Yooka-Replaylee is not a bad game. It's just… safe. And maybe a little hollow.
Yooka-Replaylee is the kind of game that knows exactly what it is, a 3D platformer packed to the brim with collectibles, quirky characters, and colorful worlds. It doesn't try to reinvent the genre or push the platforming forward in any major way, and that's both its comfort and its curse.
Coming into this as someone who never played the original version, I was hoping for a whimsical, pick-up-and-play platforming adventure. And to be fair, Yooka-Replaylee delivers that, but in a way that often feels like it's just checking off boxes rather than building toward something meaningful. It's the kind of game where you can easily lose hours chasing shiny things across vibrant maps, only to stop and wonder what the point of it all really was.
The narrative is framed around Yooka and Laylee retelling their adventure through a notebook-style setup, occasionally poking fun at themselves and the tropes of the genre. It's light, a little silly, and mostly just there to justify the levels and progression. The new notebook-themed presentation is a nice touch visually, and there are extra cutscenes and a new ending thrown in for good measure.
But honestly, the story doesn't do much beyond being a backdrop for the gameplay. It never really builds momentum or stakes, and because it's a retelling, it already has a strange sense of detachment. The characters are charming enough, but they rarely feel like they're evolving through the journey as it's more like they're guiding you from one checklist to the next.
Each world in Yooka-Replaylee is big, colorful, and absolutely packed with things to collect. Pagies, Quills, Ghost Writers, health and energy extenders, secret challenges, tonics, costumes — you name it, there's probably a collectible for it.
These worlds are now fully expanded from the get-go, apparently, which means you can explore everything right away without needing to unlock or grow them. And yes, they are packed with content. There's always something in every corner, a puzzle to solve, an enemy to fight, or a platforming challenge to attempt.
The problem with this, is that it doesn't take long before it starts to feel like quantity over quality. You're collecting a lot of things, and after a while, it's hard to shake the feeling that you're doing it more because the game tells you to than because it's actually fun or rewarding. There's a sense of grind that creeps in early and doesn't really go away.
The new collectible tracking system and warp character, Mark the Bookmark, help with navigation, sure. But when you zoom out and look at the bigger picture, you're spending hours upon hours gathering stuff without much in the way of meaningful progression. You collect to unlock moves, to unlock more challenges, to collect even more. It's a loop that works mechanically but doesn't always feel satisfying.
Yooka and Laylee's full move set is available from the start this time around, which is nice as you get access to all the platforming tools right away. The controls are sharp, movement is responsive, and the camera is thankfully smooth and modern. The updated animations and a couple of new moves give it a polished feel.
But again, none of it really feels new. You roll, glide, bounce, and butt-slam your way through the levels in the same way you've done in a dozen other platformers before this. It's all functional, sometimes fun, but rarely surprising. There's nothing wrong with the platforming, it just never goes beyond "good."
It's the kind of gameplay that keeps your hands busy but doesn't do much to excite your imagination.
Apparently, the original game had some minigames, that many of the players were not really all that fond of. To replace those, this time around they the Rextro's Arcade. The new version of Rextro's Arcade is a decent diversion, and it includes a set of small isometric platforming challenges where you play as Rextro himself. They're fine. Some are tricky, others are kind of tedious. It's more content, more collectibles, and more time spent running and jumping through themed spaces.
Like most of the game, they feel like things you do just because they're there, not because you're especially excited to complete them.
The Tonics system is interesting on paper. You can equip gameplay modifiers or visual effects, and there are over a hundred cosmetic options to unlock. Some of them are actually useful, like highlighting collectibles or altering difficulty. Most are just cosmetic.
The idea is to encourage replayability and make the game feel like your version of the adventure, but in practice, it feels more like window dressing. You might mess around with a few Tonics, but they don't fundamentally change the game in a meaningful way.
Visually, Yooka-Replaylee is lovely. The full art overhaul is great, textures are crisp, environments pop with personality, and dynamic touches like grass bending under your feet or snow reacting to your movements give everything a nice sense of polish. It's colorful, it's cheerful, and it runs great on PS5.
The soundtrack has been reorchestrated by the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra and sounds fantastic. The music is sweeping and cinematic, giving these whimsical levels a grander feel than they probably deserve. It's easily one of the highlights of the experience.
But again, it's style over substance. The presentation is great, but it can't cover up the repetitive nature of the gameplay loop.
Yooka-Replaylee is a perfectly fine collectathon. It's charming, well-made, and offers a big sandbox of things to do. If you're the kind of player who just wants to unwind and clean up a checklist of shiny objects in a colorful world, this game has dozens of hours waiting for you.
But if you're looking for progression that feels meaningful, platforming that challenges your expectations, or mechanics that push the genre forward, you might find yourself underwhelmed. The sheer amount of collectibles starts to feel like filler, the sense of discovery wears thin, and eventually you start to question why you're collecting all this stuff in the first place.
It's not a bad game. It's just… safe. And maybe a little hollow. Thanks for reading!
The game was reviewed on a PS5 via a promo copy provided by the publisher. Yooka-Replaylee is available on PS5, PC and Xbox and Switch 2.
