There are plenty of things to like about the third Donkey Kong Country game, and there are things that are kind of lame. I never liked Kiddy Kong as a protagonist, some of the levels were borderline mean and I think they took the collecting concept to new levels of tedium. Donkey Kong Land 3 takes more of a streamlined approach. This is actually one of the easiest Donkey Kong Land games I’ve played. It’s not a bad game, and in fact I had fun. But there are some problems I wish Rare would have addressed before release.

The biggest problem, as in DKL2, is with the graphics. You may recall my complaint regarding Donkey Kong Land 2 that the backgrounds and character sprites sometimes blended together, causing an annoyance. In Donkey Kong Land 3, the annoyance becomes an actual problem. Many a time did I fall off a ledge and other platform because I could barely determine what platform was an actual object in the stage as opposed to a piece of the background. The problem most frequently occurred in the waterfall levels. I suspect this would not be a problem if this were a Game Boy Color game, but unfortunately that isn’t the case.

Despite that admittedly big issue, I didn’t have a problem beating the game. It’s a stripped down version of Donkey Kong Country 3, with the same music, stage concepts and characters, but with brand new level design. There’s a different story, kind of, but again it pertains to Dixie Kong and Kiddy Kong looking for Krematoa, so they’re pretty similar. Of course, I didn’t collect everything in the few hours I took beating the game. There’s plenty to collect, such as DK coins, Bonus Coins, Bear Coins, and the KONG letters, and that’ll keep people busy who want to clear the game with 100%. Much like Donkey Kong Country 3, there’s also the Krematoa area for those to unlock if they collect enough DK coins, which will lead to more difficult stages and the true ending of the game.

I’ve come to the same conclusion with Donkey Kong Land 3 as I have with its predecessor. It’s a relatively fun game for a few hours, with tons of leeway for replay. The graphics were more annoying than DKL2, enough to impede gameplay, but in the end I still had fun with the game. It provides a few hours of enjoyable gameplay, and again it’s a nice trip down memory lane.