Talk about an upgrade. Donkey Kong Country was a fine game in its own right, and still worth playing to this day, but it cannot be understated how big of an improvement this was on the original. You can find my review of the first game, and since most of the core aspects remain the same I'll just be using this review to talk about the improvements to the formula this game has made. As before, the story is barely a factor, King K. Rool Kidnaps Donkey Kong, so now it's up to Diddy and Dixie to save him.
Not related to the gameplay itself, but the game has ramped up its animations and given the characters a lot more personality than even the first game had. Seeing how Diddy and Dixie swap places differently is kind of amusing at first, and even their animations are different depending on who clears the stage. They took what was already a great visual experience compared to its contemporaries and ramped it up even more.
That is pretty much the theme of this review, making everything better. The differences between Donkey and Diddy were pretty minor in the last game, but here Diddy and Dixie both feel very different. Diddy has a bit of a higher jump and can move around a bit faster, whereas Dixie can spin her hair and hover, lowering very slowly until she reaches the ground and can move left to right during her decent. Each one works a bit better in different situations, so having both characters undefeated makes a big difference in traversing the levels. Throw in the addition of throwing your teammate to reach a new location, there are so many more ways to traverse through levels now that weren't in the previous game.
Levels are just more fun to traverse, and secrets are a lot more fun to discover as a result of the improved mobility aspects of the game. While the original did a fine job keeping the fairly short run time engaging, there are so many more things to do in this one. And discovering the Bonus Barrels to find Krem Coins gives you a reason to look for secrets in this game, unlocking the Lost World levels. It took the Super Mario route of 'Getting better at the game unlocks more game to play'. And unlike the last game, all the bonus areas are very unique, so you're not just doing the same thing over and over just for the sake of completion.
This is also where one big annoyance comes up, and that is to unlock all the levels you need every Coin. Each level has between one and three coins, and you are only notified you are missing coins in a world, not the individual stages. I say this is an annoyance, and not a real big issue because for me this is largely a quality of life thing. I just don't want to have to keep playing through levels I already went through not knowing if I'm just wasting my time doing it. The levels are all short though, and a lot of the bonus barrels to get the coins are cleverly hidden. I never felt like they were in spots that were complete BS that you would need a guide for.
I did, however, use a guide so I would know how many were in each stage. I still found them all in each level myself (Okay, there were like three I looked up the location of. :( ). It's very doable without any kind of guide though, you just need to be prepared to redo a lot of levels. Or you can just use a cheat that's been known about to spawn all the coins in the first level, but the rest of the game was fun enough that doing that you just miss out on a lot of fun parts of the game.
I don't know if I can think of any other sequel in gaming that is such an incredible leap in quality. The game does absolutely nothing worse, and everything better. With a distinct lack of story, you don't need to play the previous one either to follow along. So if you just want to play one of the best SNES platformers, jump right into DKC 2. It's worth your time.
so poshbot just posts from twi5ter to hive? not from hive to twitter?