The issue with Glover gameplay-wise compared to a good few other N64 games is that it's basically PURELY a game, architecturally speaking. Compare the levels to Gex, Mario, Donkey Kong, Banjo Kazooie, and you'll notice that Glover for the most part is empty space and weird twists and turns. At least by comparison to the others. I think it's most noticeable in the carnival level. There's set pieces but they're kind of just strewn about; had the level design been better to accommodate the well designed platforms it'd be much nicer to play through.
And if they just didn't do the dumb control reversal. I get why they did it, but it's still dumb.