I just finished replaying the original on my N64 for the first time in 20 years, and so I thought that I would give you a short review if you are interested. Note that there might be some possible very light spoilers but I have tried to avoid anything too specific.
The game overall still holds up fairly well. The controls are great and the presence of Kazooie adds a really interesting a new dimension on the platforming introduced in Mario 64. Rare made some nice improvements to the camera struggle that Mario 64 had, although it can still be a problem at times. The soundtrack is really distinctive and catchy: it will get stuck in your head for days afterwards. The final boss fight is the best part of the game, in my opinion. Rare really knew how to nail boss fights, both this game and DK64 go down in my view as some of the best final boss fights in gaming history, in my opinion. My big complaint with the game (compared to Mario 64), though, is the collect-athon aspect. For me, this reached a pinnacle on the last level, you need to collect 100 notes, 10 jiggies, 2 hollow honey combs, 5 jinjos, 15 or so worms, 5+ acorns, Mumbo tokens, Grunty Switch, etc. and much of it needs to be done without dying once (which makes having multiple lives basically a pointless thing). I just thought that Mario 64 struck a bit better balance here. BK, in the later levels, really doesn't lend itself to short play sessions since you will basically have to replay entire levels if you stop short of 100 notes for any reason (assuming that you want to 100% the level). That said, I am sure that this is remedied in the Nintendo Switch Online version with the use of save states.
BK is loaded with humor of the western (and sometimes clearly British) persuasion, which is an interesting change of pace for a Nintendo game in 2022. This is good in that you don't need to put yourself into "anime-mode" and try to see through the lense of a localization team to fully get the jokes since you are playing the game in its original language. That said, while the jokes can be pretty funny at times, some of it is fairly childish now that I am playing it as an adult (lots of "smelly socks" and "booger" stories told about Grunty, which (slight spoiler) you actually need to read AND remember for something in the latter part of the game). I do find that Japanese youth entertainment (eg. Pokemon, Mario, etc.) tends to scale to older audiences a bit better than most western youth entertainment does and sometimes it is easy to take that for granted. You will probably feel a bit awkward at times playing BK as an adult, more so than if you play Mario 64 or Sunshine.
That said, the gameplay, platforming and puzzles can be pretty grueling. I would not classify this as a kids game in terms of the difficulty. It just shows how hardcore games were back in the 90's. It will challenge you as an adult. It took me almost 20 hours to 100% this game on this most recent play-through. That said, the resolutions to a lot of the hardest parts of the game still came back to me even though it has been 20 years. If this was a fresh playthrough of a game that I have never played before, it probably would have taken me at least 25 hours (maybe even 30) and I probably would have needed to check a walkthrough on at least a couple of occasions.
Verdict: Overall, BK is a pretty decent game and worth playing through as a gamer in 2022 (4 out of 5): great controls, outstanding graphics for the N64, great soundtrack, enjoyable and very memorable final boss battle. Downsides are: a bit too much focus on collecting, humor at times can make it not quite as accessible to an adult audience as most of Ninty's other games, camera (while better than in Mario 64) can still make platforming difficult at times.
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