DK64 sucks ass. It's easily the worst game Rare did for Nintendo since they became a 2nd party in 93 or so all the way until they were sold. I played through all of Jet For e Gemini and beat Star Fox Adventures twice and couldn't get further into DK64 once I got the third Kong. Just the thought of having to go through everything at least 5 times mentally exhausted me. And this is coming from someone who considers the original DKC trilogy on SNES almost immaculate and DKC2 one of my favorite games ever (let alone on the SNES).
Good for Hbomberguy but what a game to be suffer through. All for charity at least.
See, I know one of the big "problems" people have with the game is the Kong-exclusive collectibles and tag barrels. But you see, there are actually two separate "problems" going on here that sort of work in opposition to balance each other out. DK64 is known as the game that broke the collectathon genre for a reason: there are an absolutely absurd number of collectibles. Literally, there are over 3,000 collectibles. Requiring you to retread certain areas with certain Kongs to get some of these, in addition to adding replay value/staying power to the levels, is also an attempt to mitigate collection fatigue. If you could switch Kongs whenever you felt like it (a feature some suggest a potential remake should add), you would literally be collecting something every 5 seconds, which would immediately cause collectibles to lose all value, and with it, any enjoyment one could derive from the game. You may suggest, then, simply removing these Kong-specific collectibles. But if you do that, what purpose do the different Kongs even serve? If the only thing that differentiates them is their special abilities, couldn't you just condense those all into one character? But then, would you even have enough button combinations to do that? And what about the entire game design being based around a multi-character system?
In summary, all of the defining aspects of DK64, whether you call them "problems" or "features", are inexorably connected, and the whole thing falls apart if you try and remove just one. Perhaps you see that as an indication that the whole game is an irredeemable mess. But me, I love it to death for what it is.
...Except those minigames though. Like, really, those are just bad. Too hard, and too frustrating. Lol.
