For me it was at its best when focused on pure platforming. It felt like a spacial puzzle many times. You'd play through a level and collect half of its gems along the way, while mapping it out in your head. Then the real fun started. If instead of calling it a day and leaving at the exit, you decide to stay some more to grab ecery other gem, you find yourself considering the entire map three-dimensionally in your head to consider what can possibly be the best angles to jump and glide from to get to the hard to reach gems. It is the game that best delivered the promise of exploration based 3d platforming in that sense to me. It's superior to SM64 in that aspect (but mario was more fun to control and do acrobatics with). Banjo was not good at anything really. Level design was bloated, controls did the job but didn't feel specially fun, a lot of forced back and forth backtracking that felt like a chore, and overall everything felt excessive, too many diferent types of items to collect, special moves and power ups that were useful only on cery specific contexts... It worked then because it had good graphics and charisma, but the design is terrible.