Yooka-Laylee originally launched in 2017, and now--depending on who you ask--a seemingly short eight years later, a revised remake of the game releases tomorrow. Ahead of the game's launch, SuperPhillip Central has an in-depth review and my thoughts on this newly remade 3D collect-a-thon platformer. Here's my review of Yooka-Replaylee.
It's Grand Tome Time Once Again.
2017's Yooka-Laylee was an ambitious--perhaps to a fault--3D platformer and a virtual, spiritual successor to Banjo-Kazooie. Like the bear and bird's adventures, Yooka-Laylee featured a pair of precocious protagonists, Yooka, a chameleon, and Laylee, a bat, who took up residence on Yooka's back, essentially serving as Kazooie's role in both a gameplay and sass role. You had endearing gibberish for dialogue, huge, expansive, colorful worlds to explore, and plenty of Jiggies--I mean, Pagies to nab, grab, and collect.
However, as I mentioned, the original Yooka-Laylee was indeed an ambitious game, but one that really stretched too far and too thin to be the amazing game it could have been. For one, character movement wasn't ideal in feel and handling, worlds required players to expand them from their original smaller size to something much more wide open (I realize this design choice was meant to not overwhelm players immediately, but it wasn't as fine-tuned as desired), and many of the challenges in said worlds were a bit frustrating, clunky, and wonky to complete.
No doubt Playtonic Games heard and read all of this feedback from players and critics and took it to heart. Rather than build off the same game, instead, eight years later we have what essentially comes down to a "take two" effort with Yooka and Laylee's remade adventure: the cleverly titled Yooka-Replaylee. The aim of this re-imagined take on the original Yooka-Laylee is to make a bigger, vastly improved, more focused, and enjoyable 3D platformer using the base of the 2017 game. So much has changed, and honestly for the better, too.
The story of Yooka-Replaylee sees our soon-to-be heroes crash land their mighty vessel, the Bat Ship Crazy (cheeky humor like this abounds, as expected from ex-Rare staff), and find themselves exploring a cavern. Within this cavern they stumble upon a caged up tome, the One Book, and upon rescuing him from his personal prison, he informs the chameleon and bat duo of who locked him up and why.
The dastardly Capital B and his minions captured the One Book for no doubt nefarious purposes, and soon use a humongous vacuum to suck back up the One Book. Before being able to fully do so, the One Book manages to tear out its Pagies and spread them all across the worlds of Hivory Towers, the main hub of the game, before they fall into the wrong hands. Thus, the adventure begins and both Yooka and Laylee traverse their way into Capital B territory to reclaim the lost, separated Pagies.
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| Worlds in Yooka-Replaylee are immediately and fully open for exploration right from the word "go". |
Yooka-Replaylee keeps in line with traditional 3D collect-a-thon platformers of yore, with the main collectible being that of the previously mentioned Pagies that serve not only as rewards for completing various platforming and puzzle-based challenges within the game's five worlds and one main hub, but also a means to unlock new areas of Hivory Towers. Thus, those five worlds slowly open up one by one.
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| This familiar challenge from the original Yooka-Laylee is present in Replaylee too, but so many of the platforming, puzzling, and environmental trials on offer in this game are brand-new. |
The worlds themselves are quite vibrant and varied in locales and various in challenges and tasks for Yooka and Laylee to complete for Pagies. As opposed to the 100 or so Pagies in the original game, now there are 300 total, 50 in each world and the Hivory Towers hub. This means that instead of the large but rather bare worlds of the 2017 original, worlds are expansive to begin with, but also are densely packed with challenges to complete, collectibles to find, and things to discover.
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| Now THAT'S what I call some Pagie Power! |
Aside from Pagies, there are plenty of other collectibles within the worlds. One such collectible are the colorful Quills that can be used to purchase goodies from returning intrepid business snake Trowzer (150 in each world), as well as coins called Quids that are used to purchase from Vendi a new mechanic for this iteration of Yooka-Laylee, Tonics, that can change how you play the game entirely. Some are gameplay modifiers that make the game easier or more difficult depending on which ones you equip, while others can provide graphical filters to the game itself like cel-shading or a CRT filter.
Tonics are worth nothing that they're really nothing new to the series, having been utilized in the incredible Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair, but they're well incorporated into this 3D platformer. Aside from purchasing Tonics, Vendi also has an ever-expanding catalog of cosmetics for Yooka and Laylee. From gloves, pants, jackets, shirts, and more for Yooka, to hats and headgear for Laylee, you can have a lot of fun with these purely aesthetic costumes.
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| Hey, I'm not your buddy--go away! |
That's of course not all for the collectibles in Yooka-Replaylee. Many from the original game return, such as the five Ghost Writers in each world that must be captured in different ways depending on their color and type for a Pagie apiece, specific Arcade Tokens that are used to play the all-new Captain Toad-like retro-style, polygonal-visual, level-based arcade games from the endearing dino Rextro, and Mollycools--one in each world--that are exchanged to turn Yooka and Laylee into various helpful transformations.
Rextro's arcade games from the original Yooka-Laylee were retro experiences that tried their best to be fun, but ended up being more frustrating, unfortunately, and less than appealing. I dug the variety of the games, but their replacements in Yooka-Replaylee are net positives overall. They're bite-sized adventures, again similar to Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker in an albeit non-1:1 way, but they see you controlling Rextro through progressively more challenging stages where Rextro can lunge his head forward to bash into enemies, use his mouth to grab rails and pull himself up to higher platforms, and acquire up to three gold medals placed throughout the levels, all the while avoiding and evading hazards that can be put him in harm's way.
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| Rextro's Arcade games in Yooka-Replaylee, like many aspects of this remake, are a marked improvement compared to the original game. |
Meanwhile, the Mollycools are given to the tentacled Dr. Puzz, who takes on Mumbo Jumbo's role from the majority of the Banjo-Kazooie games, to transform our heroic duo into one of five transformations, one for each world. Depending on the world, these transformations can have very little or a lot of utility to them. For instance, the first world, Tribalstack Tropics's transformation is of little use, really, outside of one Pagie and getting hints for the world from flowers that won't otherwise reveal their secret knowledge outside of the world's floral-themed transformation. Whereas the final two worlds have more Pagie opportunities and tasks for your transformations than merely a modest or meager amount, which makes for a less of a headache. Speaking of less headaches, players can cancel out of transformations by holding down the right trigger instead of being required to trek back to Dr. Puzz. Very convenient!
The convenient features of Yooka-Replaylee don't end there, either. Playtonic added a talking bookmark character appropriately named Mark who serves as fast travel points throughout each of the game's worlds. He also--for a price of 50 Quids, can reveal the location of an overlooked, missing Pagie, too. Though, I did encounter some glitches with Mark, at least playing on desktop, where talking to Mark completely soft-locked the game. The map never popped up (and it wouldn't ever reveal itself for me even when hitting the Select button, yet other options in the menu would be available), and I was stuck in a perpetual waiting screen, having to force-exit the game. Strangely enough, playing the game on my Steam Deck did NOT result in this issue at all. Opening the in-game map worked so I could see every Pagie challenge, NPC location, and fast travel at will--plus I didn't have to actively avoid speaking or interacting with Mark like I would on my desktop version of the game!
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| That tongue of Yooka's certainly gets the job done when required! |
Yooka and Laylee sport a rather impressive repertoire of moves and abilities to help them out throughout their adventure, and unlike the original game, these are all available almost exactly from the start of the game. Essentially, when the tutorial--the aforementioned cavern section--plays out, new moves are introduced as platforming challenges stand before our heroes. Every move from the original Yooka-Laylee is present, and this time there's no need to track down Trowzer in the game's worlds to purchase new tricks for our pair of protagonists. Whether it's the Glide 'n' Ride, allowing Yooka to grab onto Laylee to temporarily--and literally as the name suggests--glide and ride across chasms and chunks of land, or using the Reptile Roll to move up otherwise too steep platforms a la Banjo-Kazooie's Talon Trot, moves are easier than ever to perform with a lack of needlessly complicated button combos to press.
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| Take flight with Yooka easily, as all moves are unlocked right from the get-go. |
Abilities like changing Yooka's color and powers by tasting various elemental berries big berries in the world are easy to switch between. From lashing his tongue at a red berry, Yooka's body temperature heats up, allowing him to light torches, while lashing at a stockpile of cannonballs increases his weight, meaning he can run through wind currents that would otherwise push him back like he was made of paper instead of polygons. Even flying while holding on to Laylee has been upgraded in this remake, offering Yooka the ability to lash his tongue at a cloud to be temporarily given the power of flight.
Yooka-Replaylee does indeed contain 300 Pagies, of those many are collected through discovering different platforming, puzzle-based, and environmental challenges throughout the game's worlds. Again, worlds are positively packed with more mindful use of space, with something placed practically in every nook, cranny, and around every corner. Some challenges, like boss battles (which as an aside have also been improved), Rextro's arcade games, an ancient mine cart named Kartos' mine cart challenges (some remaining unfortunately as frustrating as they were in the OG Yooka-Laylee), among others reward up to three Pagies upon completely clearing them. Others require finding two sets of four Pagie pieces to put together two more Pagies, and these can be rather overwhelming to find in the sense that it can be akin to looking for a needle in a haystack. This is especially so in the ones that require a Buddy Slam by the duo to reveal them. Sure, there's a faint sparkling spot, but not every spot reveals a lost Pagie piece, nor are they all available to be viewed easily until getting close enough to them.
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| Moodymaze Marsh's mushrooms shine and glow brightly to impressive effect. |
No doubt a massive upgrade from Yooka-Laylee to Yooka-Replaylee is that of the presentation. With vastly improved visuals, all-new texture-work, new objects in the environments, better detail, and much more to make the game's worlds feel and look less bland and sterile and instead appear more colorful and alive, Yooka-Replaylee is a fantastic offering visually. While the desktop version delivers the ability to change up your graphical settings, from resolution to changing up V-sync to varying degrees, it's the Steam Deck version that I also played which lacks such functionality. It's one size fits all here, and while the game looks and runs alright on Steam Deck, in the more expansive worlds starting with Tribalstack Tropics, it's noticeably blurry and fuzzy image quality-wise. Still, it's all the while impressive to have the game running on Steam's handheld-that-could in 2025!
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| Meanwhile, Capital Cashino is more golden and garish than ever before. |
Meanwhile, the majority of the music has been completely overhauled, this time performed by the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, save for pieces like Kartos' cart challenge themes, which remain the same. The new arrangements sound positively great and glorious. Though on the other side of the sound spectrum, your mileage will most likely vary with regard to the cast of characters and their numerous grunts and gibberish voices. I found it charming, but I loved it ever since Banjo-Kazooie.
So much of the original Yooka-Laylee has seen vastly superior improvements with this remake. Yooka-Replaylee is a far less frustrating experience, as the more taxing boss battles from the original have been redesigned, there's more thought put into collectible locations, better and more mindful use of space in worlds, and pretty much everything is a marked upgrade. While my issues with Mark at least in my desktop Steam version of the game made for a less convenient and more aggravating experience overall, there's something to be said about how much fun I had with Yooka-Replaylee that seems like just a sour footnote in an otherwise highly remarkable, rewarding, and enjoyable 3D platformer. With more to do, more to love, and yes, in genre tradition--more to collect, Yooka-Replaylee managed to outperform my expectations, making it a stellar and superb experience.
[SPC Says: A-]
A Steam code was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.
