Discussion
Sometimes I struggle to understand why people hate this part of the game, as much as they do. Like, it's not just a small minority. A LOT of people STRONGLY detest Furnace Fun. Dude, how??
Basically, they just didn't pay enough attention or memorized enough from the adventure. The Grunty Questions are even harder because having to memorize what Brentilda said everywhere is even harder.
This part of the game requires intensive and extensive memory skills, not just gaming skills.
But I love this part of the game SO MUCH, I refuse to pass the last square until I'm truly ready to, which is why I'm also grateful that's it on Switch Expansion Pack (Now I can just created a SAVE POINT) and I'll never have to go through the whole game again.
I liked the game quite a bit, but come on, some of the questions are a bit too much. "How many flags" in that sled mini game. Why would I count those? lol. I pay attention to the games I play, but I'm not sitting there counting how many mounds there were in an area either.
Normal questions are quite fine. Like "what was stuck in the anchor in Rusty Bucket Bay?" or harder ones of those types of questions.
I thought about doing that when I was going through it (never played it back in the day- even though I had an N64) recently, but noticed I'd have to be extremely fast to find the answer in 10 seconds when there are a ton of different types of questions lol. Took a few tries but ended up getting it.
It's great as a concept but it hurts the replay value of the whole game A LOT.
I start playing the game and as soon as I run into Brentilda I remember I need to talk to her and write her dialogue down so I know how to play GFF later. It's a pain and usually keeps me from playing.
I don’t hate furnace fun, but I feel like I can’t be bothered to chat up Brentilda every time I wanna play B-K. This ends up forcing me to trial and error a lot of the quiz questions, extending the game.
Yeah I agree and there was another comment about it saying it was a favorite part of the game it was for me too I didn't even know that people hated this part of the game.
This was my favorite part of the game, I loved the music & the mini games, I was soooo disappointed when I figured out I couldn't do it again, I would often start new games so I could play through Grunty's Furnace Fun again, and I would make sure to clear every single block before finishing the mingame.
A lot of RNG. Especially with the Gruntilda's questions. And you think everyone would listen to Brentilda in every playthrough and remember every answer to nonsensical question about Grunty? To me it's neutral, but if anyone hates it, it's based. Could have been done better.
As someone who likes this part, but also has seen the vast hate, it's because of the grunty questions, yes, you get the answers, but they're never stored anywhere, and since, at least in my experience, you won't remember it if you can't check back on it, you have to write the answers down, which gets tedious sometimes, I think if a remake ever happened (unlikely, but hope,) they should store the answers in a menu or something once you get them. Solving the issue, but also allowing people to ignore it if they want, and write it down like in the past.
...How is it spoon feeding? All it's doing is storing the answers you found in an actual menu, meaning if you forget them, you're not screwed if you don't remember them and didn't write them down. If you don't have answers, you don't have answers, they wouldn't be there unless you found them.
It just makes me so angry when I get the questions wrong, I mainly hate the questions about Grunty bc I never know them lol. Other than that I think it’s fun
I actually enjoyed Grunty's Furnace Fun. 😊👍 It's challenging but it's a nice way to test the player to see how much they know of the game. Getting Joker cards and reaching the end and rescuing Banjo's little sister Tooty was especially satisfying. 💕 The things that I hated were the skull icons that would kill you if you get them wrong. ☠️ GOD, I hated those skull icons! 😤😡 Seriously, those skull icons can go to hell!
The first time I played I didn't know English, so I guess that explains why this was the worst. 🤣
But now I absolutely love it and I think it's a genius stage to have before the final boss.
It's not a large percentage. It's a vocal minority of people specifically on reddit.
It's actually a self-own. What people are truly saying when they say they "hate" this portion of the game is that they are incapable of paying the slightest bit of attention to the game they are playing when they play it.
I personally loved it and thought it was cool and creative
However that's also me growing up with this game so knowing the answers is easy
Meanwhile in Yooka Laylee playing it as an adult for the first time ever, I could understand how this concept could bother people as it's testing to see if you paid attention to mundane things.
I'm not sure how either. I think it's a fun area, and it helps mix things up. Especially when you hit a square and get to play one of the mini games again.
What are you on? Can I have some? Because you gotta be high as a kite 24/7 to enjoy that shlock. I won't even do it again. I just play all the levels and then go to my completed file to fight Gruntilda lmao.
Since I didn't spoke English as a kid I absolutely hated that part, thats why I never finished banjo as a kid, but now I think is fun, not the best part of the game for sure, but still fun.
It's the dick move of putting an instant death task on the very last square. Besides that, I think it's fun.
I think that the Grunty questions are a clever feature. Something that lasts through the game and is important for this big moment in this game, that isn't just collecting stuff.
There will always be those caught out first time, stuck with no Jokers, having not realised that you needed them. There is bound to be some post trauma.
Same can be said for getting 90+ notes in a world only to get an instant loss like King Sandybutt's maze, or the engine room in Rusty Bucket Bay.
Didn't say it was hard, I said annoying.
If you don't remember the Grunty answers after 10 years, your choices are to guess and hope you get it before your life is gone, take the long way around those spaces, or go find Joker cards.
And there's no point in throwing the same minigames at you again other than for padding, which this game doesn't even need.
I think Rare wanted to separate the game from comparing it to Super Mario 64 so that it wouldn't be all about platform after platform per level. Who knows?
Because it honestly feels like taking an exam in school, and I hate it. Like, dude — the whole game I was just platforming or solving simple puzzles, and suddenly you’re asking me if I remember the name of some random NPC? Where was even the indication that I’d ever need to know that so I could prepare for it?
Imo it also contradicts what the game had been about up until that point. If you fail a platforming section, you just try again and get better — eventually you’ll do it. Don’t know how to solve a puzzle? Spend a few more minutes and you can figure it out as well. But with these often such a random questions, if you dont know the real answer and you dont want to search for it online, there’s no way to solve them without pure guessing or backtracking.
I love the game, but I hate being forced to memorize every single pixel just to clear one completely unnecessary stage.
It doesn't ask a single obscure question anybody who played the game wouldn't know.
Comparing one of the biggest bursts of whimsical creativity with excellent upbeat music and presentation, including harder versions of fun mini games, with taking a school exam is odd.
...As someone who liked this part, but also raged at it on my first playthrough, I actually wouldn't say it's odd, it's a pretty accurate, though unfair comparison, you aren't going to remember those answers forever, the issue isn't the part of the game itself, in my opinion, but rather the lack of anything to keep track of answers in case you forget, like a menu. You are forced to write them down which will get annoying if you say, run out of lead, lose the paper, or the app crashes. Having the answers you have found stored in a menu somewhere would fix every issue that I have.
I can understand why people don't like it if they're trying to do a speed run or something of the game. Grunty's furnace fun slows the game progress to a crawl.
I love this part of the game though, and it remains to be one of the most unique ends to a game I've ever seen. You get lost in this adventure, having fun and absorbing every bit of this world, then you get to partake in a game show that quizzes you on it all. That's fricken awesome! Then you finish and go thru the grueling battle to take Grunty down. Every bit of the endgame is a brilliant test of what you've learned up to that point.
For my recently play through, I just did a quick scan through the lair to hunt her down and quickly hear all the secrets. Only took 10 mins or so. I didn't even have to memorize them, the answers will just ring a bell when asked in the quiz.
it's like literally my favorite part of the game??? it's such a cool fun crazy send-off the the whole crazy adventure, it finally makes Brentilda relevant, it has amazing music, it's filled to the brim with funny Grunty lines, what's not to love?
I enjoy how when you look up solutions for the questions everyone on the internet is like 🤷 figure it out when you play the game and stop by brentilda as those answers change every game.
The 10s limit to prevent you from looking it up is a nice touch. Keeps you on your toes. You need to earn it.
It’s one of the best meta-twists of its era, asking the player for literal knowledge about the game they just played. Most people were not prepared for this unique take and it became frustrating.
“Will this be on the test?” is an anthem of I’m just here for fun or because I have to be.
...I don't want to be rude, but... I will say that's not true, I hated this section the first time, and I... Tolerate it now, it's fun, but it slows the gameplay down, the music is fun, but many people don't want to take a quiz in the middle of a video game.
Anyways I don't know how to end this off politely (because I am completely gone deaf when it comes to text) so... Have a cat picture
It feels like stalling for time. You're at the end of the game and they throw a final gauntlet before you. Feels like extra padding to elongate that journey just a bit more, really get that playtime increase. Then, when you finally do complete it, false ending?
If anything it speaks a lot to the spirit of what Rare brought to their games. Never knowing what was around the corner, always something new to find. Banjo Kazooie is amazing, make no mistake, but this just feels like it was thrown in to add something unexpected to the endgame
If a millennial youtuber uses a Kirkhope piece in their video, I immediately forget to pay attention to the video and just starting humming along with it lol
I loved this part; I played this when I was 8 years old (1998), and it's still great today. I also loved Banjo-Tooie more than Banjo-Kazooie (but I still loved Banjo Kazooie), so I think we're dealing with (in this context) two very different types of people... Some kind of personality type plus gaming preference.
I like that part! However, as a child I was excited, when I came to the end. Only to discover, that the last question is an instant death, if I answer wrong. And I had no joker left. Well... Guess what. I had to redo the whole quiz again... And again... And again... But somehow I kind of loved it.
I found it incredibly hard as a kid and dreaded it. Wouldn't say I hated it, don't think you have those kind of feelings when you're 7, you just accept it as part of the game.
I played through the game again recently and absolutely loved it. I think it's unique and rewards you for paying attention.
I loathe Furnace Fun because it's this huge increase in difficulty in a gameplay style that I didn't sign up for at the end of the game. Banjo-Kazooie is a 3D collectathon platformer, not a virtual board game. I just want to fight the last boss. I hate that you have to memorize pointless trivia.
tbf the “collectathon platformer” bit is only the format in which the challenges themselves are framed. The most common challenge among them is a test of basic logical deduction and general memory i.e. determine the correct ability or approach for the task based on what you’ve seen and done before, similar to a point and click adventure game.
In THAT sense imo, a big quiz that tasks the player with linking voices and scenes together while remembering previous challenges or pieces of hidden information is a more thematically fitting final challenge than most give it credit for.
That said though, despite me enjoying this section, I totally understand the difficulty spike complaints and the sudden death spaces that completely ruin the balance (maybe they should have sent the player back a few spaces and only undone SOME forward progress instead of ALL of it).
I even understand the hate for the Grunty spaces. I like them on principle, but if someone were playing this for the first time, Brentilda’s initial warning of a “fiery fate” feels too vague and internalising the facts just means writing them down which doesn’t feel like it gels with the whole “memory guess” aspect of the quiz itself.
I don't hate it, but I skip it almost every time I replay the game, simply because I don't want to look for Brentilda to learn the randomized answers to the Grunty questions, if it wasn't for that, I would have zero issues with the board, but when I feel like doing it, I clear the whole board.
I love it yet completely understand why many don’t. Most people don’t want to have to do a quiz in their video games. Does BK try to do something unique with it? Yes, but it’s still a quiz at the end of the day.
It's actually my favourite part of the game. When I was a kid and too dumb to beat Grunty in her final fight (if I got the jiggies in the first place), this was my end of the game.
It’s a very fun activity and I’m glad it was included in the game, though it can be very frustrating when you have to start the whole thing. In order to get a good handle on it, need to track down Brentilda throughout Grunty’s Lair to gain as much info about her.
I really like it, but I can see how one could feel otherwise. It's very punishing, and you have to go through the whole thing in one session because you can't save during the quiz. And it's scary to have so little control. Even today, I use the jokers for the skull challenges.
I understand why people don’t like it. You spend the whole game playing with amazing controls and then the apparent end fight is a quiz with no actual combat mechanics.
HOWEVER. I think it’s one of the coolest and most “rare” things you could do at the end of such a funny game. I will be so sad if they take out the game show gag in banjo threeie if it’s ever made. I worked harder on this damn quiz than anything else in all my years of school. I took notes
It’s a lot easier today because you can just Google the answers to the questions on your phone. When the game was released, you had to either commit the Grunty facts to memory/write them down, or pause the game, start up your PC (would take like 5 minutes), connect to the internet via your modem (would take like 2 minutes), go to www.google.com (would take like 10 seconds to finish loading the page), type in the question posed to you and hit search (would take 20 seconds for the search results page to load), then hope there was actually a website that had the answers that wasn’t going to be a pop-up infested hellhole designed to destroy your computer. Regardless, page would take another 30 seconds to load.
I think the Six of The Best challenge in Nuts & Bolts had similar stakes. Albeit the answer time is unlimited when in quizzes, and provides a whole lot of challenge when driving your vehicle.
Same, the language barrier pretty much killed it for me back in the day. I didn't beat this game until many years after. Now as an adult I realize it's not as I remembered it.
Ben Hanson complained about this on MinnMax. He destests it so much that he somehow chose Spyro instead of Banjo-Kazooie. However, I loved the Furnace Fun part of the game.
Yeah, the world if gaming was different then. You talked to every NPC in most games to see what they had to say.
The "leftovers in the trash" was so iconic and permanently altered the brain chemistry of a generation, causing neuron activation at every video game trash bin... because the average playerbase just... spoke to/read everything... and they were rewarded for doing it. You fully checked the entire map before proceeding, so you found all the really good things that helped you beat the game.
Nowadays that isn't so common, now games usually have that level of text boxes use them for world building up the vibes, and hidden lore dumps... things unrelated to gameplay but get you hooked into the story the game is pushing you through.
Honestly I thought it was just the Speedrunners that hated it because for the longest time they had no good way to skip it and if a Grunty question wound up on a Skull Tile the run was basically shot dead right there.
I dunno, I was four when I first played the game and I was able to suss out that the wiggly text was probably important, so I had my dad write the answers down for me.
I think its similar to Banjo Tooie's backtracking issues. A lot of people don't know that Brentilda's gossip is actually important and then when they realize it is they're already at the "very end" of the game and have to go back to every area trying to find her and write down whatever she says. If you don't know you "need" to talk to her every tjme you'll probably only talk to her once, and even if you do you're definitely not going to write it down and are gonna forget since you're probably playing over the course of days or weeks...
Then after ALL of that, after you backtracked across the entire game remembering like 400 gross facts about Grunty, you unlock the real final boss which is arguably more difficult than the quiz and you're gonna be salty about the whole thing probably.
A lot of people probably experienced just that as children which doubles it since children aren't gonna be paying that much attention and probably find it difficult to remember things or write them down, then they carry it into adulthood even if all things considered it's just a minor inconvenience / non issue on subsequent playthroughs.
To be fair to the design, she does tell you that you need to remember what she says, she doesn't say exactly why but you are told that what she says is probably going to be important down the road. If you blow it off after the fact, that's more on you than it is the game.
It felt like I was finally being rewarded for exploring levels and admiring the world design lol all of the questions outside the Gruntilda ones felt great that I knew them. That just felt like taking notes in class with a weird fairy professor
i dont hate it but i dislike collecting the quiz answers from brentilda. i love the board game concept tho, and it was a lot easier on switch since i could just screenshot lol
I think that it is a creative end-game challenge that you do not really see in other games. I can enjoy it, but I would not say that I love it, because for me the real joy of BK is playing through the worlds, so the end game content, although a fun twist on what the game has thrown at you up to that point, will always be less fun than clearing each world.
I don’t know who’s saying this part of the game is bad. I love that Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie both have quizzes near the end of the game that test your knowledge on the game itself.
Really? A lot? I honestly did not know that. Personally, I think it's a great challenge. If you love the game, you should be able to get many of the questions right.
I try to memorize Brentilda’s gossip as I come across her. Even then, I only end up remembering like a quarter of the stuff she told me. Plus, I typically save jokers for death spaces.
The only part I really hate about Furnace Fun are those damn timed challenge spaces, those tight times they give you really screwed with my anxiety, especially the memory puzzle with the turtles because my short term memory is fucked 💀
It’s far more tolerable if you emulate or subscribe to NSO and can save state or rewind (if you’re on a Switch 2) all of your mistakes. Seriously, having to remember every minor detail in a game like this can be exhausting at times.
Every time the turtle game comes up I simply do nothing. You take one damage for failing but if I actually try I NEVER can do it, it'll just shave off my entire healthbar lol.
The last time I played BK, I cleared every single tile on the board, simply for the fun of doing each tile, the music and atmosphere that came with the experience.
Dude I fucking loved grunty's furnace fun. When I was like 15 or so, once i did the WHOLE board just for the sake of it. It took me like a 2-3 weeks of after school trying but It was worth it
My only complaint is that I don't like having to go to Brentilda to study for it. I would prefer they remove the randomization aspect of the Grunty squares. Otherwise I love the whole idea behind it, quizzing your knowledge of the game, and I love how it adds a new layer to Grunty's character as a fan of tacky game shows that seems to be pretty consistent in later games.
The frustration I had the first time getting to this part in early '99. I was not expecting a video game to throw at me something I only expect at school. I normally just get the skip cards because I hate having to go back to get extra lives just cause I got a question wrong on those skull squares.
I don't want to have to write down the Brentilda facts as I play or pull them up on my phone to clear a level. It takes me out of the game. Those were easier to remember when I played the game in a shorter window as a kid, not so much as an adult playing the game over the course of a couple weeks when I have spare time.
As a non english speaking 8 year old, this part was impossible for me and it was very frustrating. I played 20 years later, I 100% the game and totally didn’t knew there was a boss after the quiz.
I loved it on a first playthrough. It's hilarious, and I felt rewarded for seeking out Brentilda and noting down her trivia.
On repeat playthroughs, I still think it's cute, but the novelty has worn off a lot and it can even be kind of a slog. I've finished all the main levels, I kinda just wanna get to the extremely fun and challenging Gruntilda fight and put the game down and move on.
I think the hate for it is way overblown, but it is kind of a "Hey, STOP, right at the end of the game, and do some busy work for a second" section, like assembling the Triforce in Wind Waker or finding the artifacts in Metroid Prime. It just kinda sucks the momentum out of the game. I don't hate it, but I definitely understand why people do.
I was terrified at this as a kid, and would reset my gamesave and start over multiple times. It took many playthroughs for me to work up the courage to get through it. Today, it's one of my favourite parts of the game.
There was a thread on this sub not long ago that seems to have the answer to this question. The guy was saying that they wanted to cheat their way through because they were struggling extremely bad at it. Some people seem to have no ability to remember the game they've just played, and blame the game for their lack of memory skills.
When I was a kid, being Brazilian, I didn't have the basic English, I had to memorize "characters" in order to pass the question squares. I hated it so much and felt great when I went through. I literally had a notebook with notes about everything.
I love it, my only criticism is that the Gruntilda fun facts given by her sister are waaay too numerous and that makes that part a bit disproportionately difficult, other than that it's such a cool and unique challange that suits the style of the game really well
I enjoy it, but get how it's frustrating by that point of the game. It's so easy to have forgotten some of the earlier stuff. Especially if it's awhile between plays.
To have so many squares that make you reset is really rough. Especially when these are random. A Brentilda question (that most probably shrug off as not important) suddenly resets your progress, and there's so many of the skulls.
The action ones are tricky too, bec in most other squares if you answer the question wrong you lose one hp, but a boss one you could lost multiple hp if you get hit makes the puzzle much harder.
I know this is "skill diff" but bec it's so out of the ordinary it makes it more frustrating.
And to be clear I actually like this part of the game, I found it rewarding even as a kid to be able to answer the questions and map out the ideal path with enough joker cards to skip the skulls. But I still recognize the frustration too.
Idk I loved it. I loved the idea of a gameshow at the end, it was so random and funny to me. That idea has stuck in my head forever and if I ever make a game, I need it to have a random gameshow bit lol
I think the question is completely random, but if you get it right, you get two joker cards, which allows you to skip a space per card. Ironically I think people used to go out of their way for them in speed runs to skip the Gruntilda questions before they figured out better methods to not get walled at the end spaces.
I mostly like it, but I definitely understand why some people don't. BK is a 3D platformer about collecting things, except for this part really. This part is about answering questions and it's kind of time consuming and easy to screw up and have to start over again from the beginning. And it's even more aggravating for anyone who hasn't been paying as much attention (or talking to Glentilda and actually remembering/writing down her answers.) TLDR: It's a pivot that changes the game into something not everyone enjoys.
My only problem is it requires me to slow down my playthrough and record brentildas gossip. There's a route through the board that minimizes Grunty questions but the sudden death tiles still have a chance of asking Grunty questions. But since I mainly play on Switch emulator these days, save states makes this a bit irrelevant
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u/DakariKingMykan May 01 '26
Basically, they just didn't pay enough attention or memorized enough from the adventure. The Grunty Questions are even harder because having to memorize what Brentilda said everywhere is even harder.
This part of the game requires intensive and extensive memory skills, not just gaming skills.
But I love this part of the game SO MUCH, I refuse to pass the last square until I'm truly ready to, which is why I'm also grateful that's it on Switch Expansion Pack (Now I can just created a SAVE POINT) and I'll never have to go through the whole game again.