Yooka-Replaylee

As a person who enjoyed the original decently enough, I have to say this is an incredible improvement! It really feels like a whole new, and whole better game, polished superbly and not relying on the original nostalgia of getting the Rare gang back together! This really shows what the original was aiming for, now all the better! If you had issues in the past, or never played the first attempt, this is a sure fire hit and a wonderful time!

[b] For Nintendo-Style Game Lovers: [/b] 9.5/10 [h3] Maybe all we really need is a lizard and a bat setting off on a grand, childlike adventure. [/h3] First, a little bit of history—and a few curious stories—behind the game: [i] Yooka-Replaylee [/i] isn't actually some forgotten N64 relic from the '90s. [i] Yooka-Laylee [/i] is a relatively young IP, first released in 2017. But its development team was made up of former Rare developers, which means that, deep down, it is absolutely drenched in the spirit of those 3D platformers from the N64 era—the same lineage that gave us [i] Banjo-Kazooie [/i]. Back in 2015, the game was even crowdfunded on Kickstarter. Its original goal was £175,000, but it ultimately raised a staggering £2.09 million from 73,206 backers. By the standards of indie game crowdfunding at the time, that was quite a legendary achievement in its own right. Then, in 2025, Playtonic decided to give this piece of “old-school heritage” a full-scale overhaul, resulting in [i] Yooka-Replaylee [/i]. And this is by no means a simple HD remaster. The developers themselves describe it as “[b] Remastered, remade, remixed. [/b]” Everything from the visuals, maps, levels, collectibles, movement and camera systems, to costumes, Tonics, currency, minigames, and even the soundtrack has been extensively reworked. The original world's structure and overall adventure are still here, but almost every aspect has been reconsidered and rebuilt from the ground up. The overall amount of content has even been brought to roughly twice that of the original. In the developers' own words, this is essentially “[b] as close to a full remake as you can get without completely starting from scratch. [/b]” And honestly, I couldn't agree more. So when you finally finish [i] Yooka-Replaylee [/i] and find yourself staring at that almost comically long list of credits and thank-yous at the end, you can't help but feel a strange sense of temporal dislocation. The people who backed these former Rare developers on Kickstarter ten years ago, and this newly polished version of the game standing before you today, are somehow still connected by the very same thread. You could almost call it a massive nostalgia séance spanning nearly a decade: [b] The old developers, together with the old backers who believed in them, have all come back to revisit and remake that very first game together [/b]. And yes—perhaps fittingly, it is precisely this kind of game that has become one of the happiest, purest, and most genuinely fun experiences I've had in recent years, second only to some of Nintendo's own IPs. There's an interesting thing I've come to realize. Even though I've been playing games for practically my entire life, and even though I can hardly call myself young anymore, the games that have ultimately left the deepest marks on my life are often not the ones that are dark and profound, grand in their themes, or drenched in blood. Quite the opposite. More often, they're the games that are [b] childlike, pure, joyful, imaginative, full of clever little ideas, and overflowing with romance, beauty, and a poetic sense of fantasy [/b]. Maybe life doesn't always need some grand narrative to pursue. Maybe it doesn't need some supposedly ultimate meaning, either. And maybe it doesn't need all those deliberately dark and self-important attempts at being “profound.” Maybe, sometimes, [b] all you really need is to set off on a grand, childlike adventure with a lizard and a bat [/b]. And maybe that's enough. Maybe life really can be this happy. [b] And this pure [/b].

This is a hard one. I'm a huge fan of 3D platform games like A Hat in Time, Banjo-Kazooie, DK64 etc... so obviously I was very excited. The first Yooka-Laylee was... okay. It wasn't bad, it wasn't good. It was meh. Which often is the worst kind of emotion you can produce in a customer. Yooka-Replaylee is much much better and I'm very thankful to the devs for not forgetting Yooka-Laylee existed. It takes the positives from the original and builds on them. You can tell that the developers took all feedback to heart and changed everything that was not on a level that the developers should be able to produce. Is it on a level as Banjo-Kazooie/Tooie or A Hat in Time? No. It is good, but still has a couple of strong weaknesses. [b]Negatives:[/b] Apart from Pagies (main collectible like time pieces or jiggies) you collect coins and feathers. I don't think it was a good decision to hide the feathers and use the coins to lead the way. It doesn't feel good when you miss one bunch of feathers and now you can look behind every corner to find those last 4. I love that you can buy things with coins! But I think just coins or just feathers would have been enough. Pagies are weird and not as rewarding as they should be. Sometimes you have to work for them hard (boss fight) and most of the time you can find them randomly laying around or by doing a stomp. And sometimes you get 3. This made them feel less rewarding. I would have preferred less Pagies [spoiler](There are like 300 of them and the game is not very huge)[/spoiler] to make them feel more rewarding. You get the minimum Pagie amount for the last boss fight way too fast. The levels should be smaller and there should be more of them. They are still too big. And sadly there are [spoiler]just 5 which in my opinion was too low. I expected more than 7.[/spoiler] The puzzle pieces were the worst idea. You need 8 in every level to get all Pagies and it is awful. They can be any shiny thing on the ground you have to stomp. 99% of the time it is just coins. It will happen that you get 7/8 pieces and look an hour for the last one. Having to check literally everything because it could be really anything. Tip for future updates: Let us pay 50 feathers to get an area circled around where the next piece is. The difficulty was way too easy. I was disappointed how easy the game was most of the time. It was still a lot of fun to do but a little more challenge would have been great. The Hub was okay. [b]Positives:[/b] The movement in the game feels amazing. There is nothing to complain about it. You always feel under control as it should be. The characters felt good. None of them are exceptionally likable but I didn't see one that annoyed me with their dialogue. The main cast obviously is inspired by Banjo and Kazooie. Still I think Laylee could have been even more sarcastic. The villain is okay. I personally don't find him super exciting. He is very bland compared to others in that genre. He just feels like a goofball. Music was phenomenal which isn't surprising since they hired a couple of the best composers in that genre. The art is amazing. Good animations. It all fits well together. [b]Fazit[/b] Overall the game still is an amazing game and I can recommend it to anyone who loves platform games. There aren't many on PC so this one is a must buy. And I really really hope that the devs will make a second Yooka-Laylee game even if this game didn't get the success they hoped for.