When the difficulty ramped up, I was ready for it, and it was enough to stay challenging but not be frustrating. The platforming was pretty consistently fun, and the game had a difficulty curve that felt very natural. The platforming was really fun, especially in some of the levels (Bopopolis, Wing Ding, and Cliffside Slide are some of my favorites, along with all the minecart levels.) Pros: It has a very DKC-esque feel to a lot of the platforming in the game - picky but not pixel-perfect, difficult but not cheap (if you messed up, it's because you messed up, not because the game suddenly decided to throw something at you that you had no chance of anticipating) and with fairly constant forward motion (not a lot of planning jumps, just keep moving) which is part of what I like so much about the original DKC games. Having played it now (all the way through, all the Kong letters, all the puzzle pieces, all the Kong levels, just haven't beaten every level on Hard yet), I would say it still doesn't live up to the DKC games for me, but it was really fun (I said when I started it that I would only go back and collect all the puzzle pieces if it was fun enough to merit it, and it was! Not sure yet if Hard Mode is fun enough to merit finishing, though it's mostly just tedious so far.) So, I love the Donkey Kong Country games - DKC 1 and 2 are among my top 5 favorite games of all time - but I really didn't like Donkey Kong Country Returns, despite the fact that I was pretty excited to play it, so I've put off trying Tropical Freeze for a long time. I can't decide between giving this 3 or 4 stars.

Donkey kong tropical freeze bopopolis