DKC3 has its moments of fun and new types of levels to explore compared to the original and DKC2, but it feels very lackluster overall and, at times and areas, seems incomplete and unfinished.
My biggest annoyance with this game is the music. It's non-stop repetitiveness was irritating and unbearable at times, hearing the same thing over and over again that was not a good tune to begin with.
The second annoyance comes from the areas that feel unfinished or cut. There's places on the map that you can access that seem like they should lead to places, but they don't. If it was meant to keep players searching after completion for replay value trickery, then I give RARE a Star off for the deception. If it was typical RARE thinking bigger than a snes cartridge could store, then I understand and appreciate the effort.
The 3rd downvote I give to this game is the lack of color in the less vibrant sprites. DKC had such beautiful graphics with vibrant colors that made the background and stages just as memorable as the character animations. DKC3 does not. It feels very downgraded. Way more compressed and visually very repedative. It's possible things got more compressed to fit more into the game, but it did not feel like more was fit into the game. It felt rather short with a focus on trying to create hidden boss battles to discover, but making the game feel more like it doesn't all just come full circle in the end and gel together.
The controls are the same as the previous games, no issues there. But I will say I think it's absolutely pointless in creating a couple of levels where the controls are purposely backwards or left is right and right is left etc... there's no fun in that, and you can see it was an idea RARE tried here 30 years ago, and it did not catch on. So be prepared to play some failed ideas if you've never played this before.
Overall. It's OK. I'd only recommend it if you absolutely love DKC1 and 2. I would not recommend this over either of those titles, tho. The Donkey Kong Country trilogys ratings are equal to the order of release, with the first the best, but still leaving this one as far from a bad game, but the least favourite of the 16bit series.
