See, thing about DK64 was that it became confusing. There was too much to collect. If they had have cut out all that blueprint crap, and the bananas, and made it a little easier to track down which golden bananas one had already got (because 201 golden bananas is a helluva lot to collect), then it would have been totally almost better than banjo-kazooie. Had they made the levels more platformy, and less explory, then it would have been > banjo-kazooie.
but perhaps this is all just my personal taste in games. what we cann all agree on is that both games are A grade games, amirite?