Donkey Kong: Bananza

 When Super Mario Odyssey came out and I walked away from it a tad empty, I figured I was about done with the 3d Mario team's work. Odyssey basically did everything I wanted: bringing back sandbox level design from Mario 64, giving Mario interesting world aesthetics again to make it actually feel like you're exploring something (to an extreme degree), etc. But it was still kinda, eh, maybe start buying these games when they hit the bargain bin? (which doesn't really exist for Nintendo games anymore). Then Donkey Kong Bananza comes busting through a wall and shakes me down to buy a Switch 2: platformer with destructive terrain, Donkey Kong back in 3d for the first time in ages, and hell even the story sounds pretty compelling? Well, they got me.

Tackling destructible terrain is a pretty far cry from the team's previous work, which basically hyper refined 3d platformers (ie, Mario Galaxy pretty much solved 3d cameras) and generally went for making every area in a game unique (which professional critics who have to beat lengthy games in a couple days love to praise, but also means their mechanics outside of core movement tend to end up shallow and unexplored). Destructible terrain games have been around for awhile at this point, but outside survival crafting games using it in a fairly limited way, is still pretty close to unexplored territory. The result is that Donkey Kong Bananza is not a polished to perfection work like their other games. It has rough edges. It repeats itself, especially in the early game if you're trying to get most of the banana collectables. There are limitations from the tech- you can see through walls in order to make third person mining function at all (which to be clear if you've played Dragon Quest Builders, it's an absolute miracle and straight up programmer flex on par with Galaxy perfecting 3d cameras years ago that Bananza's camera works 95% of the time the way it does), which means you can often peek secrets in the subterranean world quite easily, though the game is designed around that fact.

One of the more interesting elements of taking a design risk comes from seeing the variations in how people respond to it. It's a pretty common complaint that you can just use the sonar and blindly smash through the terrain to get a large portion of the bananas. This is especially true in the early areas, where they kind of count on the fact that a whole lot of players are going to be enthralled just by how digging feels, and as result that's kind of most of what they have to offer. However, these bananas aren't just randomly plopped around the terrain. If you choose not to upgrade the sonar range, you quickly realize most of them have hints in the world. A doorway that's sealed off, a circle of gold hinting to dig down, etc. That's how I played, and while I found plenty of bananas by just randomly sonaring and going "oh" when seeing the directed solution after the fact, another large chunk where found by paying attention to clues. Is it bad they left it so open that some people can make themselves miserable? Maybe the sonar itself is the problem rather than the openness? Maybe it's just bad that there are so gosh darn bananas. All I know is that these kinds of flaws are what makes Bananza rather delightful to me, giving it a sort of gritty texture, compared to hyper refined games that play test so thoroughly that no rough edges are left.

I suppose this direction with hinting might also be my biggest problem with the game. You have basically 3 levels of hint for bananas: the counter/list for a given level, the sonar which highlights everything within a range, and just buying maps that point you directly to them. The levels are quite large, so you basically end up with 5-10 stray bananas towards the end of a level that are virtually impossible to get outside of wandering around or being led directly to them. Some of them are tied to challenges so it doesn't matter, but plenty aren't. While I highly recommend doing the postgame areas, I can't really recommend getting every banana- just find as many as you can and then move on. The process of using the maps after beating the game felt very empty to me. A more localized indicator of how many bananas were in an area probably would have helped (but really, I don't think they even want you to try to find them all).

Bananza is a curious thing in relation to its predecessors in Rare's Donkey Kong Country trilogy. They try to mimic quite a bit of Rare's style by slappin' googly eyes on things (in this case, rocks). Which is weird when you think about it since that style was Rare's house style for platformers more broadly, not just Donkey Kong. At the same time they can't quite mimic snarky British humor, so they don't really try (which is a shame when it comes to Cranky Kong). They do understand part of the appeal of the Country games was the music, and while they sure don't match David Wise's legendary work, they do allow for some quieter more atmospheric pieces (I do absolutely love the Fractone's theme, though, especially its final variation). Game wise they don't even attempt to go for Country's control style which I'd call "slightly weighty platformer", Donkey Kong pretty much just controls like recent Mario games, with a little more limited movement chaining techniques but a stronger emphasis on punching stuff (and dang does punching stuff feel good when pieces go flying off enemies who are destructible terrain themselves, even if they fail to ever be much of a threat). This is a pretty rambly paragraph, so let's just roll with it. The new Donkey Kong visual design is great. I could have done without the level with disgusting green snot and meat-looking terrain palette (is that a Rare thing too? I have no idea what Donkey Kong Country 3 got up to, though I'd wager Conker did gross out stuff).

 Where it really excels for me, and where Odyssey failed (or wasn't going for), is making the underground world actually feel like exploring a place. The aforementioned googly eye living rocks are the glue that holds it all together, as the only NPC type that appears on almost every level. First, they just rock. Their designs are adorable. The musical sounds they make are great and their general musical theme is lovely- shapeshifting in time to music, and their theme song which appears with numerous variations which further establishes the connection between places. Making indestructible regenerating NPCs that you can freely rip apart in a game about destructible terrain is great (yet they also take the time to establish that the villain being able to immobilize immortal beings for all eternity still gives them stakes). One of them is also an explorer who went on the same journey to the core as you're taking now in the distant past, leaving behind notes that give even more connective tissue and insight into the world's history. My favorite little detail is just seeing them try to mimic the other animals on a given floor by shape shifting into crude two dimensional versions of them (something they even end up playing off of in a sad little detail you might never even notice). I have spent a very long time gushing about them, but the reality is that most of these things are pretty low key details that most players won't even consciously notice. But it makes such a huge difference.

I suppose I have to double back to the game itself. The first several areas can get kind of repetitive on account of them banking really hard on the digging (which does feel great, but is also somewhat one note if you're going hard on trying to find everything). As the game goes on, they slowly dial that back towards more platformy bits with a bit less destruction. In particular they play around with the concept of things being made out of materials and having varying reactions. The technical nature of this means it doesn't really have the same concentration of constantly changing gimmicks the way more recent Mario games have gone, but it does mean they spend more time on each thing. You also get several transformation powers which... end up slightly underutilizied, often it's not until the postgame that they really make you use parts of them. My favorite segment in particular is a small part of one of the later levels where you have to fight enemies on rather thin floating chambers while making sure all the explosions going on doesn't result in you falling- it's a rare portion where it feels like all of the elements (combat, destruction, platforming) are coming together at once. Most of the game doesn't feel quite so cohesive, but it's still pretty fun. The combat in particular feels amazing (which is saying something, I tend to think of combat injected into 3d platformers as a rather extraneous element they'd be better off without), but even when not upgrading your health for extra challenge, it doesn't quite seem like a complete mechanic. (That said I deeply appreciate being able to not upgrade your health- while it doesn't impact regular roaming much, I found a few of the late game bosses far more compelling for it- the final boss especially required me to actually figure out entirely optional interactions in order to get the edge and it could easily feel like a boring slog if you had enough health to just face tank the thing).

Let's take a moment to talk about the story. Donkey Kong and a young Pauline end up sealed in an underground world and have to go all the way to the planet core to get back home. Along the way Pauline has to get over stage fright so she can use her singing to power up Donkey Kong in various ways. Most of this relationship ends up in the form of Pauline talking to DK while walking around, or dozens of little conversations (is it a conversation when DK can't talk?) when resting. It's a good dynamic, but it doesn't quite feel like a story actually happens here. Pauline just naturally gets over her stage fright over the course of the game by singing a lot, so the actual ending seems uh kind of unrelated to her. Ah, well, it's good flavor regardless.

 So should you play Donkey Kong: Bananza? Honestly I'm not entirely sure how much I enjoyed it. I played it at a weird time for myself. I... think it was really good? It certainly got dull in parts (entirely avoidable if you don't try to get everything). But maybe it was just the perfect time for me to play something a bit mindless (though some of those postgame areas are really clever, holy crap, if you do play it don't just shut it off after the ending you have to see some of that stuff it's not all great but parts of it really are). Well, I think it's an interesting piece- a game that's imperfect by nature of trying to do something technically challenging with a lot of unexplored design space, being taken on by a team known for making highly refined work. It has quite a bit of unrefined crunchiness as a result (while still being very polished), and I adore the understated world building. If you're gonna buy a Switch 2, you should probably play it, but I dunno that it's so good that it justifies buying one by itself.

Ihatovo Monogatari

Ihatovo Monogatari is an adventure game released for the Super Famicom in 1993, and translated in 2008 by fans. You find yourself in the shoes of an unnamed traveler visiting the small agricultural village of Ihatovo, getting wrapped up in collecting the journals of the famous Real Life author Kenji Miyazawa by engaging in retellings of his fairytale-esque stories.

I say adventure game, but in practice it plays like an RPG with only the town segments. Each chapter will have you talking to every villager in the central town, then visit the area unique to that chapter and talking to everyone there, and then going between the two areas in a more focused manner a few times to solve it. You have an inventory, but pretty much every time you use it is very well broadcasted in the dialogue. There's perhaps a single puzzle that demands more thought than talking to everyone. Sometimes the critical path will get muddled, but talking to everyone is generally the solution (though you'll learn who the hint NPCs are so after the first pass of the chapter there's generally not that much directionless wandering).

 The end result is, well, kind of delightfully meditative. While most of the soundtrack consists of public domain music, the main town theme seems to be original and compliments the chill with a hint of melancholy theme. Time passes between every chapter, so you get to know each of the NPCs over the course of the game and sometimes solutions to the next chapter are hinted upon in the previous (even just discovering which villagers are connected to which when they end up moving around between chapters can be fun) giving everything a connected feel even though the main stars of each chapter are mostly self-contained. You certainly don't want to binge the game since each chapter is very similar to play, but taken a chapter a day makes for the perfect break game. If I had a critique it's probably just a shame that it isn't a different game that goes all-in on making the repeating NPCs the stars of each chapter.

 Should you play Ihatovo Monogatari? If you're exhausted and can't mentally deal with a demanding game but still have an hour a day to burn, then absolutely.

Metaphor: ReFantazio

It might be simpler to review this game by micro reviewing its "franchise" as a whole first.

Persona 3: Not the first game to mix dating sim time management with RPG, but certainly the defining flashpoint. What I adore about this game is that it has a strong sense of making your party separate characters from you as a player: you cannot give direct commands in combat, if you want to more easily grind in an area you can order them to run around the dungeon on their own and jump into any encounters if they get in trouble, they'll complain that they don't like how the equipment you gave them looks, etc. As an extension of this they're also far more distant from you than the rest of the series- rather than being your friend by default, they're more like co-workers. You can become friends only if you choose to.

The series would immediately move away from these elements because not having control over characters in a difficult turn based RPG is, in fact, a huge pain in the ass. But I also think it's the tip of an unexplored iceberg in games.

It also goes much harder on the time management element- fatigue is an unavoidable status effect that forces the player to take breaks from the dungeon. I actually think this part is rather unfortunate that they moved away from, because it gives the game a much better pacing- later entries instead just make MP recovery the limiting factor that eventually becomes irrelevant as the game goes on and gives you more options, turning the meta of time optimization into just doing every dungeon in one day, which can drag when dungeons are so long (though I have no idea what a perfect run of Persona 3 looks like, maybe it's a miserable exercise in doing dungeons in one day with sick party members so they removed it for the sake of perfectionists). 

Later remakes and ports would gradually remove these controversial elements, but as a result I see a lot of first time players wondering why the game was ever a big deal. And they're right to do so, without all the friction and the novelty of innovation all you're left with is a writing formula that the team got dramatically better at.

Persona 4: Summer nostalgia fiction seems to be a bit of a thing in Japan, the most defining one in video games being Boku no Natsuyasumi- a game that is strictly about a boy's one summer vacation and how you decide to spend it. While Persona 4 technically encompasses most of a year, its yellow color scheme, premise of the protagonist having to spend a year with relatives in small town Japan, and pop flavored music evokes summer way too hard for that not to be the intention. It also nails it.

In general it's a stone cold must play classic. The warm vibes you get from the cast of characters are second to none. I was too dumb to solve the murder mystery because my brain could not trust a story with supernatural elements not to introduce new rules out of nowhere, but the game does not actually betray your trust. Thematically it also has some interesting things to say.

Not necessarily flawless in that dungeons are still randomly generated empty corridors that are basically just there for battles to get in your way, but having theming that's relevant to the plot goes a long way. The battle system remains largely about using elemental weaknesses to prevent enemies from actually getting any turns, which can get repetitive in a long game, but it's still short enough at 60 hours that it isn't really a problem.

Persona 5: This game is an interesting case study. On paper it fixes every problem with Persona 4 while vastly increasing the production value. Every dungeon is now hand crafted with gimmicks and other variations. Bosses have more elaborate mechanics. The menus are not only the prettiest, slickest menus ever put in a video game, but they're also insanely snappy letting you button through battles as fast as you want. The plot has the supernatural elements interact more directly with the world than ever before and it's interesting in a way that raises the stakes. The same warmth in the main cast from Persona 4 appears again.

And yet it kind of falls short as a whole. That warmth feels like a hollow imitation of Persona 4 considering the drastically different city setting with the kids going through much harsher things. It also raises the length to 100 hours without actually adding much depth to the combat, so it really wears out its welcome. Perhaps the wait being so long that I beat the previous games after its announcement and still had years to go is part of too high of expectations. But it's kind of the best made yet also most disappointing game.