One of the most memorable games I have ever played!
I bought this game using my allowance when I was young, maybe in grade 4 or 5 (right about the time the game first came out), but I was away from home when I bought it so I could not play it immediately. I remember pouring over the instruction book countless times on the car ride home, waiting with a huge amount of built-up excitement. Popping the game in to find that it met all my expectations and more was admittedly one of the most exciting things I have ever experienced in the world of video games. This was the first game I bought without renting it or playing it at a friends house first, so it was already a bit of a legacy!
The graphics were so very very nice at the time, and to this day it is still a very pretty game. 3D graphics were just so revolutionary and so cool back then, that any 3D game out had "good" graphics. But BK was exceptional. The game is very colorful, arguably the most colorful N64 game out there, and was alot of fun to play because of that. A very easy to look at game, BK was, and still is, a top-rate game, graphically speaking.
The story was unique, and set up some pretty fun levels of play. The characters were also very unique; Nintendo has a tendancy to do that. The level designs were perfectly laid out, very colorful, and alot of fun to discover. The antagonist, Grunty, was a defined character, and it was always fun to learn new things about her from her twin "good" sister.
The sounds were very good, with the exception of speech. In-game sounds were good, like spitting eggs out of Kazooie's mouth (or other places), doing a back-flip, or getting hit by a giant orange. The musical score was great; one of the most addicting, fun scores to date. I still listen to a few songs. The church from Mad Monster Mansion was a classic. The speaking was limited to a bunch of pointless, repetitive sounds, but those Nintendo cartridges couldn't afford to sacrifice gameplay in order to have more believable speech, so it was a necessary cut. Overall, sound was good.
Gameplay was awesome, because the moves were easy to learn, yet useful in so many different situations. The game is not overly hard in any area, although I admit I had to replay the final boss fight in the end once or twice. As for replay value, because there is not a huge amount of "secrets; to be found in the game, you can play through it once and be satisfied. Of course, I have played through it probably three times, and have collected every jigsaw piece, and ever musical note, and so-on, but I enjoy doing that. I probably replayed it just to listen to the music again! (Actually, for any of you who have played the game, I still do not know what the Ice Key is or does...)
Overall, the game is a masterpiece, and I wish games today would produce the same excitement deep inside me than this particular one did. Unfortunately, no such modern game exists, so I will stick to saying that BK is a classic, not to be missed by anyone who is a fan of adventure, a fan of fun characters, a fan of Nintendo, oh heck, a fan of video games period! BK earns the 9.8/10 that I gave it!