I never got around to playing the original Yooka-Laylee. I almost wish I had so that I could compare all the changes in Yooka-Replaylee. Some Yooka-Laylee reviews, such as IGN’s, established a baseline of things to look out for as I played. Renaissance PR provided me with a review copy of this game, and I played the PC version.
The One Book To Write Them All
Yooka-Replaylee begins with a storybook featuring a mixture of Polaroids, drawings, and annotations throughout. The sense of humor is very British, and it’s right up my alley. Yooka and Laylee are a tag-team of a chameleon and a bat, respectively. It’s the classic hero and a sassy lil sidekick formula. They explain, against the backdrop of the storybook, that they set out on a treasure hunt and ended up crashing the ship. The story picks up a few weeks later.
There’s a basic tutorial level to guide you through some of the moves. The first thing that I noticed was that you could interact with just about everything. Smacking things with the tail whirl produced coins (and eventually led to discovering Pagies and Pagie Puzzle Pieces later on). Yooka and Laylee eventually stumble upon the all-powerful One Book locked away in a cage and release him.
The One Book explains that whatever is written into him becomes true. Laylee takes the opportunity to ask for both new and upgraded moves. This was Yooka-Replaylee’s clever way of allowing you to have access to the entire move set from the beginning. Yooka-Laylee required you to collect enough Quills in each world and purchase them. I have to imagine that caused a lot of backtracking.
Enter the Big Bads
Yooka and Laylee just so happened to wash up next to Hivory Towers, the home to the villains of the game. We get introduced to Capital B and his faithful mad scientist, Dr. Quack. The whole time I was playing Yooka-Replaylee, I kept thinking that Capital B had all this money to create golden statues of himself, but never had the sense to buy some Visine. The villains attempt to steal the One Book. The One Book uses quick thinking to launch all his Pagies out into the different worlds, rendering his power moot. Capital B and Dr. Quack coerce our heroes into assembling as many Pagies as possible, kicking off the gameplay.
So Much To Do, So Much to See
Yooka-Replaylee contains five worlds with plenty of wacky characters and things to collect. Some of the critiques of the original game mentioned that the worlds felt a bit lifeless, or that the first world started strong, but then the rest of the game tapered off. I had a blast exploring each world because every section had something to collect or do. Even exploring the far edges of the map would uncover more Quills.
Each world contains a minecart mini-game that’s reminiscent of Donkey Kong Country; the Moodymaze Marsh had my favorite version. There’s also a Rextro’s Arcade, which introduces us to Rextro. He’s this little dinosaur dude that’s apparently been waiting around since the ’90s for someone to play his games. Those sections were brief, fun, and reminded me of PS1-era platformers. Each world also featured other random mini-games; one was even a homage to RC Pro-Am, a game I spent a considerable amount of time playing back in the day.
The Casino level seemed to get a lot of criticism in the original. Things like the slot machines and roulette tables are now timing-based. Honestly, this level felt fine for me, but you could easily collect enough Pagies from the previous three levels to skip through it. The boss of this level, noted for being ridiculously difficult, was completely revamped into a fun fight.
So Many Improvements Over the Original
I wanted to address more of the issues that Yooka-Replaylee fixed. Frankly, it’s incredible that Playtonic Games clearly listened to all of the critiques and turned this game into a bona fide remake.
- The Camera: This was a significant issue with Yooka-Laylee, and I get it. A fixed camera might’ve been fine in the N64 or PS2 era, but it doesn’t fly in the modern day. Yooka-Replaylee revamped the camera system, allowing you to adjust it, except in a few specific sections. Those sections felt like a style choice and worked fine.
- Tracking and Navigation: Yooka-Replaylee now has a map and a fast travel system. This system works by meeting Mark, a slumbering bookmark. Whenever you wake him up, that waypoint gets added to the map. He also reveals the location of a missing Pagie for 50 Q.U.I.D. I greatly appreciated this feature because trying to track down the last doodad in the previous console generations would turn into an hours-long ordeal.
- Tonics: You can purchase Tonics from Vendi’s Emporium. Some of the Tonics made the game a lot easier, like extra health or extending your glide time. Other Tonics allow you to turn the game into a challenge run, like having a single health point or taking fall damage. Further Tonics would just add cool things like a CRT Filter or allow you to swap the color schemes of Yooka and Laylee.
- Cosmetics: In addition to Tonics, you can also buy Cosmetics from Vendi’s Emporium. I’m so used to this stuff being locked as DLC that it was nice to use good old-fashioned collectibles. It’s one of those minor details, but I also appreciated that the equipment you equipped appeared in cutscenes.
Surprise Difficulty Spike
One of my few complaints about the game is the final boss. You could collect just enough Pagies to unlock all of the doors and breeze right to the end. You need to take the time to explore each world and collect enough of the quills to buy all of the health upgrades. I walked into the final battle with nine hearts, and it still took me multiple attempts to win. I felt like the difficulty suddenly spiked into a Soulsborne boss.
Final Thoughts
I’m curious to see what folks who played the original Yooka-Laylee think. Owners of that game can grab a digital copy of Yooka-Replaylee at a 30% discount if it’s in the same ecosystem (such as if you bought the original on PS4 and want to pick this up on PS5). I sank about 12 hours into the game, but that could easily double if you’re going for all of the achievements and/or 100% completion. I’m not sure if collecting every Quill counts towards completion, but I wish those were also added to the map.
Besides the last boss being pretty gnarly, I enjoyed my time playing this game. Again, I like that Playtonic Studios listened to the feedback and overhauled the experience. Even things like the maligned quiz mini-games in Yooka-Laylee were turned into a single quiz that poked fun at them. I laughed, I geeked out over some Rare deep cuts, and this series could easily carry the torch as a spiritual successor to Banjo-Kazooie.
Yooka-Replaylee is available now on Steam, Epic, Nintendo Switch 2, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S. Physical copies are also available.
Yooka-Replaylee
$29.99
Pros
- They addressed nearly every criticism of Yooka-Laylee
- The mini-games rock
Cons
- The final boss could be a soulsborne boss
- I'm still trying to find those last 3 Quills in the first world
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