What are your thoughts on the game?
Here are mine.
I never played the game on WiiU but I did buy the Switch game. Everyone I know and everywhere I have read said the game is amazing and a must buy. So I took all of the advice and bought the game. I'll share a few points on what I thought about the game.
As a big fan of Donkey Kong Country 2, it being the first SNES game I played, I know what a good Donkey Kong Country game should be like. Tropical Freeze on the other hand well hmmm . . .
The Good
The Bad
Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze is not a bad game overall. It feels like a better reimagining of the first SNES DKC game. I would say in all aspects apart from raw graphics the 2nd and 3rd SNES games are better games. They have better controls, better bonus stages and a better difficulty curve.
Overall Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze is not that hard of a game. Well based on level design. The majority of the difficulty comes from fighting the terrible controls, input delay and other similar things. The SNES trilogy are harder games but they feel more fair and forgiving because of the better controls and better level design. Though I will say a few of the stages in DKC3 were not designed all that well.
Is DKC Tropical Freeaze worth getting on the Switch?
I would say yes, It's a good game. However it's totally clear that the RARE magic that made the SNES trilogy so good is not present in Tropical Freeze at all. We're talking the difference between a good game (DKC-TF) and a great game (SNES DKC games).
Here are mine.
I never played the game on WiiU but I did buy the Switch game. Everyone I know and everywhere I have read said the game is amazing and a must buy. So I took all of the advice and bought the game. I'll share a few points on what I thought about the game.
As a big fan of Donkey Kong Country 2, it being the first SNES game I played, I know what a good Donkey Kong Country game should be like. Tropical Freeze on the other hand well hmmm . . .
The Good
- The music. It's really good and changes subtly depending on which part of the stage you're in. It's seriously good.
- The graphics. The game looks good and has a great aesthetic. Sure it's not cutting edge but it looks great.
- Level design. For the most part the stages are designed quite well. Even the K stages though tough are not unfair at all. Though I think the spots where cheap deaths can occur right before the end of the stage are bad design.
- The new type of enemines, ie the move away from kremlings works well.
The Bad
- Gameplay. DK along with all of his helper buddies are so hard to control. Trying to jump and move accurately which is required for many of the tougher platforming is just not possible without much frustration. This forced me to use Funky Kong for most of the game. I don't need the extra hearts or spike immunity I just need the double jump to get anywhere. His single jump is just as terrible as DK's one is.
- The controls. Overall they work but some of the choices are really bad. Like requiring L or R held to hold on to a vine. Just not required and makes the overall game harder to play. Also it's not easy to run and not easy to manage the height of your jumps. This is evident on the mine cart as an example. It's hard to get the right hights you need for each jump.
- I just play with Funky, avoid all the spikes and kill myself when I lose as many hearts as would be a death in the WiiU classic mode. So I make the game as hard as it was on WiiU but with a character that plays at least semi decently.
- The bonus areas. There is just a few of them, they all have the same look and just repeat over and over. The SNES DKC2 and DKC3 had bonus stages, all unique and all specifically designed to fit the theme of the stage they were in. So well done there on the SNES. A shame Tropical Freeze did not do this better.
- Also you can't re-try a bonus stage in a level without dying or exiting the level first. Something you could do in DKC 2 and 3 for most of the bonus stages.
- Difficulty Curve. The SNES games gave you at most 2 hits at any one time then you're dead. They had frequent checkpoints so you could not brute force your way through any part of the game. You had to slowly get better and better at each section to make the next checkpoint barrel. Tropical Freeze also has checkpoints but they are not used at all well.
- No world map to connect the smaller individual island maps.
- Reused elements in the game. For example, in the beehive stage, the bees just hold grass for you to hold on to. There's no need to reuse the grass for this. It also breaks the aesthetic the stage is aiming to capture. Something like sticky bees was or honey would have fit in way better. In a few other stages this occurs as well. The developers chose existing assets to get the job done, instead of making new assets to better fit the theme of a particular stage.
Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze is not a bad game overall. It feels like a better reimagining of the first SNES DKC game. I would say in all aspects apart from raw graphics the 2nd and 3rd SNES games are better games. They have better controls, better bonus stages and a better difficulty curve.
Overall Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze is not that hard of a game. Well based on level design. The majority of the difficulty comes from fighting the terrible controls, input delay and other similar things. The SNES trilogy are harder games but they feel more fair and forgiving because of the better controls and better level design. Though I will say a few of the stages in DKC3 were not designed all that well.
Is DKC Tropical Freeaze worth getting on the Switch?
I would say yes, It's a good game. However it's totally clear that the RARE magic that made the SNES trilogy so good is not present in Tropical Freeze at all. We're talking the difference between a good game (DKC-TF) and a great game (SNES DKC games).
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