YMMV / Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble!

• Alternative Character Interpretation: It's been noted that all of the artwork for the bosses and mooks feature them sporting bloodshot eyes similar to K. Rool's, with some people wondering if this was a deliberate addition to hint that K. Rool had them all brainwashed like he did with Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong.
• Ass Pull: K. Rool seemingly imprisoning the Banana Bird Queen with magic can come off as this considering his blatant scientific theme in this game.
• Awesome Music: See here.
• Best Level Ever: Rocket Barrel Ride is a simply breathtaking scale up a humongous waterfall with multiple usages of Cave Behind the Falls, coupled with the beautiful track of Cascade Capers.
• Breather Level: Most of the levels in Krematoa are brutal, but the second level, Criss Kross Cliffs, is fairly standard. It's sandwiched between Stampede Sprint and Tyrant Twin Tussle, which are far more difficult.
• Broken Base: Is the original SNES soundtrack by Eveline Fischer (which is a departure from the first two games' soundtracks by being more atmospheric and less energetic) or the re-done Game Boy Advance soundtrack by David Wise (which is closer to the series' usual style, but has less songs and works off the GBA's weak sound chip) superior?
• Catharsis Factor: Given how much of a prick Cranky is in this game, it's remarkably satisfying to beat him over and over at Swanky's Sideshow.
• Contested Sequel: While it does have its fans, some feel that it's a disappointment compared to Diddy's Kong Quest. Some of the complaints, such as its considerably Lighter and Softer tone and Eveline Fischer's music, are purely aesthetic. Others, such as its heavy reliance on Gimmick Levels and fetch quests for the Brothers Bear, are more gameplay-focused.
• Critical Backlash: Kiddy Kong may be considered a widely unpopular character, but there are many fans who don't understand why he's so hated all the time. He has the ability to throw Dixie up higher places, he can carry and throw barrels better than Dixie can, and to some people, he is somewhat cute in appearance.
• Cult Classic: Donkey Kong Country 3 is largely ignored in favor of the first two games of the DKC trilogy, and even for the Nintendo 64, due to it introducing 3D gaming in Super Mario 64 and many players moving to it. But the game has its fans in spite of its flaws from those who did play it.
• Demonic Spiders: Kuff 'n' Klout. While only appearing in three levels, they prove to be absolutely no pushover, as they're immune to anything besides barrels and Squitter's webs, killing one will provoke the other to barge you down, and their patterns are sometimes impossible to predict.
• Difficulty Spike: Lake Orangatanga and Kremwood Forest are easy peasy. Cotton-Top Cove? A smidge harder. Mekanos, meanwhile, is where the game stops having fun with you in order to tear you apart (literally in the case of Ripsaw Rage).
• Memetic Mutation: Gormless Kong ^ExplanationDuring a Vinesauce livestream of the game, a member in the Twitch chat complained about Kiddy Kong's "gormless" face. Vinny and the rest of the chat immediately latched onto this, both because it's a perfect description of Kiddy Kong's dopey, wide-mouthed expression and because the word itself is hilarious.
• Nightmare Fuel: The underwater music in the SNES version may be quite creepy for your taste, or just plain beautiful. It becomes more jarring in the level Floodlit Fish, where whenever you hit a Gleamin' Bream, a creepy sound effect (like moaning monks) accompanies the music.
• Paranoia Fuel: Fish Food Frenzy cranks the paranoia levels up to absurd degrees. Dixie and Kiddy spend the entire level being stalked by a Nibbla, and they need to continuously keep it fed lest it eats them. However, eating a Lurchin also makes the Nibbla progressively angrier, so the Kongs have to be very careful with their movements.
• Replacement Scrappy:
  • Kiddy Kong is one for Donkey Kong, given that he plays almost exactly the same as Donkey Kong and the justification for his inclusion is that Donkey Kong was easily captured, again, no longer being playable in the game where his name is in the title, again.
  • Quite a few people were annoyed that Rambi the Rhino was replaced by Ellie the Elephant. While Rambi is enjoyable to play by prospect of being incredibly destructive and fearless, Ellie is slower and based around moving barrels and shooting water, and has to deal with her fear of rats in the puzzle level Murky Mill and the difficult autoscroller Stampede Sprint.
  • The Buzzes are Suspiciously Similar Substitutes for the Zingers from the first two games, and they're not nearly as memorable.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: While still lacking the powerhouse factor, Ellie is a lot more bearable to play in Donkey Kong Land 3, where she has the ability to shoot water at all times, and has none of the annoying barrel or mice puzzles to put up with.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Most of the Bonus Stages aren't too bad and generally can be handled by a fairly competent player. However, the "Grab 15 Bananas" Bonuses quickly fall into this category as the bananas appear randomly in the area, stay on screen for a brief second which is both too quick if you don't react quickly, and yet too long if you don't make a beeline to it and grab it immediately (typically as a result of trying to figure out where the single banana even appeared in the first place, which can sometimes take a second to locate and then react to) as the next banana won't appear until it's cleared, either by being grabbed or it disappearing on its own. And with each one of these stages that occurs further out into the adventure, the increased dangers can make them a headache to complete without messing up, especially if you find you're taking too long and need to hurry up before the overall timer expires. A balance of being patient but reacting quickly is key to winning these without screwing up and having to do it all over again.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike: The previous game was already a step up from the first one, and this game is a leap up from that one. This game contains a variety of Gimmick Levels and many of the final levels in the game are considered to be the hardest in the entire trilogy.
• Sidetracked by the Gold Saucer: Swanky's Sideshow is an utterly addicting minigame that offers up copious amounts of bananas, extra lives and Bear Coins for winning, plus getting the satisfaction of beating Cranky at his own game.
• Special Effect Failure: The GBA remake adds a new boss named Kroctopus, and like Kerosene from the Diddy's Kong Quest remake, it looks somewhat out-of-place thanks to its sprite looking much more like a clay model.
• Suspiciously Similar Song:
  • Part of the song "Nuts and Bolts", which is played in the factory levels, sounds similar to Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir".
  • The GBA version of "Rockface Rumble" bears a resemblance to "Sweet Home Alabama".
  • "Frosty Frolics" sounds similar to the The Transformers season 1 theme.
  • Even though the underwater levels have been given a remix of "Aquatic Ambience" in the GBA version, the start of the song sounds like the opening tune heard in the infamous internet shock video, "Two Girls, One Cup," due to the instrumentation.
  • When you enter Wrinkly's Save Cave, on occasion Wrinkly will be playing her Nintendo 64, as evidenced by the music being an Expy of the Super Mario 64 "Inside the Castle Walls" theme^note note they are not the same pieces of music: compare the original theme here and the DKC3 version here.
  • Also in Wrinkly's Cave, sometimes she will be sleeping, and the Background Music will be the baseline from the "Jungle Hijinx" tune from the first game.
  • The mill music, appropriately named "Mill Fever", is based on "Fever" by Peggy Lee.
• That One Level: Just like the first two Donkey Kong Country games, this game isn't without them.
  • Ripsaw Rage in Mekanos and Kong-Fused Cliffs in Razor Ridge are auto-scrolling levels, which were uncommon in the first two games (mostly restricted to the Minecart Madness stages). The former features a rising bandsaw that cuts upwards through the trees, and can easily catch the Kongs with its back-and-forth motion if they don't move fast enough. The second has the Kongs climbing up burning ropes, and has less platforming but makes up for it with the lack of space to see and dodge incoming enemies.
  • Buzzer Barrage in Razor Ridge is the second and final Quawks level. Quawks is tougher to play as than Squawks because he can only hurt enemies with barrels, and his level is very long by the game's standards, making deaths costly. It's also far too easy to ram into a Kopter that was just offscreen thanks to their unusual behavior of not despawning when they go far enough offscreen.
  • Lightning Look-Out in Kaos Kore has lightning strikes that come just one step ahead in the direction that you're going, as if it's predicting your movements. There is a warning flash before each one, but too soon before; you need super-fast reflexes to respond whenever you can (and sometimes you can't). Don't even try hiding in the water either, you'll get electrocuted (naturally there's a Bonus Barrel in the water).
  • Koindozer Klamber, the second-to-last level in Kaos Kore, especially if you've lost Dixie at any point. The Koins will very quickly chase you and knock you forward into a pit, and there's nothing you can do if you get pushed so much as once. Beating the level requires you to make extremely precise jumps onto Koin's shields, which is harder than it sounds — any further than the very centre will get you pushed into a pit. They also happen to be placed on tiny, barely reachable platforms. Enjoy!
  • The final level before the initial final boss, Poisonous Pipeline, reverses your directional controls, causing an already iffy water level to be that much worse.
  • Stampede Sprint in Krematoa requires you to escort an out-of-control running Ellie to the end of the level while Parry the Parallel Bird flies overhead. If you want 100% Completion, the Escort Mission has no room for error, because if Parry gets hit, he's lost for the level (and so is his Bonus Barrel), unless you restart. There's plenty of Buzzes around the level for Parry to get hit by if you don't time your jumps right. Lose said bonus stage and you have to do the entire damn level all over again for another shot. Have fun!
  • Rocket Rush, also in Krematoa as well as the last level of the entire game. You have to get used to controlling a rocket-barrel that explodes if it runs out of fuel, costing you a life. The second half of the level switches to ascending instead of descending, and requires memorizing when to avoid the rock formations with absolutely fast reflexes. If you bump into a rock even once, you're likely going to lose a life. Meanwhile, the GBA version features several changes; the second half actually gives you fuel barrels, but as if to make up for it, the only checkpoint of the level is removed, and the first half no longer gives the bottom of the rocket invincibility against the Buzzes, making parts of it require insanely precise timing and movement.
  • Barrel Drop Bounce isn't hard, but it is frustrating. It's a very vertical level, requiring the player to jump on barrels in order to ascend up a giant waterfall. The trouble is that the SNES can't handle the graphics here, so there's a lot of lag and slowdown, which is downright annoying at the best of times. However, because this causes the game to lag, it doesn't spawn the descending barrels with enough frequency to keep efficiently climbing. One of the Bonus Stages even requires such a barrel to reach it, which may not even spawn correctly, making the player miss it through no fault of their own. There aren't any Bottomless Pits except for all the way down at the bottom, meaning that falling will necessitate climbing all the way back up the hard way. In such a situation, losing a life would probably be preferable to that. Whether or not you're going for 100% Completion, it's a bothersome experience made worse by technical shortcomings in the original version.
  • The racing minigame with the Turbo Ski in the GBA version. All of the minigames added to the GBA version are annoying, but this one is especially bad. You have to do three laps around a fairly long track with the Turbo Ski, and hitting either the Kremling boats who are racing you or any of the walls decreases your health meter (and you often can't even tell when it's registering you hitting a wall, because it doesn't play a sound effect for it). If that runs out, you sink and fail the minigame. And you will fail many times.
• That One Sidequest: Stampede Sprint's third Bonus Barrel requires you to successfully escort Parry to the end and take him across the No Parry sign. The problem is, this is a very fast Auto-Scrolling Level, and it's all too easy to lose him, forcing a restart. Then, the bonus level itself isn't too bad, you just need to use Parry to grab 15 green bananas while keeping him away from the red Buzz in the center of the screen. If you are careless enough to hit the Buzz, the game will not give you another shot and you have to redo the entire level.
• Tough Act to Follow: The game is seen as a worthy entry in the series as well as a solid platformer. However, as a direct follow up to Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest, it was seen as a disappointing sequel on release, especially due to launching after Super Mario 64 popularized 3D Platformers, making the game seem outdated by comparison. The game's reception improved over time, though even today it still lives in the shadow of Diddy's Kong Quest and is a Contested Sequel.
• Underused Game Mechanic:
  • Kiddy's buddy-toss with Dixie works like it did for both Kongs in Diddy's Kong Quest, but if Dixie tosses Kiddy, he slams into the ground and potentially breaks the floor to reveal hidden items. The amount of secrets hidden behind this is few, and the amount of important secrets is even fewer; you need it in the first level to reach a bonus barrel and then never again.
  • Kiddy can skip across water by rolling forward and jumping when he touches the surface. This gets a bit more use than the ground slam, but it's still pretty situational, and the game mostly forgets about it after Cotton-Top Cove.
  • Kremwood Forest features a Speed Run Reward for its "quest", where you need to beat Brash's time on Riverside Race to open up the world's Simon Cave. This is the only speedrun challenge in the game, and every other Brothers Bear task is a Fetch Quest. Becomes ascended to a semi-normal gameplay feature at the end of Donkey Kong Land 3 where a full time trial mode is unlocked for 12 of the levels.

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