YMMV / Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time

• Adorkable: Again, Crash and Coco with their redesigns making them come off as cuter than before, with multiple skins making them look dorkier than ever before. Coco especially in her idle animations (one of them has her holding her ponytail and then getting the idea, which she writes in her laptop).
• Accidental Innuendo: The first Quantum Mask you meet is called Lani-Loli. Granted, his name makes sense if you know what they were going for, but to some who don't, his name instead comes off as an Unfortunate Name.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • How legitimate was Cortex's temporary Heel–Face Turn? While one might easily assume he's playing a bit, thanks to his history when working on a more heroic side, he has his moments as the story progresses, feeling genuinely upset when Coco calls him a bad guy, privately wondering if 'good guys' have volcano lairs in his first playable level, and staying with the group throughout Neon City. Most notable to this is that, despite losing to Crash and being sent to the end of the universe... Cortex is entirely content to stay there, as opposed to his usual anger and swears of revenge. This brings up the question of what exactly his original plan to break out of the endless cycle of fighting was: was he attempting to trick Crash to deal with him later, was he legitimately turning good, with his Chronic Backstabbing Disorder tendencies getting the better of him in the end, or was it a combination of both, with him Becoming the Mask as time progressed, or with him feeling the other heroes weren't treating him well enough to stick around?
  • There is some debate over whether the Dingodile present in the game is the same one from Warped or is one from an alternate universe, specifically Tawna's, since his Heel–Face Turn goes completely unexplained. He also comes from the Mosquito Marsh dimension, which includes the level Off Beat, which is definitely one of the more "out there" levels in terms of design, and is strange to think takes place in the mainline dimension. He seems to recognize Crash and Coco when they meet in Oxide's ship, but he also met Tawna prior to meeting them, and she proclaims that he's with her, and that she gave him a rundown on what's been going on with the dimensions. Coco also makes a comment that "our" bad guy has changed too, referring to Cortex, which is strangely worded since Dingodile is technically "their" bad guy as well.
• Awesome Art:
  • As Toys For Bob worked on the Spyro Reignited Trilogy, this comes as no surprise. But seeing it now applied to Crash in an original game made by them is a sight to behold — from the more streamlined but nonetheless appealing designs, the lush, intricate backgrounds, to the bouncy and personality-fueled character animation, this is arguably the best a Crash game has ever looked yet.
  • Several levels pay a huge amount of attention to background details, making all the environments look extremely lively and colourful. Even the minor background props like the frogs in the first level or the tiny ghost pepper people in "Give it a Spin" have their own detailed animations.
  • Crash Landed takes place on Bermugula, the planet Oxide mentioned in one of his insults back in ''CTR'', and is filled to the brim with an array of surreal environments and alien enemies unlike anything else in the game — every last one being absolutely beautiful.
  • While it can vary from stage to stage, the N. Verted levels not only reverse the stages but also put a new art style or filter over the stages, these can range from a glare, to what resembles cave paintings, to a comic book style. One notable instance has the stage in monochrome while color erupts from Crash and Coco whenever they use their spin attacks.
• Awesome Music:
  • The first boss, N. Gin, comes with an awesome and incredibly catchy rock remix to his theme from the second game.
  • So does the battle against N. Tropys, which uses part of the original theme from the third game and mixes it up with fast-paced electronic music that greatly fits the high-stakes space battle that will really test your skill.
  • Dingodile's first level isn't bad either, creating a great sense of being in a bayou with its banjo and tuba.
  • The jazzy and upbeat carnival music from "Off Beat", especially the rail riding part, where it becomes even more energetic.
  • "Stay Frosty" samples elements from Cortex's theme and Snow Go from Crash 2 into a new track, sounding both new and nostalgic at the same time.
• Badass Decay: Some characters have gotten their bumbling qualities elevated in this game to accommodate other characters losing some of theirs and getting a role upgrade:
  • Oxide is reduced to an abused lackey for the now Darker and Edgier N. Tropy and his alternate universe counterpart, after serving as the Big Bad for Crash Team Racing and, despite his comically Serious Business motivation, was considered a threat to anyone on Earth (with amusingly even N. Tropy himself boasting his greater threat level in Time Trial mode).
  • Crash, while maintaining the same prowess in gameplay, consistently plays Plucky Comic Relief for the rest of the cast in story, and is regularly annoying or outshone by his now far more competent sister. Granted, Crash was always a goofball, but only one of many and in some cases held the Smart Ball. To punctuate this, nearly all of Coco's idiosyncrasies from previous games, such as being a Failures on Ice, her selfie affinity, and lower patience for gameplay punishment, have been passed over to Crash in this game to make them a more clear cut Right Way/Wrong Way Pair.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Alternate Tawna. For those who like her, she is a fun reimagining of a previously neglected character, who brings more emotion and depth to the story, and is also welcomed as another prominent female character. For those who dislike her, she is an unfunny Creator's Pet with an overly serious backstory, who checks off every "Strong Female Character" cliche in the book without checking off enough as a Crash Bandicoot character. It didn't help that the original Tawna was just starting to get some love within the series, making the act of demoting her again for a different counterpart more contentious.
  • Coco's revised characterisation into Crash's Superior Successor is also divisive. Some like her being toned back down to her Straight Man persona of the original games and found her post-Naughty Dog characterisation too obnoxious and incompetent, while some dislike her overly flawless character and how much she supercedes Crash as the main protagonist, believing giving Coco flaws was needed to balance her out as she became just as physically capable as Crash and thus no longer an even Brains and Brawn unit (not to mention enjoyed the rarity of having a female character that didn't shirk in silly behaviour and could be as buffoonish as the boys). Some also believe her more snide and impatient behaviour towards Crash makes their dynamic too mean spirited, reducing Crash to a Straw Loser (compared to previous games, where they had a more playful bond and most times Coco acted stuck-up usually led to a karmic role reversal) while some believe it makes their sibling dynamic more realistic and funny.
• Best Boss Ever:
  • The first boss level of the game, Stage Dive, is an immensely fun one. You take on N.Gin, who is in a giant drum-playing mech, dodging an onslaught of projectiles being thrown at you while spinning Crazed Kids back at his speakers to immobilize him, then rushing up to the stage and giving him a big old whack to the cockpit. His theme is also a real banger, and one of the best tracks in the game. And he's only the first boss!
  • The first battle against Cortex also qualifies. He starts off simple by firing a barrage of easy-to-dodge missiles at you, but with each hit you land on him, his attack patterns become more aggressive and difficult to dodge, to the point where it's a literal Bullet Hell. His remixed theme that plays during the fight is amazing as well, and you'll feel like an absolute unit should you beat him without dying once. Bonus points if you did so without using Kupuna-Wa.
  • Even though the N. Tropys have often been seen as an Anti-Climax Boss, there's no denying that the build-up to the battle, along with the atmosphere and the music of the fight itself are simply jaw-dropping. It's also one of the few levels where you utilize the powers of all of the Quantum Masks, and that in itself is something to behold.
  • The final boss, a rematch with Dr. Cortex, is a fast-paced and incredibly fun battle, and a satisfying way to cap off the adventure. In this battle, he steals all of the Quantum Masks and uses their power against you, from phase-shifting the battlefield, flipping the whole screen to disorient you, as well manipulating time to send you into the bottomless pit below, among other things.
• Best Level Ever:
  • The Flashback Tapes as a whole. Extreme difficulty aside, the running commentary from the scientists provides a lot of insight into Crash and Coco's creation, which has proven popular enough with fans that they hope the format will be used for the other mutants (such as Dingodile) in future mainline games.
  • "Off Beat", a New Orleans themed level full of colourful obstacles and enemies that move to the beat of the music, is a common favourite.
  • Despite its status as That One Level, "Crash Landed" is the first level in a Crash platformer to be set entirely on an alien planet, and it features some breathtakingly creative environments and obstacles, looking like no other level in the series to date. It also introduces a new mount who has been very well-liked by the fanbase despite only appearing here.
  • "Run it Bayou" is generally considered one of the That One Level examples for its position... but more than makes up for it by the level design, level music, and background detailing that makes it one of the more fleshed-out and gorgeous levels to traverse.
  • Some players feel this way about the last few levels, "Toxic Tunnels" and "Cortex Castle", despite, or perhaps because of the sheer difficulty. They managed to feel difficult but fair, with the second ending with a final exam gauntlet that has you rapidly switching between all the Quantum Masks. They also manage to be a Call-Back to the first game without going the Nostalgia Level route: they're set in a classic location but are entirely new levels. Cortex's back-and-forth banter with his past self is also a highlight for many players.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
  • Jetboard Jetty has a sudden boss fight against a giant sea monster called Louise. Said creature only gets easily missable foreshadowing in the background, doesn't contribute anything to the ongoing plot, and vanishes after it's defeated with no further reference. Its only purpose is to give Crash and Coco something to fight in the Salty Wharf world.
  • Off Beat manages to be an especially weird level in a game that's already full of dimension-travelling through fantastical worlds, apparently being set in the regular universe a few days before the plot starts and inexplicably has a troupe of ghosts and other supernatural creatures parading in a New Orleans-esque town, with no indication of them coming from rifts. It's still one of the more beloved levels in the game.
• Breather Level:
  • The first two levels of The 11th Dimension come right after Run it Bayou and the Difficulty Spike of Tranquillity Falls. "Snow Way Out" is mainly an introduction to Kapuna-Wa and is one of the levels featured the game's demo, while "Stay Frosty" is a short and relatively simple level, with only the grind rail segment and a few mid-air boxes afterwards being tricky. After them, comes Bears Repeating.
  • The entire Eggipus Dimension, to some players, which comes right after the aforementioned Bears Repeating. Dino Dash, the world's final level, was another level considered fit for the game's demo. Cortex is also playable for the first time in this dimension, and so his level is also simple to ease you into his style of gameplay. The dimension after is Bermugula's Orbit, an even more severe Difficulty Spike.
  • Coming after the rather tricky Out to Launch and it’s incredibly difficult Cortex timeline, Stowing Away is a rather short and straightforward level. Then comes Crash Landed...
  • While the Sn@xx Dimension's levels are still appropriately difficult for their placement in the game, their N. Verted versions fall into this trope, as the addition of underwater physics actually makes their trickier platforming segments (especially the end of "The Crate Escape") easier.
• Broken Base:
  • The game's more "dramatic" storytelling than the series' usual were met with divisive reception. Some liked the attempts to make a higher-stakes story with a more earnest and atmospheric air after many previous games converted the Crash universe into a gag series, while others found the plot too dry and generic without the usual self-aware silliness, as well as the series being too fundamentally cartoony to not make the more serious moments feel laughably out of place. Downplaying several characters comedic qualities (eg. Coco, Tawna, N Tropy) was also divisive, as while some felt it was a fitting evolution of their earlier Straight Man roles, some felt downplaying their Not So Above It All weakspots completely made them more boring and less part of the fun^note Coco and Tawna do indulge in slapstick in-gameplay; unlike the remakes however, they vent little of their own funny personality traits into it, being just blander mirrors of the same gags the others do, and came at the cost of Flanderizing the Butt-Monkey qualities of other characters to pick up the slack (particularly Crash and Cortex, who with less role reversals or cartoony story beats, just ended up Straw Losers for Coco and Tropy for most of the game).
  • The sheer length and difficulty of getting 100% completion is the single most divisive aspect of the game. Some people see it as a fun challenge, with some even enjoying it so much because of how challenging it is. Others absolutely hate it for the ridiculous amount of Padding, Last Lousy Point, and ridiculous difficulty, even to the point of disliking the game as a whole due to it. Others don’t like the road to getting full completion but don’t really mind and just play without bothering.
  • The massive increase in level lengths is similarly divisive. Some people feel the levels drag on and on to the point of being tedious and just wish they made a larger count of shorter levels, especially since the incredibly long levels are one of the reasons why the N’Sanely Perfect Relics are so hard to get. Others feel that the longer level lengths contribute to each level feeling more individually memorable and make getting the Perfect Relics all the more satisfying. Others don’t mind either way.
  • The final climax with Cortex using the masks to go to the past. While many thought this portion was fine enough standalone, some thought it counted as Ending Fatigue to the main campaign, and the story would have worked better keeping the battle with the Tropys as the main focus. Others liked the continuity callback (and it linking to the time-travel premise), as well as serving as a Beware the Silly Ones moment for Cortex after being ousted as Big Bad by yet another Viler New Villain. There's also the fact that this entire portion is by far the most difficult part of the game, leaving just as many divided whether this is where the challenge ascended too far or not.
• Complete Monster: Dr. Nefarious Tropy and his alternate dimension female counterpart are the sadistic, self-proclaimed masters of time. After being trapped in the past by Crash, N. Tropy and Dr. Neo Cortex escape, with N. Tropy convincing Cortex to leave Uka Uka for dead. The alternate N. Tropy, in her own world, hunted down and killed sapient bandicoots, forcing Tawna to watch as she killed her world's versions of Crash and Coco. Soon afterwards, they begin to work on the Rift Generator, with N. Tropy replacing Cortex with his female counterpart before revealing that they plan to erase the multiverse and remake it as one where they rule as gods. When Tawna attempts to stop them, they attempt to kill her, while the alternate N. Tropy gloats about the deaths of her friends, before attempting to kill Crash, Coco, Cortex, and Dingodile as well when they arrive to aid her. Cruel and sadistic, the N. Tropys stand out as the darkest and vilest foes that Crash has ever fought.
• Contested Sequel: While still considered a step-up from the other post-Naughty Dog games in the series with the exception of Twinsanity, the game is extremely divisive among fans. While many people enjoy the game for its art style, level design, mechanical improvements, and large amount of content, some even considering the best game in the series, others criticize the game for its difficulty (most notably the hidden boxes and much longer levels); the padded road to full completion, the highly-contested character redesigns and seemingly ignoring the post-Naughty Dog games.
• Creepy Awesome: The Guardian, the angry spirit that chases you in N. Sanity Peak, is an especially memorable part of the early game.
• Critical Dissonance: Though game reviewed very well with critics and much of the general gaming public, opinions on it in the Crash fandom tend to be a lot more varied. There, there are three general camps: those who view it as very good or even one of the best in the series, those who view it as one of the least fun to play in the series or at least vastly overhyped, and those who think it is actually both.^note It is not uncommon for players who generally like the game to find a whole lot more to dislike it if they are going for 100% Completion or dislike certain decisions regarding the game, the most common probably changing the art style in a series already infamous for doing this.
• Crosses the Line Twice: The scene where Dr. N. Tropy and his gender-flipped self flirt with one another wouldn't be nearly as funny to watch without the other characters' reactions to it.
• Demonic Spiders: The Nitro Crate-carrying robot drones in "Rush Hour" while playing as Dingodile. Like the TNT variants, they home in on the player and explode on contact or when attacked. Unlike their TNT variants, they lack a countdown timer, meaning they can't be waited out, are encountered in areas without walls for them to crash into, and sucking up their Nitro Crate causes it to immediately explode on Dingodile. The only way to kill them without taking damage is via launching a TNT Crate at them, which the level is in short supply of. The final stretch of Dingodile's section is particularly bad where four of them start chasing Dingodile, who has to do some platforming on moving temporary platforms, avoid nitro crate hazards, and there are four airborne crates he has to suck up as well for crate completion.
• Designated Monkey: Crash was always the Iron Butt Monkey of the series, though the universe in general was usually indiscriminately cartoony and error prone. Comparatively, most of the story of It's About Time has Crash and ONLY Crash subject to Amusing Injuries while most of the other main characters are relatively serious and move the story along competently (or in Tawna's case, have their pain not Played for Laughs at all).
• Disappointing Last Level: The penultimate world, The Sn@xx Dimension, is considered to be one of the weaker parts of the game due to every level being That One Level and the N’Verted variant’s underwater physics exacerbating the already ridiculous level lengths, not helped by the swaying of the water being very distracting. Though thankfully the final world, Cortex Island, is generally considered a strong sendoff to the game.
• Ending Fatigue: The main conflict is resolved at the end of the eighth world, but there are still two more worlds left before the game is complete. The Sn@xx Dimension is mostly a Breather Episode plot-wise, which necessitates a Post-Climax Confrontation for the final world. It doesn't help that these two worlds are home to some of the game's longest and hardest levels, including Rush Hour, Toxic Tunnels and Cortex Castle.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • The Quantum Masks in general have been welcomed with open arms as natural additions to the Crash universe, due to their colorful personalities and how useful and well-integrated their space-time abilities are.
  • Despite having the smallest (even irrelevant) role of the playable characters, Dingodile has been the most well received of the non-Crash and Coco playstyles, it helps that his colorful personality makes his scenes some of the best in the game and that his playstyle is rather unique when compared to the other characters.
• Epileptic Trees:
  • Coco's actions in N. Sane Trilogy. Her deciding to use the Time Twister to help Crash in his prior adventures, alongside Cortex and N. Tropy's messing around, may have caused the minor changes in N. Sane Trilogy to eventually result in the post-Warped timeline being completely changed.
  • After the Flashback Tape levels were revealed, fans have noticed Crunch appear on one of Cortex's monitors. Besides some suspicion in regards to whether or not he would eventually make a full appearance in the game, this has brought about the possibility that Cortex planned to create him far before the events of Wrath of Cortex, but didn't have the means to complete or control him properly at the time.
  • Out of all the Quantum Masks, Akano has caused the most discussion due to having little to no information revealed about him before the game's launch. This made it seem like he could have a more important role in the plot compared to the others, like siding with the villains for a time, or even be an ascended version of Uka Uka himself. As it turns out, his power was finally shown on September 11, 2020 and there was no apparent reason for holding him out.
  • Around August 29, 2020, Debi Derryberry had confirmed that she would reprise her role as Coco in this game. However, the initial reveal footage for Tawna had Coco use a different-sounding voice, and in a reply to a comment on September 11, 2020, Debi stated that she would not reprise her character, and her earlier tweet was deleted afterwards. All of this has lead fans to assume that there are actually multiple versions of Coco in the game, and Debi has been instructed to mislead fans until the reveal. Debi clarifying that she was referring to the mobile game may have Jossed this.
  • Sleuthing fans have noticed an unusually large amount of references to Ripper Roo within the game; besides showing up in the background of Off Beat (with a fully-rendered model, no less) and having the Cortex Strikes Back version of his boss theme in a Flashback level, he also appears in the 100% ending epilogue, has his own illustration in the unlockable gallery, and a datamine revealed that the Crash 1 version of his boss theme was found in Run It Bayou. This has led to the conclusion that it may not be simple appreciation for Ripper Roo, but planning for him to get some sort of DLC content revolving around him in the future. Although this may have been Jossed by an early concept for Run It Bayou's level progression◊ in the art book.
  • Some fans assume that the egg that N. Brio accidentally laid in his pterodactyl form might hatch into another N. Brio at some point, especially since the 100% epilogue strongly implies that Ripper Roo killed him off for his taxidermy exhibit.
  • Some fans believe that the 106% ending is actually a bad ending, since it involves the return of Uka Uka after his prior power exhaustion, and two of the main elements required to achieve it (N. Sanely Perfect Relics and Time Trial relics, Platinum included) bear skulls, a part of Uka Uka's design. So the player's need to collect everything may have contributed to his resurrection.
  • After seeing the credits and finding out that Crash was the Narrator All Along with a smooth voice, to boot, some fans believe that he's actually Obfuscating Stupidity instead of a Cloud Cuckoolander, which chooses to be a Heroic Mime (although he DID speak on Skylanders: Imaginators and in an advertisement for Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back, albeit in a different accent) and acts stupid on purpose in order to throw off his foes. Can double with Heartwarming in Hindsight if, since this is one of the games Coco contributes the most during the adventure, he's actually letting his sister hog the spotlight in order to help her star as a heroine in her own right (the same could be said in regards to Tawna, if we consider he was actually glad to see her as a full-fledged heroine, even if she's from an Alternate Universe).
  • Spinning the TV on N. Sanity Beach will cause logos of the first three Crash games to appear on it, followed by this game's logo. When doing this after completing the game to 106%, however, the logo for Crash 4 will be followed by a bunch of static and a brief flash of a what looks like a Wumpa fruit between swathes of blue and orange. Some fans are wondering if this teases a future installment in the series, such as a "Crash 5", another multiplayer title or even a TV series. The fact that the series' 25th anniversary is set to be the year following this game's release only adds fuel to the fire.
  • This video celebrating the holidays featured some specific elements that clearly weren't seen in Crash 4, most notably a sign in the back saying "Wumpa League", a traffic light and a carpet shaped like Beenox's logo. This sparked discussion in regards as to whether the next console spin-off was hinted at in a subtle manner. In addition, an audio recording of Lou Studdert supposedly explained a little more about this alleged game. Wumpa League was eventually revealed to be the Working Title of Crash Team Rumble, released in 2023.
• Fanfic Fuel:
  • Alternate Tawna's adventures as well as her backstory from her version of Crash and Coco dying to her becoming the hero we see in-game.
  • Cortex, N. Tropy, and Uka Uka's imprisonment is also ripe with story ideas of just what it was like for them.
  • The very premise of the game involves the Multiverse being opened up to the cast of the Crash games. While the Skylanders cartoon proved that the multiverse was a thing when they pulled in another version of Crash, This opens the possiblity for different Crashes (Crash of the Titans and Classic Crash, for example) to meet up, or see new worlds with different outcomes (such as worlds where Cortex won, or evil mirror universes).
• Fan Nickname:
  • "Cash Banooca 4: In a Big Tent".
  • "Tawnaverse", for the concept of multiple Tawnas. It's also named after Toys For Bob's official term that's been coined to differentiate this game's Tawna from the main one.
  • "Fem-Tropy", for the genderbent version of N. Tropy from the aforementioned Tawnaverse.
• Franchise Original Sin: One of the main criticisms of It's About Time is the sheer abundance of hidden crates in every level. This was also a criticism for the original trilogy, but at least those kinds of placements were only present in a select few levels (like the infamous Cold Hard Crash); IAT on the other hand has these kinds of crate placements in almost every single level, and said levels are far longer and more difficult than those in the original trilogy.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • The first official look at the game occurred on the same day as Min Min's reveal for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and despite a Switch version not having been announced, there were many people who were excited for both, with some even making fanart depicting the two crossing over. Not surprising, considering Crash's popularity as a potential fighter for Smash. It reached the point that when Nintendo announced they planned to reveal a new character the day before Crash 4's release, most were convinced that it was Crash (it sadly wasn't).
  • Crash Bandicoot fans are also friendly with Ratchet & Clank fans, due to both franchises getting new games around the same time, and both revolving around the multiverse. There has also been fan art of Crash and Coco meeting Ratchet and Clank, as well as the new female Lombax, Rivet.
  • Also with Sly Cooper fans as well since, ironically, Sly's fourth game likewise involved time travel, a new developer and a new art style ^note Granted reception to that game was more mixed than this one, especially on the story front, but the sentiment was still there.
  • There's been plenty of fan art crossovers involving the Crash cast and Animaniacs (2020), thanks to Crash 4 and the former releasing on the same year, as well as the prior two games sharing Jess Harnell as a voice actor.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The cutscene where Alternate Tawna first meets Crash and Coco is hilarious, especially with her reaction to Coco's joke about her version of them being dead. Not as funny later in the game when we learn that not only, yes, they did die, but they were killed in front of Tawna.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: Any fan art that depicted Coco hanging out with the mainline Tawna. Coco's initial reaction to the alternate Tawna is akin to seeing her best friend and the latter mellowed out enough to play games with her in the ending, so it definitely showed that depicting an Intergenerational Friendship between Coco and the mainline Tawna is possible in the future.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • June 2020 gave us a reveal for a new game in a long-running platformer series starring an animal protagonist having to deal with their arch-enemy who is causing mayhem across multiple dimensions, all while returning to their original continuity. Are we talking about It's About Time or Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart?
    • Adding to this is that the unreleased Crash Bandicoot Evolution had too similar a premise with the original Ratchet & Clank (2002) (a villain trying to take pieces of other planets to construct a new one), hence why it was cancelled and eventually re-tooled into Crash Twinsanity.
    • The kicker of it all is that both dimensional predicaments were caused by the heroes (the Bandicoots breaking the Time Twister to trap the scientists in another dimension, only for them to escape in It's About Time, and Ratchet causing the Dimensionator to backfire in Rift Apart.)
    • If all that wasn't enough, both animal protagonists have to deal with a Dr. Nefarious as the major villain of the piece.
    • And on top of that, both games feature two versions of their respectives Nefariouses: One from the main dimension, and one hailing from the same dimension as the new playable female characters. What's more, Rift Apart explores the home dimension for its female character in more detail than It's About Time's.
  • Crash isn't the only game franchise that slightly redesign the characters for this exact 4th installment game as Streets of Rage did the same thing prior in the fourth game as well. Not to mention these 2 games released around the same year.
  • A drawing by the Twitter user m5mona, released around two weeks before the August 6, 2020 showcase video, featured an original character with a hairstyle and neon color aesthetic that wound up being similar to one of Coco's skins. This has not gone unnoticed.
  • On October 15th, the Twitter user Craig Hills posted a drawing of N. Tropy redesigned to resemble Jafar. Two days later, Tom Engelhardt, one of the game's animators, revealed that he used Jafar as a direct inspiration on how to animate N. Tropy for a cutscene.
• Ho Yay: While the original Tawna was made to be Crash's Designated Love Interest in the small amount of time she was around, Crash's having Took a Level in Dumbass means that the story emphasises Coco's interactions with Alternate Tawna. Coco is overjoyed when they first meet, and heartbroken when Tawna briefly leaves to protect them. And during the cutscene after the Dual N. Tropy fight, Alternate Tawna and Coco walk off holding hands. Top all that off with her rather punkish appearance bringing to mind a few stereotypes. However the 100% ending seemingly debunks this, as the alternate Tawna is said to be dating a guy named Shmathan Trake.
• I Knew It!:
  • The aforementioned Time to Play PS4 ad featured an early design for Kupuna-Wa, so fans had correctly determined that she would be involved in this game.
  • When the mobile game On the Run soft-launched in select countries, some fans expected its premise of foiling Cortex's plans to conquer the multiverse to be based on this forthcoming game's plot.
  • When Dingodile and Tawna were leaked via merchandise and thumbnail art, both were assumed to be among the playable characters. Also, the possibility of the version of Tawna in this game being from another dimension was proven to be 100% correct.
  • Canadian Guy Eh's theory about how Uka Uka, Neo Cortex and N. Tropy managed to find a way out of their dimensional prison turned out to be entirely accurate: Uka Uka screaming so loudly that he passed out.
  • After it was accidently implied by Tawna when she first meets them, many fans assumed that her versions of Crash and Coco were dead and it's the reason for her I Work Alone attitude. They were right on the money with it being revealed that the female N. Tropy killed them.
  • Prior to the game's announcement, at least one fan deduced that Coco was a failed attempt at replacing Crash as Cortex's general. The Flashback Tapes confirmed this to be the case.
  • While the Nintendo Switch port wasn't announced at first, many fans correctly assumed that it was matter of "when" it would happen and not "if" it would happen.
• Iron Woobie: Alternate Tawna, whose reaction to Coco's joking suggestion about herself and Crash being dead in her universe shows that it hit close to home. Meaning that she had to cope with saving the world with no help. It is later revealed that her version of N. Tropy killed them in front of her.
• It's Hard, So It Sucks!: The game is by far the hardest in the series, sometimes approaching Meat Boy or Cuphead levels of difficulty. This can of course be alienating to more casual platformer players, but even a fair few seasoned Crash series fans have criticized the game for being more frustrating than fun; particularly after having scoped a level front and back and still missing one damn crate. Though this seems to be aimed more toward going for 100% (Or 106% as the game puts it) completion, which turns it into a completely different game and a major headache in trying to get everything. A general consensus of many reviews is that it's a good game if you're just playing to reach the end of it, really only doing the bare minimum to get the costumes, hidden gems, and, at most, the flashback tapes (which get further and further along the level to reach and have to to be gained by not dying at all before you do so). But going for absolutely everything (time relics, platinum relics, and the new perfect & purple relics) was often cited as too much stuff crammed in just for the sake of it. Demanding complete dedication to finish made the game less fun and more busywork for a lot of people as a result. It says a lot when The Completionist refuses to rise up to the challenge, citing the purple relics as way too hard even for him. And as for Caddicarus (who is a die hard fan of the series), well... Though again, it's completely up to the player to decide if they want to do them or not and it's just there for replay value.^note It bears mentioning that the Purple Relics are purely for bragging rights, since they don't count towards 106% completion, don't give you an achievement/trophy, and don't even show up on the progress screen (instead they are registered as Platinum Relics for completion progress). So you have nothing to lose by not getting them.
• It's Short, So It Sucks!: Some of the side levels showing what some of the other characters were doing while Crash and Coco were making their way through the level. Some reviews and gamers complained most of the sections were too short and could've just been full blown levels all their own. Not helped that you have to do the rest of the level again once their parts are over with, just now with new box placement and more Nitro boxes, making the levels come off like padding.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Dingodile, of all characters, became this. Having settled down to run his own diner, only for it to get blown into splinters and him being inadvertently dragged into the multiverse. The harshness of his situation and resulting quest for retribution has endeared him to a number of fans.
  • Oxide counts as well. While he shows no signs of regretting trying to turn Earth into a parking lot, he very much does not deserve what he goes through. First, he is bossed around by the N. Tropys, who even flirt with each other in front of him. Shortly after, his ship gets raided and his latest car gets stolen, which only encourages him to evacuate as soon as possible (especially after going through an asteroid field). Later, it's revealed he became addicted to caffeine, ended up in rehab, and is now going through a messy divorce.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • It's DIC Time ^ExplanationA meme similar to Super Mario Galaxy's "U R MR GAY". On the box art for the game, the words in "It's About Time" are underlined — except for "About", which has a line over it instead. The line happens to be right under the "dic" part of "Bandicoot". Reading the underlined words only spells "It's Dic Time".
  • Cortex and Tropy looking at the dimensional rift is a scene that's popular with editors, as it allows them to insert any character and have them come out of the rift, or have it act as a portal to random things.
  • The scene of Dingodile calling the enemies who blew up his diner "BASTARDS!" quickly became popular for the sheer unexpectedness of it, especially in a typically family-friendly series.
  • Dingodile's Diner serving "bat tacos" among its weird and gross dishes has drawn some comparison to Wuhan, whose alleged "bat soup" led to the COVID-19 Pandemic.
  • With the successful launch of a fourth Crash entry after the remakes, it's been common for fans to ask "Spyro 4 when?", given that Toys for Bob also made the Spyro Reignited trilogy. This has only increased after someone found a drawing of a neon Spyro display with the number "4" underneath him, within this game's art book.
  • N. Tropy hitting on his female alternate counterpart has become widely memetic in the fandom, with fan reactions ranging from Squick to confusion to Shipper on Deck.
  • The success of the Sonic the Hedgehog movie has led fans to joke about a live action Crash Bandicoot movie, often also joking how Peter Dinklage should play Dr. Cortex.
• Moe: Crash and Coco's redesigns make them come off as cuter than before. Coco especially in the "Totally Tubular" skin.
  • Lani-Loli has been seen as the most endearing of the Quantum Masks, thanks to his various insecurities.
  • Shnurgle, the alien cub mount, was seen as adorable once players came across them.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • The N. Tropy duo collectively powerslide across the line by attempting to erase the entire timeline and billions of beings from existence, so they can create a new timeline in their own image.
  • The alternate female version of N. Tropy crossed it long before the game even started — if it makes even sense with all that time travel — by killing her universe's Crash and Coco right in front of Tawna. Especially so when she, in the process of trying to kill her as well, amusedly notes just how much she relishes Tawna's pain and loss as a result of their deaths.
  • Cortex crosses it when he — after faking his previous Heel–Face Turn — betrays the team, steals Kupuna-Wa and uses her powers to go back in time with the intention of preventing his past self from creating Crash. Him cruelly calling the Bandicoot "[his] greatest failure" as he leaves to do so only makes it worse, especially with how visibly hurt Crash looks when Coco explains to him what Cortex means.
• Narm: Tawna says “Aw, kawaii!” upon spotting a dragon, which most players found horrendously corny. Not to mention the dragons in question are Chinese.
• Older Than They Think: While newer fans were shocked by the amount of dirty jokes and profanity that was slipped into the game, this wouldn't be the first time, as the Radical Entertainment games had previously done the same.
• One-Scene Wonder:
  • Shnurgle, the rideable two-legged alien mount that's found on Bermugula in Crash Landed and has two segments dedicated to it, instantly got adoration from fans.
  • The smooth-voiced Narrator All Along in the "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue credits scene, mainly because he turns out to be Crash himself.
• Padding: A common criticism of the game is that going for 106% completion entails a lot of this. To get 106%, you need every normal gem, inverted gem, flashback tape, and time relic. There are six normal gems per level, with six additional gems gained from completing the N.Verted variant, which are the levels flipped with a visual filter. Of these six gems, four are gained from getting all the boxes, one is hidden somewhere, and another is found by completing the stage without dying too many times. This means that to complete the game, you're expected to beat every level upwards of four times minimum- once through getting all the gems and the tape, once through to get the time travel relics, and repeated for the N.Verted variants. Even then, going for all the boxes, minimum deaths and the flashback tape can be pretty arduous for a single run, so it make take even more attempts. This also discounts failed attempts and retries. All in all, this easily septuples the game length, often shooting it into the seventy or eighty hour mark where the base game usually takes about fifteen hours to finish. Good luck!
• Questionable Casting:
  • Eden Riegel being the substitute for Debi Derryberry as Coco. While Eden's performance was seen as adequate (or at least sounding less like Jimmy Neutron compared to Debi's), some fans were baffled as to why Debi would be doing Coco for On The Run instead of this game, especially since Debi has been a series regular as Coco since Wrath of Cortex.
  • A similar circumstance occurs with Tawna and N Tropy, who both have replacement voices of varying authenticity, despite Misty Lee and Corey Burton actually staying on for other roles. It is worth noting that all three characters undergo a a more serious character shift to some level, suggesting the switch up to new more grounded sounding actors over their previous more comical sounding ones was to prevent Vocal Dissonance.
• Salvaged Story: The game addresses a couple of long-running Plot Holes from the original series:
  • Tawna's unexplained disappearance and Coco's equally unexplained appearance between the first and second games are both given explanations here, with a Hand Wave that Crash and Tawna "lost touch" at some point, while the Flashback Tapes expand on Coco's backstory, showing why she was absent from the first game and how she escaped from Cortex Castle before the second game.
  • The Wrath of Cortex infamously offered no explanation for how Cortex, Uka-Uka and N. Tropy escaped being trapped in prehistoric times at the end of Warped. This game takes place in an Alternate Timeline picking up directly where Warped left off, and opens by showing Cortex and N. Tropy escaping, although they leave Uka-Uka behind.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Dying in a bonus stage does not effect your death counter or ruin a perfect relic run, but, at least until it was patched, it would void your Flashback Tape if you had not picked it up yet. And on a lesser note, as in previous games, dying in a bonus round will void any Aku Aku masks you have.
  • The animal-riding, vehicle and rail-grinding sections can be this, especially when combined with the Perfect Relic requirement. In these sections, it's all too easy to miss a box and be unable to go back for it (and the Hitbox Dissonance on the animal-riding segments doesn't help). Getting the Perfect Relic turns these sections into an absolute nightmare; if you're just going for the box gem, you can simply restart the section as many times as you like until you've got all the boxes (and come back for the No Death Run gem later if you haven't got it already). But if you're going for a Perfect Relic, missing any box at any point means you have to start not just the section, but the entire level from the beginning. And some levels have more than one of these.
  • The sheer amount of hidden boxes in each level. While some levels in the original trilogy also suffered this, they were only a select few. This game by comparison has boxes hidden just off-screen in every single level, essentially forcing you to play them multiple times or consult a guide just to find them all — a problem only exacerbated by how long some of the later levels are.
  • N. Verted levels being required for 100% Completion. Apart from being horizontally mirrored, adding a visual gimmick and moving the hidden gem to another location, most N. Verted levels don't do much, if anything, to actually change up the gameplay and make the levels feel new. The player is essentially just being forced to collect everything in each level a second time, which doesn't do anything but artificially double the amount of stages it takes to achieve 100% completion. The one saving grace is that the filters typically improve the visibility of the level for locating otherwise easy to miss crates.
  • The second half of the Timeline levels where you play as Tawna, Dingodile or Cortex. After finding out how these characters affected Crash/Coco's journey in the main levels, the player is then forced to replay the Crash/Coco level from that point forward, with the only difference being that the boxes are in different places, but the level geometry is otherwise unchanged. Like the N. Verted level gripe mentioned above, this is just seen as arbitrarily forcing the player to play the same level over again for no reason other than padding. Not helping is that the Timeline levels also have N. Verted versions, thus requiring the player to repeat these levels several times.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike: Especially if you want 100%, the game is much more difficult than Naughty Dog's original trilogy. Offset by the fact that playing with lives is optional, so you can continue indefinitely from a checkpoint if you so choose, and of course if you're not going for 100%, you don't have to worry about every box, sufficient Wumpa Fruit, and no/few death runs.
• Spiritual Successor: The game's character roster can be seen as a revival of the character roster formula seen in Yoshi's Island DS. Crash is the equivalent to Baby Mario, being the Jack of All Stats, Coco is Baby Peach, being the Distaff Counterpart with only very minuscule changes, Tawna is Baby Donkey Kong, being the heavyweight who specializes in tethering, Dingodile is Baby Wario, being the Anti-Hero who specializes in Weapons That Suck, and Dr. Cortex is Baby Bowser, being the Token Evil Teammate who specializes in projectiles and makes a Face–Heel Turn.
• Spoiled by the Format: In past games, Cortex is usually the final boss. He's fought after three of the four Quantum Masks are found. Sure enough, N. Tropy announces his true plans and the urgency of the plot speeds up from that point onwards.
  • Likewise, past games have had 5 boss battles. Beating N. Tropy after he had hijacked the plot as the fourth boss in the game is a telling sign that Cortex's Heel–Face Turn isn't gonna last for much longer.^Amusingly...The Tropy duo actually is the game's 5th boss if you consider the Big-Lipped Alligator Moment that is Louise in the pirate dimension. But, considering there's no introduction and little foreshadowing outside a hint about two minutes before in the same level, no one counts it as a major boss, and as a result, no one was fooled.
• Tainted by the Preview:
  • The trailer's apparent declaration that all the post-Naughty Dog games were non-canon was met with some contention in the fanbase. While those who only consider the Naughty Dog games canon were happy with it, those who liked what some of the later games did felt it rather tactless and wasted potential, since it meant getting rid of post-Naughty Dog darkhorses like Crunch and Nina as well as dashing hopes for a remake of Crash Twinsanity.
  • The redesigns were another contentious point about the reveal, with many declaring them ugly and decrying them over the rather on-point models of Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy.
  • The choice of making this title the direct sequel to Warped only exacerbated criticism, since it left the game with very big shoes to fill and only made its deviations from the original games more glaring. Even some who didn't mind the changes did not think it was the place for Toys For Bob (a developer renowned for heavily reimagining established franchises) to so presumptuously consider themselves as on par with the originals, with some viewing it as a cheap publicity stunt to put their take on a higher pedestal than other post-Naughty Dog contributions to the series (especially through the supposed exiling of everyone else's from the main continuity).
  • The lack of the PC, Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 5 ports in sight around the time of the game's original release in late 2020. This is due to Activision still "evaluating additional platforms" to release the game, according to PR. While it makes sense for the next gen consoles (mostly for the Playstation 5, as the Xbox One version will be cross-gen compatible with the Xbox Series X and Series S), the lack of PC and Switch ports at launch is jarring to many, especially since N. Sane Trilogy and Nitro-Fueled sold exceptionally well on the Switch and the latter was not only available on the console from day one but is still absent from PC. And while the Switch, PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC versions were later announced to be released in 2021, the PC version got scorn from fans after it was announced to be released exclusively for Blizzard's Battle.net instead of Steam — which has a bigger userbase compared to Blizzard's service — and the ire only increased when it was discovered upon release that the game's DRM does not allow it to be played without an internet connection. (Not helping was that said DRM was cracked within the day)
  • Concerns arose when the game's ESRB label hinted at the inclusion of microtransactions. While Toys For Bob later clarified that there wouldn't be any microtransactions in the game — and stayed true to their word — the damage was already done, as a number of players had canceled their preorders. Not helping matters was that Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled had gotten microtransactions patched into it months after release.
• That One Achievement: There is an achievement for getting all of the Perfect Relics. Getting them is an exercise in frustration. To get a level's Perfect Relic, you must obtain all gems in a level except the hidden one^note which means getting most of the Wumpa Fruit and breaking every single crate in one go without dying once. This has to be done for every level, including those where just finishing the level without dying is hard (not to mention that some of these levels have crates in places where it's almost impossible to avoid dying).
• That One Level:
  • Off-Balance, the last platforming level of Tranquility Falls (which present rather nasty Difficulty Spike as a whole). Convoluted Lani-Loli section, nastily placed boxes (especially in segments requiring Quantum Masks to advance), wall-running sections that are not that hard but take some practice and the level's sheer length all contribute to this being one of first truly hard levels in the game. Thankfully the music and its design more than make up for it.
  • Jetboard Jetty contains timed jumps across spikes while on moving rafts, the most involved Lani-Loli segment so far, three jetboard segments, a green gem route, and a miniboss at the end. Generally the first level players will struggle getting the 3 Death Gem on.
  • Run It Bayou is often considered the game's first big roadblock for completionists, as it involves backtracking over jetboard segments, timed crates on jetboard segments (some of which have you fighting against a current), six extremely difficult to find boxes (the added camera panning won't show these ones), and has one of the sneakiest hidden gems in the game. The N. Verted Mode variant is even tougher, as everything's undercranked.
    • The alternate timeline level (No Dillo Dallying) isn't much better. The first half is a Dingodile section with nitro crates everywhere, including bats that drop them from above, and a moving boat that he must keep up with in three dimensions while blasting away all of the explosive crates. The second half consists of Crash's boat ride from the original level and ending jetboard section, both with an even harder crate layout. But what really makes this one hard if you're trying to get all of the crates is a glitch where two of the crates at the start of Crash's portion of the level disappear if he dies. It doesn't matter if you're not going for the Perfect Relic, if Crash dies during the boat section, you've lost your chance to get the "all crates" gem and must restart the level. And this is before the jetboard section.
  • Bears Repeating, a level with a decently-long and difficult regular section that leads into a Polar segment that requires insane precision to hit all the boxes, especially the crates that are stacked in a 2x2 formation (of which there are many). The level also has a yellow gem path that's a Call-Back to the infamous The High Road from Crash 1, and the flashback tape is placed in the middle of the Polar section in mid-air. Getting the N. Sane Relic is especially sadistic, since if you die or miss a box in the Polar section, you have to redo the entire level. There were so many complaints about Polar's hitbox, that it was finally patched to be much wider.
    • Building Bridges, the Tawna version of the above level can be incredibly finicky, with the hitboxes of the electric enemies being wider than they need to be, and the electric platforms being ridiculously difficult to time, not to mention Tawna's kicking hitbox being at the mercy of TNT Crate stacks. Then, once that's section's done, there's the matter of both a harder bonus stage, which is typically not the case for alternate timeline levels, and an even harder Polar section than before. Oh, and god help you if you have to redo the level, as all of Tawna's lines are her needlessly complaining about the cold temperature.
  • Rock Blocked isn't so hard normally or even with getting the perfect relic, getting the Platinum Relic on the other hand is an absolute freaking nightmare as it's easily the single most difficult time trial in the whole game. Whereas other harder levels later on have enough ways and shortcuts for you to shave off enough time so that you can afford to get hung up a few times, Rock Blocked offers no such mercy requiring an absolutely PERFECT run with zero room for screw-ups of any kind, even if you take every possible method to save time you'll still just BARELY have enough time to get the platinum no matter what, to top it off this level also has an annoying glitch where Dingodile can sometimes randomly get stuck on one of the log platforms, there's nothing worse then having a good run ruined due to circumstances completely beyond your control.
  • Shipping Error has an absolutely nightmarish platforming segment with Cortex, where you must cross three rows of fast horizontally moving platforms, and break a couple of boxes in mid air. The vertical climb segment is also pretty tricky. And then you switch back to Crash/Coco for a replay of Out to Launch, with one of the most insanely hard bonus stages in the game.
  • Crash Landed is one of, if not the biggest levels in the game, and as such it's got a high amount of fruit and crates to collect. On top of that, many parts of the level are coated in slippery pink slime, it's got multiple riding sections and a few areas with Ika-Ika where precise and consecutive gravitational shifts are required. And one of the craziest bonus stages in the game.
  • For many people, there's at least one level in the Sn@xx Dimension that will drive them insane, if not all three.
    • Food Run, the first of the Sn@xx Dimension levels, has two sections where you have to use both Ika-Ika and wall running on moving vehicles. It's pretty tricky.
    • Rush Hour is the longest level in the game and a nightmare to get a perfect relic on as a result. For Dingodile you've got a section with jumping on moving vehicles(the smaller ones will fall down if you stand on them too long) and avoiding nitros, some of which are carried by flying drones, the four boxes at the end are damn near impossible to suck up without taking at least one hit because of the sheer amount of drones and nitros in the way. Then Tawna's section has several rail grinding sections where you have open electric gates and jump over moving cable cars not to mention two insanely fast and stress-inducing sections where you have to cross over moving vehicles, only this time you also have to deal with oncoming traffic in some lanes that can hit you(and even if you have a mask they can still push you off the edge to your doom if you aren't careful) and the cars all move in varied directions and speeds that make it incredibly to fall to your doom. The N. Verted version of this level is even longer because of the slow water physics, and said physics make it easy to miss boxes on the rails as the filter makes it tough to judge how close you are to the boxes(and also makes the grapple-hook prompts difficult to see).
    • Cortex's half of The Crate Escape starts off requiring very precise air dashes over a series of large gaps and platforms that fall several seconds after being stepped on, while Crash/Coco's section lacks checkpoints and has them jumping between falling shipping containers and requires constant movement lest they leave the playfield or move far enough away from the cargo that reaching the end platform is impossible. A number of people who have issues with the series' usual camera angles or depth perception harbor immense vitriol for the level, though the world's slower N. Verted physics alleviate the pain for some.
  • Toxic Tunnels' Gem Route is an absolute goddamn nightmare of a long, miserable slog through hideously difficult platforming and enemies requiring millisecond-perfect timing and damn near molecular-scale positional precision. And if you mess up, it's right back to the very beginning. This Gem Route has killed many players' drives to 100% the game.
  • Cortex Castle requires a lot of quick and precise jumping between platforms as well as a very good understanding oh how each mask functions and affects your mobility. The final segment throws everything into a blender where you must rapidly adjust to your masks switching in and out while dealing with an onslaught of moving platforms and laser traps with little room for error.
• That One Sidequest: Going for 100% Completion (and beyond) in the Crash games has never been easy, but as described in Sequel Difficulty Spike, this trope is in effect moreso than any other game in the series thus far. Here are a few examples of how completionists really have it rough this time around:
  • Thought finding and smashing all of a level's boxes to obtain its Clear Gem was tricky enough in the older games? Well, not only have the developers hidden more boxes in unexpected places, such as the two sets of tires the Bonus Platform covers in "A Real Grind", the third level in the game, but there are not one, not two, but FIVE additional Clear Gems to collect: three are earned by collecting 40%, 60%, and 80% of a level's Wumpa Fruit, respectively, another is earned by beating the level while dying 3 or less times, and the last one is hidden somewhere in the level. Oh, and you have to do it all over again for the level's N. Verted variant — environment-obstructing visuals and all, AND, as detailed in That One Achievement above, you need to obtain all but the hidden gem without dying to earn the level's N. Sanely Perfect Relic. Have fun!
  • While getting all the Colored Gems was always a tricky task, given the varying degrees of Guide Dang It! involved, their hiding places are especially secretive this time. The blue gem, however, takes the cake. Finding out how to get it without a guide is confusing enough, but actually pulling it off is a nightmare: to get it, you must complete Draggin' On without breaking a single crate, meaning that not only do you have to complete the level without dying, since checkpoint crates are out of the question, but you also have to avoid breaking any crates. And this is a level where you have to use Akano (the mask that gives you the Death Tornado Spin-esque power) to get through most of it. Good luck. The task can be made slightly easier by deliberately entering the bonus stage and dying, creating a free checkpoint midway through the stage.
  • The time trials are back and as hard as ever- moreso, as a matter of fact. The Triple Spin, earned by beating the game, certainly helps in this department, but the alterations to the layout go beyond merely replacing some crates with Time Crates, such as placing Nitro Crates where there previously were none as early as the first level. As such, going for those Gold and Platinum relics (the latter of which is now mandatory for 106% completion) requires immense precision and timing Aku-Aku invincibility just right to go as fast as inhumanly possible. And if that wasn't enough, beating the Platinum Relic time for a level will display a new time to beat: an even faster developer time, represented by a purple Toys for Bob logo. Woe betides any player that attempts to beat these.^note The Purple Relic earned by beating these times only counts as a regular Platinum Relic for collection purposes, so these dev times are, just like Platinum Relics usually are, purely for bragging rights.
  • Getting the Flashback Tapes, which requires getting to them in the level without dying once. They're not too hard in the first few worlds, but the difficulty in obtaining them increases exponentially once you get to The 11th Dimension, and is incredibly difficult in the last two worlds, The Sn@xx Dimension and Cortex Island, since the tapes are towards the end of the levels, which are marathon levels as it is.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • While the art style has been praised for looking more cartoony, the character designs themselves are far more divisive, with some characters coming under fire for making bizarre changes (most notably Cortex, who's lost his flat forehead and pronounced underbite, Coco, who has a noticeably larger forehead and lacks her flower, and Tawna, who's been completely redesigned due to being an Alternate Self) compared to the more on-point N. Sane Trilogy designs.
  • For time trials, the Crash Dash from Warped (which was activated by simply holding down the dash button) was replaced with a new ability in the Triple Spin (a speed boost activated by repeatedly tapping the spin button in rhythm). Fans find this to be a completely arbitrary change that has no apparent purpose beyond artificially making time trials harder than they already were, which isn't helped by both the levels being much longer than previous games and platinum relics now being mandatory for 100% Completion.
  • Due to a number of factors, Aku Aku is generally agreed to have been neutered to near uselessness. First, crates containing him are much less common, and since the levels are so much longer, it makes it significantly more difficult to hold onto him between each crate. Second, for most players, most of their deaths in the game will likely be from the sheer amount of Bottomless Pits, which he can't protect you from anyway. Third, unlike the original trilogy, Aku Aku is not carried over between levels, so even if the player manages to hang onto him until the end of the level, he'll be gone when they start the next one.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • After exhausting himself to get out of the void, Uka Uka is left for dead by Cortex and N. Tropy and isn't seen for the rest of the game. While it's unlikely that he's gone for good (and in fact, the 106% ending reveals he isn't), it does mean there's no boss fight against him or any interactions with the Quantum Masks.
  • Despite being the Big Bad Duumvirate, both N. Tropys are disappointingly underused in the story. We only see the female Tropy near the end of the game and most of the two's potential interactions are restricted to a couple cutscenes and a boss fight before they vanish from the plot altogether. It's never even shown how they met!
  • The only alternate universe characters to appear are Tawna and female N. Tropy (unless you believe that this game's Dingodile is also from an alternate universe). No one else ever gets to meet their counterparts, as well as no seeing what alternate versions of the characters could have been like, and the mainline universe Tawna is back to being completely absent with barely any explanations.
  • N. Gin and N. Brio appear for their obligatory boss fights at the end of their respective worlds then basically drop out of the game. In N. Brio's case, his boss battle is basically an expanded version of his original boss fight in Crash Bandicoot. After his defeat, he gains an interesting looking pterodactyl form, but the player never fights him in that state. For that matter, the bosses mostly being the human(-oid, in the N. Tropys' case) scientists is disappointing, with non-human threats like N. Oxide only appearing in cutscenes and staples like Tiny Tiger being missing entirely.
    • Although he clearly has other ideas, Brio is back to being just one of Cortex's numerous henchmen without explanation, despite having blown up his space station the last time we saw him.
  • Memorable though his scenes may be, Dingodile ultimately serves no role in the story. Even smacking away the N. Tropy's and letting them escape could have been replaced by falling rubble.
  • Poor Nitros Oxide, the only time he ever appears or is heard from is during the Bermugula's Orbit Level, and you never face off against him, he could have been an interesting boss battle if you had to fight against him in his vehicle, either with you in another vehicle or on foot, but you don't fight him at all in the entire game.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Despite the teasing from the development team, and the game's premise of exploring the multiverse, the post-Naughty Dog games are only referenced as easter eggs, with no mention of how they fit into the new canon, if at all. Additionally, apart from the presence of alternate timeline versions of Tawna and N. Tropy, the game's multiverse travel is indistinguishable from the time travel that Warped already did. Overall, it amounts to being an excuse for the dev team to have the heroes run around in various insignificant (if pretty) locations, without any great shake-up in the series' status quo and leaving a blank slate for other developers.
  • Cortex gets the idea to go back in time to stop himself from creating Crash, but while clumsily trying to avoid a paradox, he decides to just try and kill Crash from the present again, making the time travel seem pointless. Even if he had won, nothing would have been undone.
  • Surprisingly little is made of Crash finally reuniting with his girlfriend, alternate counterpart or not, with Tawna interacting more primarily with Coco most of the time.
  • The game is generally light on character interactions. Dingodile never says a word to his old boss Cortex, most of the Quantum Masks only get a handful of lines, and the heroes tend to remain silent while the bosses introduce themselves.
  • Dingodile's Heel–Face Turn goes completely unexplained, to the point that he comes off as Took a Level in Kindness.
  • Despite opening the fight with the line "Let's see what you mongrels can do as a pack!", the fight with the N. Tropys only has Crash/Coco playable even though Tawna and Cortex have stakes in the fight as well with Female N. Tropy killing her Tawna's versions of Crash and Coco and N. Tropy stabbing Cortex in back.
  • The Sn@xx Dimension is the only time that Dingodile, Cortex and Tawna get their own full levels following their introduction levels. Every other time they are used, they are only playable for half the level before the player is forced to switch over to Crash/Coco. Even then, Dingodile and Tawna are still splitting a level, just with each other instead of the aforementioned Crash/Coco and the final section of Cortex's level still has control switch back to Crash/Coco for a section that could have just as easily been a cutscene.
• Trapped by Mountain Lions: Played for Laughs example. Due to getting literally thrown into the plot against his will, Dingodile's levels are largely separate from the story (outside of him accidentally helping the Bandicoot siblings) until the Sn@xx Dimension. The most blatant case is Dillo Dallyin', which could easily have been cut without affecting Run It Bayou's level progression.
• Underused Game Mechanic: Jetboard Jetty ends on a kraken miniboss, a concept that has otherwise never been done in the whole series. Unfortunately, this is the only level in the entire game to have a miniboss at all; reportedly, Ripper Roo was supposed to also appear as one but was ultimately cut, leaving this as the only miniboss encounter in the whole game and sticking out like a sore thumb as a result.
• Unexpected Character:
  • When word got out that there would be more playable characters besides Crash, Coco, and Cortex, speculation ran rampant about who these characters could be, but few expected the first confirmed playable character after those three to be none other than Dingodile.
  • The last playable character is Tawna of all characters, who hadn't appeared in a platformer since the first game and completely vanished from the series for years. Played with, however, as early on some leaked official art showed off her new design, and her appearances in the N. Sane Trilogy and Nitro-Fueled were rather popular.
  • After a long period with nary a hint of the game even having rideable mounts, it's Polar who gets the honor of being one, when the last time he's served that role was back in the first Game Boy Advance game.
  • Nitrous Oxide from Crash Team Racing actually playing a part in the story, being kowtowed by N. Tropy and his alternate female counterpart to help them.
  • The 100% ending features cameos from various characters. Some aren't too surprising, like Ripper Roo and Nina Cortex. However it's doubtful that anyone expected N. Trance and Chick & Stew to show up at all.
  • A poster of Megamix appears outside shortly before the fight against N. Gin.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: Crash spends a good quantity of the story singled out as The Chew Toy, Straw Loser and The Friend No One Likes. While this dynamic wasn't unheard of in previous games, it was usually only in instances Crash was being a Comedic Sociopath or Lethally Stupid (eg. Tag Team Racing) and even then slapstick karma would often befall his comrades whenever they themselves got too pompous. Despite attempts to portray Crash as an Insufferable Imbecile however, Crash consistently being a Kindhearted Simpleton and the others being mostly Immune to Slapstick he causes means his only crime is not being as elegant a hero as they are. It doesn't help that Toys For Bob specifically stated they altered Crash's dynamic with the other characters because they wanted them to be "equals".
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The N. Verse mode that was debuted in the August 2020 State of Play is nothing short of breathtaking with numerous Art Shift changes to the levels.

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