The ending of Banjo-Kazooie fairly strongly hinted that there would be a sequel. In fact, it outright showed some pictures and told you that the stuff in them will be in the next game. One of the things in the ending that was really intriguing, at least to me, was that there were some items in the first game that were completely unaccessible, but the ending showed clips of Banjo collecting them, hinting that they would be used somehow in the next game.
A couple of years later I bought the sequel, eagerly anticipating getting the tantalizingly out of reach items from the first game and then somehow use them for goodies in the second game, but it was not to be. The feature was axed from the game, and without any word from the developers nobody really knows what the plan was or what kind of things were to be unlocked. Ah well.
It turns out, however, that the second game in the series is fun in its own right, so that lessened the blow considerably.
Banjo-Tooie is a lot like the first game. You take control of a bear and the bird that lives in his backpack and have to get puzzle pieces to progress, sometimes getting transformed into various creatures to do so, and the story culminates with a battle with Gruntilda (the villain of the first game) and her sisters. Only this time the duo can separate, gaining new moves, and you can occasionally control Mumbo (the witch doctor from the first game).
Oh, and occasionally you get into an area where the bear wields the bird like a shotgun, shooting eggs from her mouth. Which I found to be kind of out of place, but not off-puttingly so.
I liked this game about as much as I did the first one, and was pretty disappointed that Rare kind of quit making this series (though rumblings of a third game are starting to make the rounds). And if the only problem that I can find is that it didn’t link up with its predecessor like it was supposed to, then I’d say that’s pretty minor and still a winner.