I owned BG&E for my GameCube, and I don't remember the camera being as wonky as it is in a few parts of the XBLA port. Maybe it's always been like this and I just forgot, maybe I just didn't notice back in the day, or maybe something got weird in the port to XBLA. Who knows?
That said, I still had a blast playing through the game again, despite the camera issues. Honestly it was only annoying in a few select spots for me. I finished the game to 100% in about 12 hours, but that's only because I knew what I was doing having beat the game a couple of times in the past. A newcomer could probably do the same in about 15 hours or so. The game isn't all that complicated, and the few collectibles can be conveniently marked on your map by purchasing a couple of in-game "detector" items.
Unlike Spike, and a lot of other people around the internet, I absolutely love the stealth sections from BG&E. I wonder if people have just become way too impatient these days or something. These sections are found in parts of the dungeons, and they play out like small puzzles of how to get through a room. None of them are really all that complicated when you take a few seconds to watch the guard patterns. All of these rooms can be done stealthily, but you can also use a little brute force in most of them.
Sometimes I will kick a guard's breathing tank just because I like watching them stumble around for a while before administering a second kick to make them explode. In fact, with a couple of rare exceptions, you can sneak partway into a room, take out one guard, and run back out while the others are alerted. Guards don't respawn, so getting rid of one or two makes things easy as pie. The only trouble come in the rooms with the instant death lasers. Once guards are completely alerted to your presence, these lasers will take you out quickly, but there is a short delay before they fire. So I got through a couple of these rooms with a guard right in front of the exit by kicking him once and then booking it through the door before the lasers could fire. Regardless, the checkpointing is always right where you left off when it comes to these stealth sections, so they are never bad at all.
Compared to something like Thief or Splinter Cell, the stealth in BG&E is rather simple, and I find those parts to be enjoyable. Jade is equipped with a cool glowing stick and a camera that can take photos and shoot little disc things. It's not like she's armed to the teeth. Sneaking around bases to take covert photos of the shenanigans going on there makes more sense than running in with laser guns or something. Shenanigans tend to get canceled in the face of blaster-wielding heroes shooting up the joint.
Minor issues included, I think BG&E is a steal at 800 points/$10 (not to mention you can try it out for free). You get quite a bit of game out of it, and it looks great for a game that is 8 years old. I won't pretend that BG&E is the best game ever made, and I think it being hard to find for a long time made people latch onto it a bit more than if it had been widely available. It is, however, a quality game that has a ton of charm and is one of the better "Zelda clones" out there.
