Yooka Laylee playthrough log part 7 (99.3% completed)

- Capital Cashino 2 -
Nothing special about any of these expanded sections, just busywork... found all the remaining pagies and ghosts easily... wow, these were all easy to find and took no time at all...
At least, that's what I thought... After going through all of the obvious expanded sections and then exchanging my tokens for pagies, I found there's still 6 pagies worth of tokes left in this level that I haven't found yet, somehow... and there's still that health extender I haven't found yet...
oh, there is that one area I still couldn't figure out how to get into. I need to find a bomb plant somewhere to destroy the blocks in the way, but I haven't seen one...
this is crazy. I'm already resorting to a guide for the last 6 pagies... found out you need to use the helicopter to break those blocks, and also use it to break all of the "out of order" slot machines to steal the tokens inside them... and also the health extender is hidden way up above the central fountain, below the chandelier.

breaking into the bank using invisibility, and deflecting the lasers to open doors, this part is pretty cool...
while flying around destroying all the slot machines, I managed to find the last 6 tokens I needed.

but getting into here is kind of tricky. it's another one of those laser switch puzzles.. at first I was running out of energy before being able to hit all the switches in time, but then I learned how to do it quickly by facing away from the switch when turning invisible, and then come out of invisibility until the next switch to preserve energy.
wait, what... oh no! that was only 5 tokens. I'm still missing exactly 1 token. nooooooo!

luckily, the only 1 that I missed was this

Yooka Laylee playthrough log part 6

- Moodymaze Marsh 2 -
most of the new stuff that opened up is some tricky platforming with tongue lash (hookshot), but it can be completely trivialized by the flight ability. although there's this one rolling platforming race section that flying doesn't help with, it's kinda challenging.
that british skeleton girl is back now, and this time is actually not captured and being cooked, and instead wants us to get a gem for her. uh... this is a REALLY pointless section. it's just a foggy room with nothing in it except ice cubes you have to break with the sonar splosion.. and at the end is the gem. pretty easy so far...

aaaaaaaah! wtf
this gardening minigame.. this is undoubtedly the hardest part of the entire game. you have to push some round seeds into the soft dirt holes. it's REALLY finicky and hard to control.. it's also on a timer, and if the time runs out you gotta go back and get a new seed and start over. it's also REALLY easy to get the seed stuck on the side or corner of a fence or something. also there are thorny plants that not only hurt if you run into them but if the seed runs into them it gets destroyed and you have to start over... at least the camera is fixed to an overhead view so it's easy to see everything.
the first 2 seeds took me a few tries, and I thought that was it but there's actually a 3rd seed and hole, and this one is a BITCH. look at this shit

...
wind? did they really need to add WIND to this? this is madness... this is incredibly frustrating. it's like, purposefully designed to be as frustrating as possible. it requires a ton of precision to get the seed through this obstacle

Yooka Laylee playthrough log part 5

I found one other place I haven't been to yet in Hivory Towers.. that one toxic sludge tunnel where you need protection from the air to get through it. That's probably one of the last things I need to do in the hub world still... but I haven't figured it out yet. I have all the moves already, so there must be something I'm missing...

- Tribalstack Tropics 2 -
Finally expanded this first level. now I can try and 100% complete it. got the hungry ghost and shy ghost that I missed earlier...

Inside the Monument... omg this place is so frustrating... it's a confusing maze filled with laser turret enemies all over the place, and some of them are on slopes... it's really easy to run out of energy and start getting clobbered by lasers... it wasn't too hard though, beat it on the 2nd try. After that it plops me out on a higher part of this tower... it's like the tallest monument in the level... now I'm exploring around this tower not really knowing where I'm going... found the last ghost, the pink one... I must say having flight power makes navigating this world so much easier... I don't have to worry about falling off and having to remember out how I got up to the high places anymore.

Found Nimbo, the giant cloud. He says he can make water appear in the level, but he needs help releasing it.. it's stupidly easy, you just gotta grab a water plant and shoot water at him. then he pours water out and creates a waterfall and rainbow and fills up the river down below, the one you raised the small cloud guy on before...

On the roof of where the snake is, there's a character named planker that wants me to clean up all the rubbish flying around through the air... okay this is silly... there's just a bunch of pieces of paper flying around in the wind, but only one of them is a pagie that you need to collect. I actually went and collected all of them just to see what would happen. he just says "About time. I suppose you did an alright job. Try not to take as long next month, ok?"

Explored the outside of the monument tower... this place is really confusing.. a bunch of doors that plop you out at a random other part of the tower..

Yooka Laylee playthrough log part 4

- Galleon Galaxy 1 -

First thing I noticed about this level is it's very heavy on the purple and blue... also it seems to be made up of a bunch of small islands with a ton of uninhabitable water that hurts you in between. This level definitely expects you to make use of your recently acquired flight ability.
Flying is a bit awkward in this game. I guess it's intentional though, because in exchange for being able to fly anywhere, they made controlling where you go with it more challenging.
By now, I've learned this game's rule about Trowzers always being in the most direct path from where you start the level. I found him right away this time, and got the sonar shield ability. It's like the wonderwing ability from BK, except it doesn't use up its own special collectible resource, instead it just uses up energy.
I like that I've never been low on quills throughout the entire game, so I've always been able to buy every available move as soon as I meet Trowzers.

This level has a lot of blue forcefields that get in your way, and the sonar shield is useful for getting passed them easily..
wtf, I found the transformation device, but Dr. Puzz is gone...
then I went up to the top of a glass tube lighthouse and activated the light, which enabled Dr. Puzz to find her way here. also that cutscene conveniently showed the location of this world's mollycool... this'll be the last transformation in the game I believe...

hmm... I found a room called "Lunar Lockup" where I need to activate 3 switches to unlock a pagie.. it gives you access to like every single temporary lizard gulp power... also the hungry ghost was in this room, and I finally figured out that you have to shoot a projectile at the hungry ghost in order to collect it. now I know how to get all of the ghost writers... I figured out my way to 2 of the switches in this room but the 3rd one has me stumped. there's a red thunder symbol on a pad and an unbreakable wall... but there's no way to get a thunder elemental as far as I know... maybe I have to come back here with the transformation.
...nope, that's not it.

Yooka Laylee playthrough log part 3

- Moodymaze Marsh 1 -

it's some dark swamp/forest area, with some underwater passages and mushrooms everywhere..
I met several shopping cart characters... one of them challenges me to get through this death maze where a wall of electricity chases you... it's not hard at all especially because it restarts you right outside the maze if you die. another cart character wants me to find a way to destroy all of the mushrooms in the mushroom patch, they grow back if you do it the normal way so I dunno.

found Trowsers under a mushroom.. spent all the quills I had to get the tongue grapple move and sonar blast (a more powerful version of the sonar attack that can break windows)... that's before collecting most of the quills in this level though. figured out the sonar blast is how you destroy the mushroom patch..
still no invisibility huh...

wow, I climbed up to the top of the Pumping Plant building and found what looks like a mumbo token. Yooka says this is pirate treasure, and that there might be more to find in other worlds... hmm, is this like this game's stop n swap thing?

some of the water here is all muddy and going in it hurts you.. there's some log platforming over this muddy water.. the platforms sink if you stand on them too long... one of the shopping cart characters tells me how to activate the switches that clean the water and make it swimmable.. the tongue grapple platforming is kinda fun. it seemed a little unreliable at first, until I realized you can't use it while in the middle of a Laylee glide or spring jump.
Now there's a few more underwater sections available.. and some underwater thorns I don't know what to do with yet... found the mollycool underwater.
Dr. Puzz turns me into a shoal of fish, and I can finally attack the jellyfish enemies. I can also go through those underwater vines.. found a couple more pagies using that form, one of them was given by some sunken shopping cart.

Found some big box with a tongue grapple point on it, but I'm not strong enough to move the box at all.. do I need to find some weight element or something? I eventually managed to find the play coin in this world, and got the 2 rextro pagies.. then I went to another island area I hadn't been to before...

Yooka Laylee playthrough log part 2

- Glitterglaze Glacier 1 -

This place is also very confusing, like the 1st level.. except this level has several doorways that lead through some cave to an upper section of the level.. It feels very big and intimidating at first, but it's actually not that hard to find my way around once I spent a couple hours here... I can find the squid girl and trowzers very easily since they are at the bottom sections where the big lake is, and from there I can easily get to each of the upper sections and the various caves.

Found a minecart character named Kartos.. played his minigame for a pagie.. it's basically just a sidescrolling minecart section where you have to collect a certain number of gems and avoid enemies. you can also shoot bullets out of the cart.. the controls for this feel kinda sloppy and nowhere near as good as the DKC games. at least the music is good.

I got the spring jump move and a move that lets you slurp certain items to gain an elemental status.. so for example this one cold area, I needed to slurp some fire to become warm to get through it, and then light all the torches with my fire status to make the place warm. In the upper section after this part, I found that british skeleton girl and her boiling pot friend again.. and fought some more enemies to get a pagie from her.

The squid girl here transforms you into a snow plough once you find this level's mollycool. This form is only used to destroy certain piles of snow that have hat items underneath them, and they need to be returned to the various snowman characters around the level that are missing their hats. I managed to find and return all the hats to all the snowmen I could find, but didn't get anything for it.. I'm guessing there will be more of them in the expanded version.

Found an underwater cave that leads to a dark platforming section. you can use the glowy plants to make yourself glow for some extra visibility, but it's not really required. I found this section pretty easy, it's all about learning to control your speed in rolling mode so that you have enough precision to not fall off but also don't go slow enough to run out of energy.

Yooka Laylee playthrough log part 1

Played for 3 hours so far... Went through some of the first level and some of the hub world, I got 11 pagies and 115 quills. I was kinda taking my time at first, just enjoying the music and getting used to the controls. I didn't bother expanding the 1st world yet. I'd rather come back to the expanded version of each world later after I've been to every world once.

General non-spoiler thoughts:
The first level of the game already feels more confusing than the early levels of Banjo-Tooie were. I'm finding it kinda hard to recognize where I've been in the level cuz there's not many unique landmarks to go off of.
Other than that, I really like the controls. I like how easy it is to control your speed while rolling, even though the physics of it don't make much sense. You can even stop while rolling up a slope.
The music and writing are great, just as good as Banjo-Kazooie and Tooie in those aspects. Maybe even better.
The graphics look really nice. Playing the superior PC version of course and turned the settings to max, and still getting super smooth framerate. The hub world looks really cool and I like all the little details in the environments, like the glass tubes with pieces of paper getting sucked in through them.

The hub world is fairly simple so far. I've found 3 of the ...10 pagies there are to find in the hub world just by exploring everywhere I can get to at this point.
Unlike in BK, it seems most of the pagies make you solve a puzzle or do a fetch quest in order to collect them. There aren't many that are just sitting out in the open.
Also unlike in BT, the worlds and hub don't have any warp pads. but I guess it doesn't matter much since your character moves a lot faster in this. Going from one side of the first world to the other doesn't take much time at all.
It seems at first like there's no fall damage in this game.. it's weird.. maybe there is but it's a lot more lenient with how much distance you can fall before you take damage.

Recap of my playthrough:

- Hivory Tower 1 -
I wandered around a bit before going to the snake character that teaches you the basic attack move. I was surprised that there's only one move to learn in the first area of the game. Normally in the Banjo games, the first area of the game is a big optional tutorial where you learn several moves and get to practice using them. This game's first area, there's nothing to do except get the attack move from Trowsers and then open the chests that are scattered around and grab a few quills, to open the way into Hivory Tower, where the magic book flew off to. It seems like there's probably more things to do in this first area later on, but I dunno.