This nostalgia trip manages to look the part, but once you scratch beneath the surface there is very little to stay for beyond the initial appeal.
Design and programming take a backseat in favor of art direction, and since the game is riddled with countless bugs and absolutely bizarre counter-intuitive puzzles, it makes it especially hard to appreciate it. This game isn't a successor to Banjo-Kazooie, it's simply a cheap imitation that can't hold a candle to its predecessor.
For example, there are blocks of ice in the game which all look like ice, but inexplicably function differently from each other. One block of ice will require you to melt it with fire whereas another seemingly identical block of ice will instead require the sonic blast ability, whilst a fire plant has been placed within feasible distance of said ice block.
If the game itself seemed broken, wait til you play the minigames - they're exponentially worse. All minigames seem to have an awful amount of input lag to them, floaty controls, and disproportionately high skill requirements in comparison to the rest of the game. And they get worse and worse as the game goes on, to the point where when I got to Capital Cashino, I found the character would lock up if you input more than one command every half-second, roughly. This is obviously problematic in a game that requires precise movements.
The game is dull in general. The regular quests are at least responsive for the most part, but they are incredibly repetitive, often rehashed from level to level. The levels in Banjo-Kazooie started small and got more grand and epic as the game went on, however Yooka-Laylee suffers diminishing returns from level to level, despite having a mere 5 levels as compared to Banjo's 9.
The music from Grant Kirkhope is excellent as always and helps bring charm into the otherwise lifeless environments of Yooka-Laylee. They are one of the few elements that may have even improved at this point, and the dynamic transitions between variations of the world themes is flawlessly executed.
Boss fights are needlessly frustrating given poor camera angles and janky mechanics which make it feel more so you're fighting against the game itself and that your success is due to RNG rather than skill.
Don't buy this game. I heard Snake Pass is a cool game, and it's much cheaper.
