Yooka-Laylee official artwork

As you're probably well aware by now Yooka-Laylee launched with some rather unfortunate issues. The camera was slow and inconsistent, most of the transformations completely impossible to control, the 'dialogue' assaulted your eardrums without the ability to skip it quickly, and the first boss was by far and wide the most annoying enemy to fight in the entire game due to all of the previously mentioned issues.

Thankfully, the newly released update boasts fixes and improvements to most of the problems I encountered during my review! The overall patch notes are fairly short and concise, so allow me to list them out for you along with a couple of highlights if you just want to know the important stuff: 

Brand new pause menu music

• New optional camera mode with minimal assist

Pagies have added signposts to Hivory Towers to help guide players to new worlds

Design tweaks to all arcade games

Speed improvement to scrolling through Totals Menu

New option for shorter ‘gibberish’ voice sound FX

New speech volume option

New ability to speed through dialogue by holding Y

Cut-scenes can now be skipped with Y

New moves section added to pause menu, with image guide

Camera design improvements throughout game (less scripted cameras, door cams now appear behind player etc)

Restart option added in the pause menu during arcade games and Kartos challenges

‘Sonar-able’ objects now have more clear visual identity

Laser move no longer requires player to crouch

Minecart control improvements and new visual effects

• Transformation control improvements

Improved first-person aiming controls

New first-person aiming control options added

Improved flying controls

When transformed, collecting butterflies now restores energy

Hunter tonic now tracks the last 30 Quills and Casino Tokens, in addition to the Health and Power Extenders. It will also whistle at the location of the closest rare collectable.

Health UI is now always visible when low

Design tweaks in various areas (Black Hole in One, Gloomy Gem Grotto etc)

New icons added for keyboard/mouse controls

Arcade games now support per player control settings, such as vibration, inverted aim and sensitivity

Improved Rampo boss fight

Added PC Display Settings to the in-game pause menu

Performance improvements

Audio improvements

On the other hand, if you're interested in all of the minor details and bug fixes you will find the full patch notes over at the official website. As for whether this update has managed to achieve what it set out to do, that I can't tell you personally as I haven't tested it just yet, but from what I've seen online its definitely a major step in the right direction. So if you're interested in Yooka-Laylee, but held off from buying it due to the aforementioned issues, it might be worth giving it a second look now that its 25% off on Steam.