Appropros of nothing, but I just finished my first all KONG letters and puzzle pieces run of Tropical Freeze via new Funky Mode and it has slightly increased overall view of it. In hindsight I was a little hard on Sea Breeze Cove as the non-swimming oriented levels in the world (close to half of them) are actually quite strong. The pacing in the second half of the game in general is better paced than I recall from my last playthrough and I think I let the dubious impression of the longer deep-sea stages color my opinion of world 4 rather unfairly and it is a decent stretch of the game, with highs better than something like Caverns in Returns.
Speaking of DKCR, doing a recent playthrough of that does make me better value the strengths of TF all the more; with the mine cart and rocket barrel stages coming off as so much fairer and the bosses just feeling more organic than the ones in the former title. The returning stages in DK Island also hit a lot more thanks to experiencing them recently in Returns and thus appreciating the cool transformations Tropical Freeze did with them. I would say the 3DS/Switch bonus levels in Returns feel a bit stronger than those in TF, possibly because it feels like a nice summation of the whole game rather than just some additional tough levels.
Overall, it feels nice to have gotten closure on both Retro titles. I'll go back to them someday, but for now it feels like I've gotten an honest experience with the duology and can generally fully recognize the flaws they have while genuinely appreciating just how good they were away from the needless waggle of 2010 and the unfortunate context of the Wii U in 2014 (or the worry about DK's future circa 2022-2024). Just need another run through DKC3 before Bananza out and I think all the critical Country titles will have been recently finished.
