Kaze and the Wild Masks

I'm probably being too hard on Kaze but it really got on my nerves by the time I was done with it. I grew up with the DKC games, I loved them, especially DKC 2, and I should be the target audience for this one. It emulates (or should we be saying rips-off?) the main control concepts from DKC 2 including Dixie's floaty hair twirl. There's the equivalent of bananas, barrels, KONG letters, bonus barrels, all of that's here. The game controls well, and while the graphics and music are a significant downgrade from the game it's inspired by, it starts off okay. But the late game level design is a miserable slog. If you play on Normal, which I did (again, target audience), you get punished by very high challenge and checkpoints that are few and far between. You'll run some of the later stages dozens and dozens of times before you can get a perfect clear with all the gems, letters and bonus areas. And that's not even getting into stuff like time trials, and no-hit clears. By the time you're done, instead of satisfaction from a job well done, it's more like- ugh thank goodness that's over. Let's see what the next punishment is. The DKC games could be tricky, but they weren't about making you pull your hair out and trolling you with things you can't even react to without having seen them already. There's the core of a really fun game here, and if you like high skill platformers you will probably get more out of this than me. Just don't expect to love it just because you liked the DKC series. As a final note, your reward for getting all of the bonus rooms done is.... unclear? Instead of a bonus series of stages like in DKC, it seems like it was a cutscene tease for a sequel that never happened.