out a character who has a problem, or by completing minigames. Some minigames are more fun than others, but most do a decent job at switching up the gameplay. The minigames don’t have unique controls; you’re still playing the game like normal, it just might have a different camera angle or restrict you to a confined area. The Balloon Burst challenge, for example, doesn’t control any differently than normal; you just have a specific objective you need to complete. If there’s one minigame Banjo-Tooie is notorious for, it’s the races against Canary Mary. Her first two races are no problem, but then you find her later and, uh, let me put it this way: Do you like mashing buttons for nearly a minute-and-a-half continuously? Yeah, I didn’t think so. Good luck beating her without pausing the game or using a turbo controller. Every world also has a boss now, and beating them nets you a Jiggy, but except for the final battle against Gruntilda, you aren’t required to fight any of them. Each boss requires a specific move to defeat, and most aren’t too tough to take down. The one you’ll encounter most often is Klungo, who stops Banjoat various points to try and prevent him from reaching Gruntilda. You fight him three times in the game; once at the beginning, once in the Isle o’ Hags, and finally as you enter Grunty’s castle. He ingests a potion before each fight to give him a new ability, and the order he uses them in is randomized each save file. The red potion makes him grow in size and try to stomp Banjo, the green potion turns him invisible, and the blue potion makes Klungo clones that you need to avoid. While this makes his fights more interesting, he’s still a very easy boss; no matter when you fight him, he’s nothing but a pushover. The number of necessary items is much less strict than in Banjo-Kazooie; you only need 70 of the 90 Jiggies in the game to reach the final area, so if there are some Jiggies you just can’t figure out, you can skip a handful no problem. The game gets rid of lives completely, so dying isn’t nearly as big of an issue, and you can actually take advantage of this by using a death to warp you to the beginning of a world, since all of your progress is saved. The process of collecting Jiggies can take a long time, though; a good chunk of them have several steps you need to complete before you can get them. On that note, let’s talk about one of the things Banjo-Tooie is infamous for; backtracking. In Banjo-Tooie, for every world except the last one, there’s at least one collectible you cannot get without leaving the level and coming back later, usually because you need to learn a move in a later world first. It should be noted, though, that if you don’t want to revisit any world to collect unobtainable items, then assuming you collect everything you can as you play through the game, and assuming you’re collecting everything as intended without using cheats or tricks, you can collect 76 Jiggies, which is more than enough to reach the final area and means you don’t need to backtrack at all to beat the game; it’s only necessary for reaching 100%. I know backtracking is universally despised by the gaming community, but I actually don’t mind it if it’s implemented correctly. Banjo’s world design has always been open and non-linear, which encourages exploration, and that means that you’ll inevitably come across a challenge you can’t quite solve yet. However, each world in Tooie has these Warp Pads that allow you to warp to other areas of the current world once you activate them. This significantly cuts down your travel time, and means you don’t have to redo a platforming section to reach an area again, which makes exploring these worlds less stressful. There are eight worlds in this game, plus the Isle O’ Hags which serves as the hubworld. This is a much better overworld than Grunty’s Lair; the subsections are visually distinct from one another, and it is still semi-linear, but thanks to these warp silos, travelling between areas is nowhere near as tedious. Now for the levels themselves; we begin in Mayahem Temple, a Mayan-inspired jungle-forest world that has plenty of temples and groves to explore. It’s a great opening stage that is much larger than Mumbo’s Mountain and has more subareas, but that isn’t too big so as to overwhelm beginners. Unfortunately, the boss Targitzan is pretty lame; all he does is spin around and shoot you with darts; very easy to deal with, even with the Breegull Blaster controls. Glitter Gulch Mine is up next, and it takes place underground in a dingy old mine. I really like the contrasting colors between the gemstones and the dirty ground and wall textures, and exploring the dark caves is a lot of fun. You fight Old King Coal inside a boiler here, and all he does is run around. Shoot him with enough eggs and he dies; another pathetic boss. The third level, Witchyworld, is a decrepit amusement park that’s split into a handful of zones, with different theming in each one. This is one of my favorite worlds just on aesthetics alone; the ramshackle look and gloomy carnival music make it feel like a rundown theme park. The boss, Mr. Patch, is super frustrating. You need to shoot the patches on his body while flying, and because he’s constantly moving, it’s hard to be precise enough to deal damage, especially since some patches are really small. Moving on, we have Jolly Roger’s Lagoon, the water level which begins with this seaside town that’s pretty small, but is strangely inviting. The rest of the level is entirely underwater, and after Mumbo performs his magic on the water, Banjo doesn’t lose any air while swimming around. This area has plenty of aquatic ruins and deep-sea caverns to explore. It’s here where you fight Lord Woo Fak Fak, a giant anglerfish who has the same problems as Mr. Patch, though not quite as bad. You shoot this poor thing in his eyes and his boils which causes him to bleed. Rated E for Everyone... Terrydactyland, the fifth world, is a prehistoric level of dinosaurs and cavemen, and it is HUGE, much larger than any other world in the game. And that’s not a good thing; because most of the characters are in subareas, the main level feels deserted, and just seems like wasted space. This is the only world where getting around is more of a hassle than it’s worth, and the Warp Pads can only help you so much. I don’t have much to say about the boss, Terry; he’s a standard boss with the usual “avoid his attacks” and “hit him at the right time” motifs. Then there’s Grunty Industries, one of the most hated worlds in the entire series. People can’t stand this world because of how difficult it is to navigate and the long and convoluted process of collecting most of its Jiggies. And yeah, I’ll admit it’s not my favorite world, but after playing this game for so many years, I’ve come to appreciate this level. There are some puzzles that are extremely tedious, like forcing the player to open a secondary entrance, then leave and come back through this new entrance just to start exploring the world, but moving around the level isn’t that big of a deal as long as you activate every Warp Pad and keep track of where everything is. Getting to the boss Weldar is a pain in the ass that requires a lot of steps, but once you reach him, it’s an okay fight. It’s a little tricky to hurt him without taking damage, but he goes down pretty quickly. Hailfire Peaks is interesting because it’s both the lava world and the ice world, and you’ll need to travel between the two halves to collect everything. I’m sure Banjo-Tooie wasn’t the first game with this concept, but I think it pulled it off well, though I wish there was more visual representation of the fire and ice theme. You fight two bosses here, Chili Billi the fire dragon and Chilly Willy the ice dragon, who are both weak to eggs of the opposite type. Whichever one you fight second is tougher than the other one, but they’re both not very challenging as long as you move out of the way of their attacks. The last level is Cloud Cuckooland, a bizarre world that takes place above the clouds. There’s a lot of strange locations, like a giant trash can, a pot of gold, and a big piece of stinking cheese, all built around a central cavern area. It’s a big world, but it’s very open, meaning you can fly basically anywhere. However, you’ll notice that there’s two Mumbo skulls in this level, one that holds the real Mumbo and the other that holds the boss, Mingy Jongo, a Terminator-like Mumbo impersonator who is, again, not very hard to defeat. Finally, Banjo and Kazooie make it to Cauldron Keep, where they have one more showdown with Klungo before facing the most daunting and gruelling challenge yet... ...a quiz show. Once again, Grunty’s set up a quiz game called the Tower of Tragedy, and you need to answer her trivia questions before you get to the final boss. There’s no board game this time around, you’re just answering questions about the game, which are certainly much more difficult. The picture questions, for example, might just ask you where the location is or force you to pick out small details in the picture. If you’ve been paying attention through the game, it shouldn’t be too bad, and you don’t have to buzz in if you don’t know the answer. Once you’ve beaten Gruntilda’s two sisters, who Grunty mercilessly kills, she escapes and Banjo makes it to the life-sucking machine. They reverse its effects, bringing King Jingaling and Bottles back to life, and head up to the top of the castle to face against Gruntilda in her giant drill machine, the Hag 1. This fight has a bunch of stages, but all it boils down to is dodging Grunty’s attacks and going into Breegull Blaster mode to shoot at her. Not a bad final boss, and once Banjo blows up the Hag 1 and leaves Grunty as nothing but a bony head, the game is over. Banjo-Tooie’s worlds are just as fun to explore as the ones in Banjo-Kazooie, though on an aesthetic level, these worlds are more unique. The level themes are more interesting, and it never feels like the game is retreading ground. I love Banjo-Kazooie’s worlds, but call me biased; I think Tooie’s are just so much better. Part of why I feel that way is an aspect of Banjo-Tooie’s design that I absolutely adore, and is a major reason why I like this game better than Banjo-Kazooie: that being how interconnected this world is. In Banjo-Kazooie, every level was disconnected from each other; you had to leave a world completely if you wanted to enter another. That isn’t the case in Banjo-Tooie; almost every world has a direct pathway to another level that allows you to travel to that level without reentering the hubworld. Sometimes, these pathways lead to sectioned-off areas that you can’t access otherwise, but they can also be handy shortcuts between worlds. The biggest example of this is Chuffy the Train, who you can use to travel to different worlds after beating Old King Coal. Many worlds have a train station that you can open up, allowing Banjo to take Chuffy there. This is the reason why I don’t mind the backtracking in this game, because the interconnected world, not to mention the Warp Pads, make visiting areas you’ve already explored much more convenient. But beyond that, it helps make the world feel much more alive and more like, well, a world. Banjo-Kazooie was a level-to-level platformer, and I guess, at its core, Banjo-Tooie is as well, but the links between each world makes the game feel much more like an adventure than a standard platformer. And that’s something you rarely see in platformers of this era; they all have clear separations between each level and treats them independently. Banjo-Tooie’s world is more holistic, and it may not seem like a big deal, but for me, it gives the game a special quality that few other platformers have matched. I think the issue is that people assume this game to be another level-to-level adventure like Banjo-Kazooie, which I can’t blame them for, but this is an important aspect of Banjo-Tooie that helps it stand out from both its predecessor and games of a similar vein. I guess the last thing to talk about is the game’s replay and multiplayer features, both of which you can access from the main menu. Replay allows you to watch cinematics again, as well as replay minigames and bosses, and in the Xbox version, you can track your best times and scores on the Xbox leaderboards, which is great if you’re into that kind of thing. The multiplayer lets up to four people play minigames or engage in first-person deathmatches, because, you know, GoldenEye. It does feel like a way to justify the minigames sprinkled through the singleplayer campaign, but it can be a fun time if you have the right group of friends or you just want to play a few quick rounds of Goldeneye multiplayer without actually playing Goldeneye. And that’s Banjo-Tooie; man, what an adventure. It may have a less cheery attitude and be more bloated with unnecessary features, and the need to backtrack to collect everything might turn people away, but Tooie improves the gameplay on so many levels and has the same platforming magic that the first game had. The controls are more refined and the world design is outstanding, and you would be hard-pressed to find a better 3D platformer on the Nintendo 64. While it’s certainly more bleak than Banjo-Kazooie, it doesn’t lose any of the charm the original game had; in fact, it has a lot more. It’s not for everybody, but it’s still my favorite Banjo game and my favorite N64 game, and is something I definitely recommend. Just like Banjo-Kazooie, I’d stick with the Xbox version, if only for the updated graphics and smoother frame rate. But Banjo-Tooie would serve as the beginning of the end of Rare’s glory days, because there was a massive change for the company on the horizon, one that would completely change their future as a video game developer. Special thanks to dribson for assisting me with the multiplayer footage.
I think the one of the underrated factors in its level design was the use of different levels connecting to each other. Saved soo much back tracking.
Excellent review; i personally prefer Banjo-Tooie over Banjo-Kazooie as well. Like you mentioned, one of the most impressive aspects of this game in comparison with other 3D-platformers is the connectivities of the levels to make the game feel so expansive and wondrous. it may be an unpopular opinion, but my favorite level is Grunty industries because i admire its maze-like structure. Memorable 3D games that can get me lost especially engrave my long-lasting appreciation for few masterpieces as Banjo-Tooie. Thanks again for your incredibly passionate and in-depth review of this game!
This is very well put together. You just gained a new sub 🙂
Banjo-Tooie is a wonderful sequel that is made for players who just don't want to stop playing.
Backtracking only makes the game longer, but makes it more enjoyable in the long run.
I feel like Banjo-Kazooie was made for simple fun, while it's predecessor Banjo-Tooie, was more complex and gave the player a challenge to complete with satisfaction.
If I was to choose what game is better, it would be Tooie in my personal opinion.
Also your points where perfect and your video made 40 Minutes feel like 10 Minutes.