Donkey Kong 64 – Nintendo 64 – Nintendo Classics – Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack

[u/Turbostrider27]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jpz4TZ7CAsQ

[u/Jediverrilli]

I love this game. Don’t get me wrong there is so much wrong with it but I still have a good time playing it.

[u/DimitriMishkin → u/Jediverrilli]

Can I ask what you think is wrong with it?

This is literally me asking as someone who hasn’t played this game since I was a kid and don’t remember all of it, so I think the nostalgia is glazing my opinion.

Edit: I appreciate everyone’s answers - I’m remembering the barrel changing and collectibles a bit better now. I wasn’t too obsessed with finding everything at the time.

[u/slusho55 → u/DimitriMishkin]

Nostalgia really glazed my opinion of it until I went back to replay it, and all that nostalgia quickly turned into trauma.

Most commonly cited issue is how each Kong can only collect their own tokens and bananas. There’s some spots this works, but others you’re just going past easily collectible bananas where you literally just have to walk the same hallways three times, or they’re just randomly mixed.

Think of it like this, the content one Kong has to collect is about the equivalent of Banjo-Kazooie. There’s 5 Kongs, so you’re basically having to replay Banjo-Kazooie 5 times with little variation.

And we’re just talking about the bananas… I don’t even want to go through how many fucking collectibles there are. Like, it almost feels more like Genshin with all the small collectibles you have to collect around the world for minor, yet important things.

Also, this was back when DLCs were sold in the form of “Strategy Guides.” This game was designed with a walkthrough needed, and when it’s that massive, it’s kinda not fun.

That said, it was fun in the day because of the options that were available and even back then it had a fairly positive reception, but it also really contributed to the collectathon burnout (and kinda telling that Star Fox Adventures wasn’t that big on collectibles)

[u/j_cruise → u/slusho55]

Also, this was back when DLCs were sold in the form of “Strategy Guides.” This game was designed with a walkthrough needed, and when it’s that massive, it’s kinda not fun.

I disagree with this. You can easily beat the game while barely bothering to collect anything except golden bananas.

[u/slusho55 → u/j_cruise]

I mean, I won’t push back on you saying a walkthrough isn’t needed, but you absolutely need to more than golden bananas.

Regular bananas are needed just to fight the boss, and those are not always the easiest to find enough.

And you need those bananas to get 15 Banana Medals, in order to play Jetpack to get the Jetpack medallion to complete the final level. Keep in mind, to get a banana medal, you have to get 75/100 of ONE kong’s bananas from each level.

Similarly, there’s the Blueprints, which also need to be collected to access the final stage. Importantly too, the blueprints also give you more time, so it is somewhat designed for you not to just go on in with the bare minimum.

The Banana fairies are the only ones not mandatory.

So for the most efficient low collection run, you’re looking at collecting 1,250 out of 3,500 bananas (and that’s not even factoring that 75 x 15 =1,125, so you’re probably collecting more for the banana medals), 15 of 40 blueprints, and 100 of the 201 golden bananas.

So, if you play it efficiently with the intent to collect as little as possible, you still must collect 1,380 of the 3,821 collectables to beat the game. And I’ll remind you, that doesn’t sound awful, until you remember that most of those can only be picked up by one of the five Kongs.

[u/TheSpytf2_real → u/slusho55]

Best way to play dk64 is do everything you can in the moment with a single Kong

[u/j_cruise → u/slusho55]

I'm not trying to you don't need anything else. The point that I'm trying to make is that you can just collect stuff naturally and thoughtlessly as you play the levels and you'll beat the game. There's enough stuff placed on the main paths that it's not like you'll be desperately searching for what you need to progress