Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest (Super Nintendo) review on HonestGamers

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Review by Felix Arabia
March 09, 2008

Donkey Kong Country 2 is generally seen as the zenith to the series. People who love this game cite its predecessor as an overly simplistic, unchallenging title more known for its graphics than its gameplay. They are right! However, these same people are quick to point out that its sequel, subtitled as Diddy’s Kong Quest, fixes a lot of the gameplay issues by implementing more diverse stage design, more challenging scenarios, and pirates.

Now pirates are generally interesting folk, especially if they’re played by Johnny Depp. Unfortunately, Johnny Depp never makes an appearance in DKC2. Instead of going against him, we are cast into a world replete with bipedal crocodile pirates. These pirate Kremlings wear eye patches, hobble about with their pegged legs, and toss hooks at our primate heroes all while brandishing cutlasses and cannons.

I kid you not. Some of the larger ones tote cannons around as weapons. That’s pretty cool.

But overall, it’s not as exciting as it should be. While we begin this new adventure aboard a rickety sloop sailing the high seas, we never completely abandon the series’ overly bright and perky atmosphere. Sure, now the music is a little darker. The stages are set in more ominous locales, and the enemies have definitely adopted more character. The entire game is still coated in a nice, glossy finish, though. That same rickety pirate ship filled with menacing buccaneers, for example, looks gorgeous in the warm sun. Its inhabitants, muscular corsairs wearing red bandanas, don’t appear any more menacing as the furry rats that squeak aboard the poop deck. It still only takes a simple bop to the head or a barrel throw to the chest to put these enemies out of commission. The more challenging foes, like cannon-toting tars and spectral phantoms, won’t appear until later in the game. For now, we’ll be forced to hop on rats and contend with barrel-wearing mad-crocs until then.

We won’t get to navigate deadly bramble mazes, explore cavernous beehives, or scale menacing dark castles until at least the end of the third world if not far later. By the time we do get there, it won’t even matter. The majority of the enemies are inane, and the opening stages are boringly simple and at times pointlessly inane. One stage, prior to any of the interesting environs awaiting our presence, will force our heroes to navigate the innards of a galley flooded with scolding hot water. The only way to progress through this dangerous maze is to bop a seal so it can exhale its icy fresh breath into the water, which then temporarily cools it down.

What kind of cheap gimmick is this?

This little animal buddy is just one of an expanded cast that now includes a spider, a snake, an anglerfish, as well as the return of several old favorites. While it’s exciting to form web platforms over bottomless pits with the spider, it’s exceptionally boring to follow the faint light of an anglerfish through an underwater shipwreck. It’s also unfortunate that Winky the Frog is a no-show. He’s much cooler than his replacement, Rattler the Rattlesnake.

But perhaps the biggest and most surprising character to turn up M.I.A. is none other than the hero of the original DKC. Donkey Kong, the big dumb gorilla who trail blazed through his own island stronghold in search of his stolen banana hoard, doesn’t even make a regular appearance in this installment. Instead, his limber sidekick, Diddy, lands the lead protagonist role (though I doubt he wants it). Filling the secondary spot is some relative of theirs, the effeminate Dixie Kong. She has a pony tail and pink toenails. Her hair makes for a capable makeshift helicopter and doubles as a deadly weapon. Can’t you see these big, tough pirates getting whipped by a tuft of hair? That’s exactly what happens here!

We have instances where the Kongs must battle possessed pirate swords, race against evil parrots, and outwit haunted rollercoaster rides. These scenarios should be fun, but they’re not. In a sense, DKC2 uses more smoke and mirrors than its predecessor. It has to, I suppose, since the game is hardly any better. It’s still the same simplistic platforming action we’ve seen in countless other games. The only two major non-surface differences being that the screen at times scrolls upward instead of to the right and that now there are coins to collect.

I disdain coin collecting unless it’s in Mario. This attempt at variety fails to establish the aura of exploration it intended to create, for me at least. A lot of people actually like this. I don’t. We have coins for purchasing clues/saves/extra lives, coins gleamed from clearing bonus rooms, and coins carefully hidden in each and every stage. The bonus room coins are the most important kind since they’re used for paying a toll to a mysterious island realm housing the game’s toughest stages. This “Lost World” also happens to be the final showdown between the Kongs and the series’ upstart evildoer, King K. Rool.

Guess what! He dresses like a pirate, too!

While his encounters may prove challenging if not memorable for their silliness, the other boss battles are quite forgettable. It’s a shame since improving upon the original’s pitiful end-of-world guardians would not have been an overly difficult thing to do.

But as it stands, it shouldn’t be that surprising since Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest fails to adequately correct any of the issues that faulted its predecessor. The original’s charm and graphical innovation has given way to half-hearted changes in design and mechanics. This certainly isn’t a bad game – it’s quite mediocre – but I’ve never been fond of this sequel. I’ve always disliked this title’s aesthetics as they’ve never appealed to me despite the lengthy amount of time it has spent in my collection. As a youth, I was able to get lost in the ephemeral beauty that that the original Donkey Kong Country provided. The same did not happen here. If I want to play a great SNES platformer, I’ll stick with Mario and Luigi, not Donkey and Diddy, and certainly not Diddy and Dixie.

Rating
4	Weak Though there may be a few bright spots, the overall product is fairly weak and does not come recommended.
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Game Profile & Content

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Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest (SNES) game cover art

Staff Score (Avg): 4.0 User Score (Avg): 8.1 Press Score (Avg): N/A
Reviews: 4 Guides: 3 Cheats: 2 Ratings: 10	High Scores: 0 Screenshots: 0 Videos: 0

Title: Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest
Genre: Action (Platformer)
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Rare
Release Date: December, 1995
ESRB: K-A
Save: Battery

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