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.
