Way back when it was announced, Playtonic’s Yooka-Laylee attracted a huge amount of excitement and anticipation, promising to bring back the lost art of the collectathon 3D platformer. With ex-Rare devs leading the way, and their former employer subject to the whims of Microsoft’s inner workings, fans were hoping that the lizard and bat combination would resurrect the golden age of Banjo-Kazooie et al. The end result was one of the biggest disappointments in gaming memory. Yooka-Laylee wasn’t a complete disaster but felt unfinished and strangely empty, especially in the later levels. The 2D spin-off Impossible Lair was far more complete and therefore better received but it was clear that Playtonic felt that there was unfinished business with the first game. Enter Yooka-Replaylee.
Yooka-Replaylee is the updated and fully fleshed out version of the original pitch that fans were excited for back in the day. The visuals have had a major overhaul, the levels filled with new challenges, and the game mechanics given a new lease of life. It’s no exaggeration to say that this is the definitive Yooka-Laylee experience and I hope that it reaches the wider audience that it deserves.
The visual upgrade is the first thing to hit you upon starting up the game. I played on Switch 2, predominantly handheld, and the new palette really pops on the screen. It also looked fantastic when docked with smooth performance and a much improved camera. The different levels really stand out with the increased graphical detail, leading to environments that are far more interesting to explore. Exploration is also required as there are double the number of pagies to collect and many new minigames and trials to complete.
Just in case you are new to the series, let’s go through some background. Yooka and Laylee are best friends that live on a pirate ship. One is a lizard and one is a bat, with the latter living on Yooka’s back in much the same way that Kazooie lived in Banjo’s backpack. They have the same kind of friendly banter and back-and-forths, and share many of the same platforming skills of their spiritual predecessors. Whilst relaxing on their ship one day, they meet a magical book that offers power to its owner. Before they can get too comfortable, though, the evil Capital B steals the book and scatters its pages throughout the lands. It is therefore up to the dynamic duo to explore the various levels and rescue the Pagies.
The original game had a system of unlocks that meant you had to buy skills as you progressed and return to levels to find Pagies that were unavailable first time around. One of the most transformative changes in the new version is that all of the skills are at your disposal from the very start. This makes it possible to completely clear a level before moving on if you want to go for 100% and removes the need to backtrack. This doesn’t mean that completion is easy, though, as there are still some fiendishly hidden collectables and challenging minigames to beat in order to collect everything.
You begin your quest to collect the Pagies in the overworld hub. This area contains the entrances for the five levels, each with 50 Pagies to collect, as well as 50 Pagies of its own. Accessing each level requires you to have a set amount of Pagies, but this amount has not been altered from the original, so it is actually possible to reach the final confrontation with Capital B after rinsing just the first two levels and the overworld to meet its 120 Pagies goal. This is a peculiar choice as it makes much of the new content feel far more optional than it should. There isn’t even an achievement for collecting every Pagie, which seems like a bizarre choice. I only briefly touched the last two levels in my playthrough, but know I will be returning to mop up the rest of the collectables at some point.
It’s not just Pagies, as there are also 150 Quills, currency that you can use to buy upgrades from Trowser the Snake, 5 Ghosts with different approaches to collect them, hidden pig characters to find, an Arcade coin for Rex’s retro arcade machine, a Mollycule for Dr Puzz, coins to spend with Vendi the Vending Machine, 8 Pagie fragments, and even more. The collectathon is the game here, with narrative being restricted to entertaining cutscenes as you unlock each Pagie door – another clear influence from Banjo-Kazooie.
Each level is well designed to hide all of these many collectables and you’ll need to scour every nook and cranny to find them all, as well as fully exploit Yooka and Laylee’s abilities to traverse complex platforming sections with impressive verticality. Enemies are frequent with different varieties for each biome and there are fun boss battles that reward victory with 3 Pagies. Less fun are the returning mine cart sections that remain just as frustrating as ever. Fortunately the huge excess of Pagies in this version means that you can ignore challenges or minigames that you don’t want to play. Perhaps the most radical redesign here is the Retro Rex Arcade minigame which now plays out with far more substance than originally.
