DKC Atlas Forum

[Kingizor]

I only started playing DKCR for the first time early last year and have been playing it intermittently ever since. Over the past week or so I've been spending much more time on it.

I imagine the main reason I haven't been able to stick with it for a longer period of time is the sheer difficulty of the game. For a long time I've attributed how difficult I've found it to my insistence of getting the KONG letters and puzzle pieces as soon as I possibly could, believing that if I were to play through levels without such distractions it would be much easier.

I've often found that the levels are very inconsistent in their difficulty. Some I would complete without dying once, whereas the following level might result in me dying many times. This seems to happen throughout the game.
I have collected all the KONG letters and puzzle pieces in the game and am currently working through mirror mode. Even without any collectible distractions, the same disjointed pattern of difficulty seems to continue.

There are more than a few points where I have died without doing anything clearly wrong; simply a matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or being caught by the unexpected.
I've always felt that the original trilogy is much easier if you know what's going to happen next, although you can do rather well with your reactions alone or just taking your time. This doesn't really seem possible with this game, where knowing what's around the corner is essential and you are often not in control of a level's pace. The original trilogy seems leisurely in comparison.

Bosses seem to fall into the same pattern of “easier when you know how”, although that doesn’t seem to be enough either. I have occasionally died even to normal enemies by hitting them on top as intended, but perhaps slightly beyond the edge of their hitbox which is rather infuriating. It feels a very cheap way to die.

Certain areas seem to have very strict timing in order to make it through unscathed. In normal mode such points could simply be passed at the expense of a heart, but in mirror mode such exchanges aren't at all possible. In some stages I've died repeatedly trying to get past certain points and sometimes succeeding despite playing near identically each time.

The mere presence of the time attack mode is very intimidating. I've only attempted the first two levels in this mode and that was back when I was playing the game for the first time. It took me many attempts to get a gold in 1-1, which was enough to put me off the mode altogether. Anything less than gold isn't good enough for me, so I find no point trying for bronze or silver.

I’ve played the game entirely with Wiimote & Nunchuk. The control scheme itself doesn’t bother me, but the controls often feel slow to react even for Wii games. Normal running and jumping is fine, but transitional movements such as landing then turning and jumping, running into crouching and so on are very SLOW.

Overall I find the game far too difficult and stressful to be fun. If I were to make a list of things I particularly like about the game, there probably wouldn’t be an awful lot in it. I don't really like this game…

[CountryFan]

You may still like Tropical Freeze, though. Not nearly so difficult overall.

[OneOf99]

Hey, at least mirror mode doesn't make the rocket barrel levels any harder