Banjo–Tooie

My childhood “deeply flawed over-ambitious sequel game”. Better and worse than the first. It's at least as good at creating a sense of place a bunch of different atmospheres. However, unlike the original's tight, dense level design, the levels here often feel proto-open-world: vivid vignettes separated by generic connective tissue. And it doubles down on the cartoon racism. And many of the new abilities are just keys to unlock collectables rather than new ways of moving through the world. (And said new abilities are distributed over the whole game rather than front-loaded to let you explore the last levels with your complete toolkit.) Well, for all the issues, I do really like how this is a true sequel, including mechanically. You start with all the moves from the original and the levels start about as complex as the last few in the original too. It creates a real feeling of progress.

Side note: When replaying it I decided not to use any silos or warp pads, to see what it was like. It took a little longer, but was mostly fine and did mean I had to learn levels a bit better. The train's still weakly implemented, but I did use it occasionally—they should've had it start in Mayahem Temple, both as a more extreme cross-world connection and so you have it from the start. The branching part in the hub world is actually meaningful (it's why I used the train, to go between the Plateau and Wasteland or their levels), but Jinjo Village is just grotesquely swollen for how little of a presence it has, seriously it's a fucking massive empty space dotted with 1:1 scale houses you never need to enter.