Why People Hate Banjo Tooie

Looking at why people hate the sequel to one of the most popular games on the n64, Banjo Tooie. I break down in depth the 3 main reasons why people hate this game, Too Much Back Tracking, Too Many Mini Games, and the Worlds Are Too Big. I compare Banjo Tooie to Banjo Kazooie in each of these 3 categories and see if the haters complaints are valid. If you've ever wonder why people hate Banjo Tooie this is the video for you.

[aseldesu]

Usually I don't like backtracking but I love how the backtracking in tooie makes the world feel more alive and connected

[AaronStorey]

My love for Tooie is a bit different - as a kid, I only had Banjo Kazooie, we had a tough time financially so we only had a couple of games. A family friend however did have Tooie, and to me (someone who had beaten Kazooie probably 100 times), it was this magical expansion with extra moves and new worlds that I got to play once in a blue moon.
I'll always love Banjo Kazooie, but Tooie for me was this elusive extra part of the game that only when I was a young adult I got to revisit for myself, and loved it.

[Hilipinapixili]

As someone who loves both games, Tooie always felt more adventurey to me, while Kazooie felt simpler and more compact. Both premises have their up and downs, and while it's true that Kazooie is more replayable because Tooie is more exhausting, I don't think this is necessarily a strike against Tooie, as it's the same situation bigger, more involved games find themselves in when you compare them to simpler less time-demanding ones. Like, I'm currently playing The Witcher 3 and while I'm enjoying it I can already tell you it's gonna be a long while until I decide to replay it again. On one hand, I find completing Mayahem Temple more satisfying, but on the other I know Mumbo's Mountain is a simpler endeavor that takes less time and probably will get more runs from me because of this. This extrapolates to the rest of both games as a whole.

Overall I think the levels in Kazooie are more memorable, but that doesn't mean Tooie doesn't have it's gems. Witchyworld is fun, Jolly Roger's Lagoon is one of the rare cases where the water level is my favorite stage in the series, Grunty Industries is kind of a Zelda dungeon in disguise that I happen to find extremely clever. Having said that, I really dislike Cloud Cuckooland. Way too much flying makes the level feel disjointed.

Now if you allow me to go on a tangent here, I've also seen Tooie being compared to DK64. Unlike Tooie, I DO find myself in the camp that considers DK64 to be weak (not necessarily BAD, but definitely worse than both Banjo games IMO), but my reasons have more to do with thematic integration. As I said, Tooie feels more adventurey, with levels that interact with each other giving the feeling of a cohesive world. DK64 would be in the same camp, but it's levels always felt fake to me, like a ton of the stuff you find has nothing to do with the level itself. It's full of generic barrel minigames that don't fit the theme of the levels, bullet switches, instrument switches that do different stuff just because, and while the Banjo games also have switches and pads that are only there so Banjo can use them (Grunty switches, fly/jump pads, the pads that allow you to separate both characters in Tooie), I always felt DK64 was much more egregious and immersion-breaking about it because it's CONSTANTLY throwing them at you. Not to mention the fact that the whole game revolves around collectables being arbitrarily able to be collected by only one Kong, which adds both to the backtracking AND to breaking the believability of the world. All of these things made DK64 feel more like a checklist. Tooie, while also having a checklist-like concept, manages to avoid this feeling IMO because of it's more cohesively designed levels, and feels more like an actual adventure. At least, that's how I personally feel.

I'm not going to talk about Yooka-Laylee because I haven't actually played it yet.

[sirskylight]

My thoughts on the three points why some people don't like Banjo-Tooie:

1.) I don't mind the backtracking. I actually like having a reason to go back to a previous world.

2.) I didn't have any issues with the mini-games. I liked most (if not all) of them.

3.) I liked that the worlds were bigger. It felt like there was a lot more to explore, and it didn't really feel empty either.

I can sort of understand the criticism, but it really just comes down to personal preference by the end of the day. I'm a fan of both games. Both really fun to play, and just overall a good time.

[nappa]

Always preferred Tooie, myself. I loved all the new abilities, how the worlds were interconnected, the awesome boss fights, the minigames, etc. It just felt like a much bigger game in every respect, and I never saw that as a bad thing.

[rulercamelot]

People say backtracking like they have never played a metroidvania before, since that's the sorta style it went for, getting new moves to do things in older levels. I played Banjo-Tooie first, and when I tried Banjo-Kazooie, it bored the heck outta me, there isn't anything to do in it. I respect it as a starting point, but Tooie feels like the better experience imo

[BlueBird]

While those points are valid, it still shows how much Rare would try their best improving a sequel. While I do agree that Grunty's Industries is the most tedious... It's the exploration, discovery and problem solving that what makes a great sequel. And as for the Minigames, I would have only counted the ones that reappear in multiplayer. While I do agree that there's a bit too much... consider this... Would Tooie look more like a Kazooie clone if they haven't expanded? The first game was nearly straightforward. The bosses, advanced moves and linking worlds were great mechanics.

[ACertainGoldEevee]

I actually really enjoyed the backtracking in Banjo Tooie. I always thought it was cool how all the different worlds were connected, and i would have to figure out if each new move could help me get something i couldn't before.

[spriles]

I can take or leave the minigames, but exploring the large, interconnected worlds are why I LOVE Tooie!

[JortsKitchen]

As a kid, it was amazing. The trial and error of figuring things out was so rewarding. No internet or youtube walkthroughs. Just hours upon hours spent with my sister exploring and figuring things out. One of my favorite games of all time.

[raydaypinball]

This probably also applies to Yooka-Laylee… a game I love but seems like I’m in the minority. This video helped me see why people may not like it, as Yooka-Laylee checks off these three boxes as well

[marceloalarcon]

The amount of mini games isn't really the problem in Tooie for me, it's the uniqueness of the mini games. Most of them seem like the same games just recolored for different (like the soccer or the shooting games), whereas in Kazooie the mini games feel more unique throughout the levels.

[FirstLast-mnre]

The scale of Tooie isn't inherently a problem, the problem is they stuck to having only 10 Jiggies per level making a lot of the extra space in the levels feel unnecessary. Most of the Jiggies in Tooie are much more complicated and require more steps to obtain try and make use of the level size, but most of the time it just makes each Jiggy feel more tedious to get. If they had 15-20 Jiggies per level, but cut down on how complex they were to obtain people would probably not be complaining about the size of the worlds as much. Just look at Mario Odyssey, there are a lot of gigantic levels in that game, but nobody complains about the size of the levels because there's plenty of things to collect in them.

[brittasnow]

I think the main thing people get wrong when discussing the game is labelling it a "collectathon" and criticising it as if it is the same kind of game as the original one was, when in my opinion they couldn't be further apart despite having the same engine.

Banjo-Tooie is an adventure game where collecting happens, the fact there's less to collect in the game despite being bigger than Kazooie should be the biggest indicator of this, much more emphasis is put on the tasks you do themselves than the reward you get from them, its all about the journey, and the worlds, whereas Banjo-Kazooie was much more concerned about the items you was getting.

I don't understand the criticism that the worlds are empty or whatever because I actually think the worlds are much more lived in than Kazooie, these worlds feel like they could be actual places they're that fleshed out, and I find myself playing the game for longer sessions due to how immersive everything feels, the game just lets you breathe and take in the environments while you go at your own pace, it may take longer to complete than Kazooie but in my opinion you get way more out of it.

The minigames are the weakest aspect for me though, stuff like the Saucer of Peril are irritating to me, but the worst is easily Ordnance Storage in Glitter Gulch Mine, that one just sucks in my opinion. I actually don't mind Canary Mary but thats cuz i know the trick, which is by the way to abuse the rubberbanding and stay behind her until halfway through the race.

And the backtracking to me never really felt like backtracking cuz it all feels like one big world, and plus the game often gives you shortcuts back to prior worlds anyway, i'd argue that one instance of backtracking in the first game is far more egregious bc its such an outlier and feels so awkward.

Anyway I love Tooie, more than the first game which I still love, I wish it didnt get so much hate.

[metaltornado]

I like Banjo Tooie's bigger levels and really didn't mind the backtracking. It was neat how they found ways to interconnect the game's worlds to one another like a 3D Metroidvania and it made the game's setting feel more cohesive. Characters in Tooie actually move around the worlds and feel alive, while most of the ones in Kazooie, aside from Gobi returning in Click Clock Wood, felt like they existed in a bubble and were never mentioned again after their individual worlds. I will say Banjo Kazooie's shorter levels makes it more fun to speedrun, but I still believe Banjo Tooie is an all-around better game.

[Zadamanim]

As a kid I always wished the two games would be merged into one somehow, like if you could enter the rest of gruntilda's lair in tooie.

[MelancholyJoker]

I honestly can't give the "more mini-games" as valid criticism because even with about twice as many per level, its still just a handful more than BK, which actually is just normal progression when you want to make your sequel bigger and better. I get the backtracking issues even if its something that makes sense for the worlds being interconnected. The worlds being too big is also something that depends on what you consider too big. I think some people mistake doing more for the worlds being too big. Like the only levels I think truly fall into "too big" are Jolly Roger's Lagoon and Grunty's Industries because of how they're structured

[benjaminwoodham]

Tooie is one of my favorite games ever.

To me, I think backtracking is a good thing. You see something you can't get, you progress, get a power, now you can go back and get that thing. It's a key part of a lot of video games - even in different genres.

To me, this is in the running for greatest of all time still. It still holds up to this day imo.

[XxDruidmancerxX]

I always felt that Tooie was indeed more of an adventure, and as I grew older and played more stuff, it now looks to me like a mix of a 3d collectathon and a Metroidvania (because levels are also connected in a few ways, not just because of backtracking).

[the.bloodless.one]

I love Grunty Industries. It’s my favourite world specifically because of how intricate and complex the level design is. I’d say the same for all of Tooie. Ya there’s backtracking but I think it’s a necessary evil for the payoff of such cool complex interconnected levels and objectives. I feel like people who prefer Kazooie or Tooie just comes down to preference of simple vs complex level design, I love them both to death, but it is true, Kazooie’s design is nice and simple clean straightforward, and Tooie’s is messy and complex all tangled and intricate and that’s exactly what I marvel in awe at when I play through it.