Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 8/9/2021)

[Image from igdb.com]

Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest

Developer: Rare

Publisher: Nintendo

Genre(s): 2D Platformer

Platforms: SNES

Release Date: November 20, 1995

The character of Donkey Kong is not what makes a Donkey Kong Country game. I realize this might sound silly, considering his name is in the series title, but Donkey Kong isn't a playable character in both sequels to Donkey Kong Country for the SNES. Because of this, I had assumed that the sequels were lackluster affairs, so I had only played the first one for the longest time. In retrospect, avoiding the Donkey Kong Country sequels lacking the titular character was ridiculous. I still can’t think of a reason as to why Rare would omit Donkey Kong completely from two major entries in his own series. As it turned out, Rare’s baffling decision was not detrimental to the franchise. Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest proved that Donkey Kong was not an essential ingredient to the franchise, despite maintaining his namesake. The sequel expanded on all of the elements of the first game and refined it to the point where Donkey Kong Country 2 is the quintessential DKC experience, and I also feel quite foolish for depriving myself for as long as I did. Donkey Kong Country 2 is considered the best game in the series, with a few naysayers favoring the first game. I fall into the former category, plus I consider Donkey Kong Country 2 to be one of the greatest 2D platformers of all time. All things considered, DKC2 isn’t a whole lot different from the first game, yet I don’t sing the same praises for DKC1. It would be easy to credit Rare for buffing out the cracks of the first game like any game developer is supposed to do for a sequel, but these improvements are very abstruse. I am not declaring DKC2 as the best game tentatively, as I’m confident in my opinion. DKC2 has all of the hallmarks that made the first game a standout title, but the subtle changes are what elevate it above the rest.

Rare’s focal point when developing Donkey Kong Country was to expand on the “country” part of the title instead of the “Donkey Kong” aspect. The world of the first game was a sprawling, rural landscape composed of humid jungles, musty caves, snowy peaks, and a smattering of other geographical environments. Donkey Kong hadn’t had much limelight since he first appeared in his eponymous arcade game in 1981. The developers at Rare figured that since Donkey Kong was an ape, placing him in a pastoral setting made sense. The choice in setting wasn’t just implemented to complement Donkey Kong’s animalistic persona. The developers went to great lengths to make every level sublime with gorgeous pre-rendered graphics, kinetic platforming, and a mesmerizing soundtrack. These elements are needed to craft a Donkey Kong Country game, not Donkey Kong himself.

Stating that Donkey Kong isn’t present throughout DKC2 isn’t entirely true. Rescuing Donkey Kong from King K. Rool’s slimy clutches is the main mission of DKC2. How anyone subdued a burly ape-like Donkey Kong to hold him hostage is beyond me, but I suppose the same was done to King Kong, another iconic ape figure that is a hundred times the size of Donkey Kong. Diddy Kong’s quest, or “kong quest” (I went through the entire game before I noticed the pun in the title), is to ascend the perilous peak of Crocodile Isle, the homefront of King K. Rool and the kremlings. Diddy, of course, can’t venture off on this daunting journey on his lonesome. He is joined by Dixie Kong, a female simian of vague relation to Diddy Kong. Are they cousins? Siblings? Romantic partners? There’s no carnal monkey love in this game, so their relationship is irrelevant. The only dynamic between them that does matter is how they work as a platforming duo. Considering Dixie Kong has ousted Donkey Kong from his own franchise, the stakes are high with Dixie Kong as a playable character.

I’m happy to say that Dixie Kong is my favorite character in the Donkey Kong Country series. This is due to one simple but incredibly useful mechanic: her gliding feature she can do with her blonde ponytail. It always feels comfortable using this technique to traverse the levels in this game, and it also covers a lot of ground. It’s difficult to say if replacing Donkey Kong with Dixie Kong is an overall improvement because both characters are totally different. This gives Dixie Kong a drastically different dynamic from Diddy Kong by proxy, and I’m not entirely sure if this new dynamic is better or worse than it was with Donkey Kong. In the first game, the dynamic was the contrasting sizes between the two characters. Donkey Kong was the strapping one with the ability to defeat bigger enemies, while Diddy was much more agile and could jump higher due to his smaller stature. Ponytail glide moves aside; Dixie Kong is the same size as Diddy Kong. I’ve been told that Diddy moves slightly quicker than Dixie, but this was never evident to me while playing. The polar opposite proportions between Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong gave the duel platforming of the first game its relative depth that Diddy and Dixie don’t have. However, DKC2 manages to compensate for this.

While the size differences between Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong are well implemented into the gameplay of the first game, sections in which not having a specific Kong would unfairly doom the player. The sections that require the unique talents of Dixie Kong are only to access bonus stages, and the same goes with the character-specific barrels. Playing as either Kong in DKC2 is completely even, so the player has a choice over which Kong to put in front to suit their playstyle. Their similar sizes also lend to the new throwing mechanic. The select Kong can hoist the other on their back to throw them upward to access new heights or across a gap. The more evenly matched dynamic between the characters gives the player more leeway in traversing the levels rather than the forced character implementation of the first game. In saying that, the only thing that’s keeping me from playing as Dixie Kong for the entire duration of the game is being hit and having to use Diddy Kong.

The Kongs aren’t the only playable characters with more precedence than the titular ape. The animal buddies are a returning feature much more enterprising than it used to be. In the first game, animal buddies were present on most levels as vehicles that would aid the Kongs in either move quicker through a level or jumping higher. The animal buddies were all fun to use once in a while, and they counted as helpful collateral when the Kongs were hit. They were also playable without the Kongs in many bonus levels for gaining extra lives. I’d argue that the animal buddies were underutilized in the first game due to their aid being a novelty instead of a necessity. They couldn’t really offer anything totally out of the Kong’s reach. The animal buddies in DKC2 are much more useful than they were and have a presence that makes them feel like secondary characters instead of tools.

Returning animal buddies like Rambi and Enguarde offer their backs to give the Kongs a lift but come with special attributes that give them way more utility. Rambi can make a rhino charge move to demolish a blocked-off entrance, and this move can also precariously catapult the player past a good chunk of the level, zooming past kremlings like a jungle autobahn. Squawks offered his talents as a flashlight in the first game, but now he’s passed that job off to an anglerfish named Glimmer onto bigger and better things. Squawks can now use their wings to soar past levels with various hazards, lifting the Kongs up with their talons. Rattly and Squitter are new animal buddies, and they are huge improvements to the animal buddies from the first game that did not return. Rattly is a rattlesnake gifted with a jumping ability uncharacteristic of any rattlesnake I’m familiar with. Nevertheless, he reaches heights higher than Winky ever did. Squitter is a tarantula with four pairs of bitchin’ sneakers on each of his eight legs. He has the most interesting utility of all the animal buddies in that he can shoot webs as projectiles and thicker webs to use as platforms. He can access heights with his webs reaching up so far as the edge of what graphical space the game will allow (I’d also like to point out that tarantulas shoot webs from their feet, not their mouths. Realistically, Squitter would just be filling his shoes with webs). All of these features prove the animal buddies to be incredibly useful in more ways than just bicycles composed of flesh and blood and being vehicles for corny bonus stages.

It’s fantastic that the animal buddies have such a large presence in this game because they are on the frontlines almost as much as both Kongs. Many levels are designated entirely for playing as one of the animal buddies. Some of these animal buddy levels are also some of the hardest levels in the entire game. Slime Climb is a level with Rattly that utilizes his super jump move to the best of his ability, having the player aim his jumps accordingly to avoid the ascending slime hazard. Web Woods is the Squitter level with swathes of bottomless hazards so tense that it’s enough to make any player’s sphincter clench. Squawks even gets his boss battle all to himself, spitting nuts at a giant zinger like a multi-directional shooter. Animal Antics, one of the bonus levels in the game, is a gauntlet of using every animal buddy to the best of their abilities. It’s also widely considered to be the most difficult level in the game, so the developers definitely wanted the animal buddies to be considered playable characters with their own stakes in the game. One might argue that the heavy presence of the animal buddies is too distracting from the core gameplay, but I think it broadens the overall scope of the series. The animal buddies are supposed to give the jungle background of DKC some depth with their presence, exotic animals that make up the foreground of a jungle setting. Their more substantial roles here do a wonderful job at expanding on the “country” aspect of the series, making it seem as if Donkey Kong is not the center of the series.

If Donkey Kong was a playable character, he’d still be a fish out of water. The setting is no longer DK Isle with its comforting familiarity. Every inch of the mountainous Crocodile Isle is riddled with the influence of King K. Rool and his reptilian underlings. The Kongs are infiltrating enemy territory instead of Kremling influence slowly adulterating DK Isle as was the case for the first game. The atmosphere of Crocodile Isle is consistently more hostile than the tropical sunsets accompanied by the sounds of frogs and other noisy wildlife found on DK Isle. Opting out of the jungle setting of DKC1 may be another instance of the franchise losing itself again, but this was just another part of the “country expansion” directive the developers strived for. The overall setting of DKC2 may not be as cohesive as the jungle setting of the first game, but the individual levels are far more consistent with a particular theme. Gangplank Galleon is a pirate-themed level in which the sublevels run from the bow to the stern of a ship or an epic ascent to the mast. The kremlings walk on wooden legs or wear bandanas to add to the pirate theme. It’s a theme that’s certainly warranted, considering King K. Rool’s fight in the last game took place on a pirate ship. Maybe the kremlings are legitimate pirates, and Crocodile Isle is like their Skull Keep. Crocodile Cauldron is a diamond mine surrounded by lava. Krem Quay is a dingy swamp, and Gloomy Gulch is an eerie place engulfed by fog and strong autumn winds. The most interesting place is Krazy Kremland, an amusement park built by the Kremlings on the territory of zinger hives. The more contained theming of each level DKC2 makes them feel more consistent in tone. The first game would introduce a random jungle environment whenever it felt like it, no matter the place in the game. The jungle setting may have felt more appropriate for Donkey Kong, but repeating this for the sequels would have fatigued the series. The only setting that is guilty of randomly being implemented here in DKC2 is the bramble areas. They occur every so often on every level starting from Krem Quay, and showcase the staple barrel mechanic in every game of the series. The accompanying track for these levels, “Stickerbrush Symphony,” is maybe the best in the entire series, but the barrel mechanic of these levels is nauseating.

Progressing through these themed places will give the player a sense of the game’s difficulty curve compared to the first game. There are no longer any steep pikes in difficulty like “Mine Cart Madness,” and there are no unfair blindspots to catch the player off guard. Extra lives are also more plentiful due to the carnival bell feature at the end of each level with a range of prizes. Despite this, DKC2 is the hardest game in the SNES trilogy. Some of the levels later in this game made me want to nuke Crocodile Isle out of pure spite, but that’s the thing. The game has an incredibly smooth difficulty curve that naturally increases as the player progresses. The challenge comes from stacking upon what the player has already experienced without any cheaply implemented tactics. Gangplank Galleon almost acts as a tutorial level, comfortably nestling the player into the experience and netting more experienced players with a bevy of extra lives. Crocodile Cauldron is slightly harder than the preceding level, just as Krem Quay is slightly harder than the level that preceded it. In my experience, the game starts to ratchet up the difficulty around Krazy Kremland. It’s a tough but fair difficulty curve throughout. Unlike the first game, saving and traveling to another level costs coins, so the player can’t use saving and traveling to easier levels to farm for lives as a crutch. Surviving the onslaught present in DKC becomes more imperative as a result.

The bosses were definitely the biggest detriment to the first Donkey Kong Country. Except for the final fight against King K. Rool, each boss at the end of every level was a laughably pitiful experience. It saddens me that the bosses in DKC 2 are only slightly improved from those of the first game. Their designs are more interesting this time, as are the means to defeat them. Some standouts are Kleever in Crocodile Cauldron and the giant zinger boss with Squawks. However, I am not amused by Kudgel’s predictable attack patterns nor the incorporeal, reskinned Kreepy Crow. These fights are mostly an improvement on the first game’s bosses, which isn’t setting the bar too high. King K. Rool is once again the only truly formidable foe. His outfit is more extravagant than his animalistic nakedness from the first game. He’s fully adopted the pirate persona, wearing a regal captain’s uniform and donning the typical black pirate hat with a skull and crossbones. His fight is a multi-phased affair of carefully dodging erratic patterns of cannonballs and colored gasses that warp the player’s controls. It’s a fight that will make the player’s brow sweat, and he doesn’t even try to execute another cheap fakeout (although the first cannonball he shoots back at the player might catch someone off guard).

Once Donkey Kong is rescued, the adventure is far from over. Our favorite geriatric primate Cranky Kong will again be disappointed in the Kong’s performance, just like any crotchety old man is with their kin. The extra features needed to satisfy Cranky Kong and fully complete the game aren’t just a matter of finding misplaced collectibles. The Kongs must brave the challenges of the “Lost World,” the inner sanctum of Crocodile Isle, acting as a secret bonus realm like “Star Road” from Super Mario World. To access this bonus world, the Kongs have to pay Kudgel at a toll marked by a crocodile icon on the map of each sublevel. The player has to pay a whopping 15 kremcoins achieved from bonus stages in the main levels to access each level in the Lost World. Having to do this is the pinnacle of a completionist-level slog and isn’t much fun. There is an option to fight Kudgel, but it will just result in him batting you off with his giant club. Considering the tedium of collecting each Kremcoin, I’d rather just whoop his ass five different times. Each level in the lost world is fairly challenging, with a steady difficulty build increasing as the player progresses, similarly to the base game. Once you’ve completed every level, it ends with a more demanding version of the final boss fight against King K. Rool in another location. It’s hard to tell whether or not Cranky Kong will truly be satisfied with the player once they’ve endured each level of Lost World, but the player should certainly feel more than accomplished (and incredibly exhausted).

Ironically, the best game in the Donkey Kong Country series doesn’t even have Donkey Kong in it (his unorthodox role as a damsel in distress withstanding). The first game was made to give Nintendo’s first breakout star another breath of relevancy after lying dormant for so long. In the process, the developers created this immaculate, rural world to support the ape appropriately. The developers made an odd decision to expand on the world instead of expanding on accompanying Donkey Kong with different aspects. The developers knew the core of Donkey Kong Country was the graphical style, the challenging gameplay, and the strength of the different settings. Maintaining this core with Diddy Kong, Dixie Kong, and the animal buddies proved to be just as exceptional, improving on aspects lacking from the first game as a stellar sequel should. It’s also apt that I compare DKC2 with Super Mario World in the last paragraph to illustrate comparisons between two landmark SNES platformers. Declaring DKC2 as the best Donkey Kong Country game is not a controversial sentiment, but I consider Donkey Kong Country 2 to even surpass the ever-iconic Super Mario World in every aspect. Hell, Donkey Kong Country 2 might even be the greatest game on the SNES and the greatest 2D platformer of all time.