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Yooka-Laylee is back!

I first started doing video game reviews back in 2017 and Yooka-Laylee was my first ever game I reviewed. Please, don’t go and read it because it’s bad—I beg of you. That was over 7 years ago and I was green back then, but with that said Yooka-Laylee just got a remastered treatement with overhauled graphics and many other new things were added to the game—hence the name Yooka-Replaylee. I cannot wait to play this through again with new eyes and see if my opinion of the game is the same.

If you didn’t know, Yooka-Laylee is from some of the same makers that made legendary Banjo-Kazooie (Nintendo 64) game back in the 1998. Yooka-Laylee follows the same kind of tradition of older platformers.

I played this through using PS5 Pro console.

Plot

The story of Yooka-Replaylee is pretty much the same as in the original game. Evil Capital B. sucks in a very special book that can re-write universe again. As Yooka and Laylee’s magical book gets suck into the Capital B.’s factory the pages gets spread across the world. Yooka and Laylee, the best friends, must go and collect the pages back to stop Capital B.

Gameplay, controls, audio and visuals

Yooka-Replaylee is a 3D platformer collectathon. Meaning the main thing is to adventure around the various worlds and find items (mainly Pagies) that can open up new areas and new worlds. Other items should be collected to make the gameplay more easier. Players can exchange coins and quills to things like more health and more stamina to do special moves.

There are tons of differences in the Yooka-Replaylee versus to the original game Yooka-Laylee. Things like “a completely redesigned and expanded moveset unlocked from the start, new and more plentiful collectibles, and the removal of the “Pagie-based” level expansion system.” There are other things that have been changed and I did find this revision to be much better than the original game.

Controlling the main characters had made easier. Players get all the moves in the beginning that are from jumping, gliding to rolling and sonar shots, to name some of them. I think it was smooth to control them and the camera is absolutely perfect now. In the original it always got stuck on something and was never right.

The lead music was composed by legendary Grant Kirkhope that is know from games like Banjo-Kazooie. As this is spiritual successor to Banjo-Kazooie the game wasn’t voice acted. All the characters has the same kind of indistinct mumbling.

Yooka-Replaylee has got graphical overhaul. It looks and performs perfectly. Comparing to the original game, that was choppy and underperforming. This was not an issue with Yooka-Replaylee. It looked beautiful, sharp, colourful and detailed. Yes, there was some pop-ins, but it wasn’t anything major.

Verdict

Yooka-Replaylee was a much better experience than the original version. It runs smoothly, looks gorgeous, sounds beautiful and the overhauled core gameplay makes it easier and more enjoyable to play. I played it through in about 7 hours. But collecting everything will take easily double than that. I do recommend Yooka-Replaylee to everyone who wants a nostalgic hit, or enjoys humouristic old school plaformers.

Compared to the original Yooka-Laylee, in my opinion Yooka-Replaylee is the best version.

SCORE:

4/5

“Yooka-Replaylee is a 3D platformer collectathon”

RELEASE DATE: October 9, 2025
GENRE: Adventure
DEVELOPER: Playtonic Games
PUBLISHER: PM Studios
PLATFORMS: PS5 (reviewed on PS5 Pro)
Xbox Series X|S
Nintendo Switch 2
Windows

 

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