History YMMV / SpongebobSquarepantsBattleForBikiniBottom

* ScrappyMechanic: Whenever you encounter a new type of robot, an introductory cutscene plays that shows you what they do. However, these cutscenes are specific to the level the robot first appears in and does not take into account the player is able to play each level in any order they wish provided they have enough golden spatulas. This means you can encounter robots before you've officially been introduced to them, and the introductory cutscenes will still play even if you've already seen that robot in a different level.

** Zigzagged with the Cruise Bubble. Yes, it can deal impressive damage to pretty much anything from a fair distance away. Yes, you have infinite ammo for it. Yes, it trivializes the more annoying tikis like Whispers and Stones. But you get it [[LastDiscMagic at the tail end of the game]], and you'll be dealing with situations that don't just call for it but ''necessitate'' it while keeping you in danger through one way or another.

* SugarWiki/VisualEffectsOfAwesome: The developers took good advantage of [[UsefulNotes/{{GameEngine}} Unreal Engine 4]], and it definitely shows. The environments look as if they came straight from the show, everything is vibrant and colorful, and the character models are very expressive and have nice and fluid animation. The game overall looks ''beautiful'', and it's clear the artists and modelers gave it their all.

* UnintentionalUncannyValley: The robot doppelgangers' designs have been modified from the original to invoke this, with [=SpongeBot SteelPants=] getting it the worst, now having clear blue domes for eyes and a row of bottom teeth that look unsettling on [=SpongeBob's=] design.

* ThatOneBoss: Robot Patrick, the boss of the second area, is a ''steep'' difficulty curve from Robot Sandy. In order to attack him, you must wait until he becomes dizzy and falls over after spinning around. During this time, he flings toxic goo all over the field, which is deceptively hard to dodge thanks to the goo having no set pattern of where it lands, on top of being difficult to see. His second phase involves using Sandy to spawn boxes to reach him, and it can be difficult to hit him since falling into the goo is an instant death, which forces you to start from the beginning of the phase. His third phase is the worst: you must hit him with the bubble bowl as the entire arena is flooded, making him too far out for Spongebob to hit. Problem is, his hitbox is extremely small, meaning you have to be incredibly precise with your aim, and the bubble bowl will immediately disappear if it touches the goo. On top of this, most of the time he'll fall over in front of one of the conveyor belts on the field, meaning you have to make a precise aim with the bubble bowl while on top of a moving platform that will drop you into goo if you take too long. Oh, and if you take too long to hit the boss? He'll get back up and you'll have to wait for him to go through his attack cycle ''again''. ''Rehydrated'' makes the third phase easier by increasing his hitbox size and having the bubble bowl roll along the goo's surface rather than immediately disappearing in exchange for making the second phase more difficult.

* UnderusedGameMechanic: Picking up and throwing robots, which Patrick can do by stunning them with a ground pound. Unfortunately, this only applies to larger robots, as smaller ones will simply be defeated by the shockwave, and of the robots than can be stunned, only Ham-mers and G-loves can actually be picked up and thrown. The ability itself is only required for two spatulas in Jellyfish Fields, and even then, they can be completed with Spongebob once he unlocks his new abilities later in the game. It's not even practical combat-wise as it's much easier to simply kill robots while they're down, not to mention the time it takes to pick them up makes it more likely you'll take damage from something else.

** Even the PC port itself, despite the lack of graphics settings[[note]]though one could just edit the game's ini files to change them[[/note]] aside from resolution, belongs to this as well, due to it being surprisingly well-optimized, running at 60 frames per second even on low-end or older configurations such as dual-core CPU and budget graphics card like Nvidia Geforce GT 1030.

* BestBossEver: The FinalBoss, [[spoiler:[=SpongeBot SteelPants=],]] in no small part thanks to being rather challenging, having a wide array of attacks, not to mention its SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic, of course.
* BestLevelEver: Spongebob's Dream is highly regarded for its creative level design, surreal music and visuals, and high but fair difficulty. Sandy's Dream in particular is praised due to everything Sandy-related being in there, from crunchy nuts to Texas, as well as the boasting the biggest slide in the game.

* WTHCastingAgency: In spite of the rest of the cast reprising their roles for the game, Mr. Krabs and Mermaid Man are given TheOtherDarrin treatment, and it's ''very'' obvious. This is slightly excusable: Creator/ClancyBrown and Creator/ErnestBorgnine are well-known Hollywood actors, and thus could’ve had a harder time getting their schedules cleared than the most of the ''[=SpongeBob=]'' voice cast, who are best (if not only) known as voice actors. At the very least, though, they could have found better sound-alikes. The fact that Clancy Brown appears in both the [[VideoGame/SpongeBobSquarePantsRevengeOfTheFlyingDutchman previous game]] ''and'' the [[VideoGame/TheSpongeBobMovieGame next game]] makes his absence here even more noticeable.

* PortingDisaster: The initial release of the Nintendo Switch version was seen as this, due to having several framerate issues, a rather low resolution, and severe texture streaming problems. Patches were released to address most, if not all of these issues.

* HilariousInHindsight: At the start of the game, [=SpongeBob=] only thinks the events of the plot came about because he [[BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor wished for it]]. In ''VideoGame/SpongebobSquarepantsTheCosmicShake'', [=SpongeBob=] genuinely ''is'' responsible for its plot, thanks to the overuse of wishes with magic bath soap.

** [[EliteMook Slick]]: An enemy you meet late in the game and is easily the toughest enemy in the game. To begin with, he's protected by an oil shield, and even after ''that'' is destroyed, he needs three more hits to be taken down, not to mention that the shield will respawn after a few seconds. His penchant for spitting oil at you, which can impede your traction if it lands on the ground, only makes him more irritating.
** [[MookMaker Arf]] & Arf-Dawg: Another irritatingly tough mook, Arf is a cowboy robot that attacks from a long distance, sending exploding dog-robots at you. The only safe way to attack him is with the Bubble Bowl, as his dawgs will mow your health down well before you can reach him, and he takes more than one hit to take down (where he flies away to a new location per hit landed on him), and he will swing his doghouse at you if you get too close. While the cruise bubble can kill him in one hit, using it makes you an easy target for his dawgs.

* AuthorsSavingThrow:
** Many early builds of the game contained some odd elements, most notably a camera that panned down every time a character jumped. Later builds show this was fixed, thanks to speedrunner [=SHiFT=] manually programming a camera that was more faithful to the original.
** The original German and French dubs of ''Battle for Bikini Bottom'' had none of the original voice actors from the respective dubs of the show reprise their roles. Purple Lamp made it a point to get redubs of the game for these two languages made with as many surviving voice actors of the show as possible (it helps that they're based in Austria, a German-speaking country).
** To rectify a common complaint from players about the boss fights in the original game being too sluggish and drawn out (especially for speedrunners where certain bosses don't have the debug skip tactic to fall back on), boss attack patterns in the remake have been sped up to make them go at a much quicker pace. This also has the side effect of giving them a genuine threat level that wasn't truly present in the original, especially with Robo-Sandy.
** The [=SpongeBall=] power-up has been tweaked to go much faster, turn more sharply, and you can now jump with it, alleviating complaints of it being hard to control and impractical to use in the original game.
** Dialogues are now entirely skippable, ensuring that speedrunners or those who just want to move on don't have to mash the X/A buttons over and over again to get to the end.
** In the original game, the spike traps in Jellyfish Caves were notorious for popping out at random intervals with no warning and little time to react, leading to some cheap deaths for newer players. The remake fixes this by giving the spike traps a set pattern cycle that is easy to anticipate, and they telegraph their presence before popping out.
** The Nintendo Switch version was noted to have a rather low resolution and framerate issues at launch. The resolution was fixed with the 1.0.2 patch, and the rest of the most glaring glitches in the port (most notably, texture streaming issues in Sand Mountain that affected the rest of the game if the area is exited) would be fixed with the 1.0.5 patch, alongside the framerate becoming ''much'' smoother.
** After the theater was criticized for replacing the original game's beloved concept art with in-game screenshots, a patch would replace said screenshots with brand-new, remake-exclusive concept art.
** Kelp Cave isn't nearly as darkly lit in ''Rehydrated''.

* TierInducedScrappy: Patrick, in the "bad gameplay" way. While [=SpongeBob=] has a wide arsenal of versatile abilities to use and Sandy has excellent platforming abilities, Patrick is considered gimmicky due to his moveset being mostly focused on throwing things. His default attack (a belly bump) has a small range and hitbox, making it impractical to use, and Patrick is the only character to lack any jump assists like [=SpongeBob=]'s spin stall and Sandy's lasso glide, which makes him a poor choice for platforming in general. His only useful ability is his GroundPound attack; a ShockwaveStomp that insta-kills smaller robots and stuns larger ones (which makes the latter able to be picked up and thrown), but many players prefer to opt for the simple solution of just killing them while they're down. It doesn't help that most of the levels that Patrick's playable in either barely utilize his abilities much (most notably the Mermalair) or utilize them in the worst ways possible (like the Kelp Forest), which makes most players play as [=SpongeBob=], who can clear obstacles where Patrick isn't needed. ''Rehydrated'' fixes this by giving Patrick's belly attack a larger hitbox and can be used in the air, which also gives him some forward momentum to help with platforming.

** Rock Bottom is considered this to some, due to its confusing layout making it difficult to tell where to go at times, surprisingly difficult platforming and timing puzzles in the Museum and Trench of Advanced Darkness, and introducing [[Demonic Spiders Sleepy Time bots.]] It's also very long.

* ThatOneLevel: [[TheLostWoods Kelp Forest.]] The entire level is comprised of dimly lit areas, making it hard to see where you're going. Every section of the level has its own reason for difficulty/tediousness: the Swamp's sprawling islands and beanstalks have long and cryptic routes to take; the Cave's extensive use of both [=SpongeBob=] and Patrick in its puzzles, which means many long and menial trips back to the signpost at the beginning of the cave (even with the shortcut later on); and the Vine's difficult slide sections with sharp turns, tight jumps, and oodles of pits to fall in.

* TierInducedScrappy: Patrick, in the "bad gameplay" way. While [=SpongeBob=] has a wide arsenal of versatile abilities to use and Sandy has excellent platforming abilities, Patrick is considered gimmicky due to his moveset being mostly focused on throwing things. His default attack (a belly bump) has a small range and hitbox, making it impractical to use, and Patrick is the only character to lack any jump assists like [=SpongeBob=]'s spin stall and Sandy's lasso glide, which makes him a poor choice for platforming in general. His only useful ability is his GroundPound attack; a ShockwaveStomp that insta-kills smaller robots and stuns larger ones (which makes the latter able to be picked up and thrown), but many players prefer to opt for the simple solution of just killing them while they're down. It doesn't help that most of the levels that Patrick's playable in either barely utilize his abilities much or utilize them in the worst ways possible (like the Kelp Forest), which makes most players play as [=SpongeBob=], who can clear obstacles where Patrick isn't needed. ''Rehydrated'' fixes this by giving Patrick's belly attack a larger hitbox and can be used in the air, which also gives him some forward momentum to help with platforming.

* BestLevelEver: The Sandy section of [=SpongeBob=]'s Dream. Everything Sandy-related is in there, from crunchy nuts to Texas.

** To quite a few, Robo-Patrick’s changes from boss mechanic to appearance. Robo-Patrick’s new design, [[BrokenBase while some people like it for its more mechanical design]], loses its NightmareFuel charm, his spin animation is slower and sporadic, and his boss battle is easier.[[note]]The ice cream has a red indicator showing where it lands and his [[AnIcePerson ice breath]] doesn’t sweep. At the same time, when he gets dizzy, he goes to the center of the arena instead of drops where he stood, making [[AttackItsWeakpoint hitting his back]] a pain to most. One benefit is the ice cream from Robo-Patrick’s spin attack are prone to reach the platforms more.[[/note]]

* WereStillRelevantDammit: Some people think that [=SpongeBob=] and Patrick's new JawDrop poses they do as idle animations (as well as [=SpongeBob=] doing it when he says "Oh my gosh! You're bald!"), which hearkens back to ''WesternAnimation/TheSpongeBobSquarePantsMovie'', are blatantly shoehorned in to pander to the meme crowd, considering how much of a MemeticMutation they became. There's been a debate among fans whether the pose is just a simple ShoutOut and CallForward to the franchise, or just something added in for the sake of having people WatchItForTheMeme.
** One of the new idle animations for [=SpongeBob=] references his chicken-clucking face from "Little Yellow Book", better known as "Mocking [=SpongeBob=]" and it's been getting a similar reaction.
** A fish with headphones dabs in Jellyfish Fields. Reaction has been mixed with some finding it amusing and others, not so much.

* EightPointEight: Not long after gaming review outlets received review copies of the remake, IGN gave the game a 5/10 score and called it "Mediocre", [=GameSpot=] gave an even worse score of 2/10, and Metacritic gave a Metascore of 66 to 70 depending on the platform. In all these cases, their reviews cited that the problems with the remake stem from it being "too faithful" to a game from an "antiquated genre" and failing to live up to even modern remakes like the ''VideoGame/CrashBandicootNSaneTrilogy'' and the ''VideoGame/SpyroReignitedTrilogy''. Many fans criticized their reviews for being unfair and not giving the game a chance, especially since speedrunner [=SHiFT=] playtested the game during development and streamed it before release day, saying that, while the game does have a few bugs (with some of them later being patched out), it still functions as a solid 3D platformer like the original. Even THQ Nordic themselves wade in by releasing an [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyUi_OTchoY accolades trailer]] showcasing only the fair and positive review scores from other sites, and when they brought up Metacritic, they only showed the user score rather than the critic score.
** [=GameSpot=] especially has gotten a serious amount of flak from fans due to the reviewer's criticism of the Mermalair ball puzzle, particularly when [=SpongeBob=] has to stand on a button to open a gate and use the Bubble Bowl to hit the button behind the gate while it's open. The reviewer stated that [=SpongeBob=]'s wind-up animation, which moves him forward, made this puzzle extremely difficult -- and many proceeded to point out that all he had to do was ''move back a little to compensate for it.'' Not to mention, as [[ThatOneSidequest truly difficult]] as that Golden Spatula is to get, it isn't even mandatory for beating the game anyway.

* UncannyValley: The robot doppelgangers' designs have been modified from the original to invoke this, with [=SpongeBot SteelPants=] getting it the worst, now having clear blue domes for eyes and a row of bottom teeth that look unsettling on [=SpongeBob's=] design.