Board 8 > Donkey Kong Bananza Review Zone

(+) Yeah! (+)

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JackMan posted...

I really wish this game was harder. I'm having fun enough, but I'm at layer 400 and I haven't had any difficulties. The bosses so far have all been especially easy.

Yep, this is my only real criticism so far

Bosses are pretty whack yeah - I beat a "major" one just now in less than 10 seconds and they literally didn't get a chance to do a single attack or even move. Easy to forgive when the rest of the gameplay is so fantastic but I do wish some of these awesome mechanics could be tested/showcased with an actually challenging boss.

Bosses do get better later, but that's relative to the earlier ones. I feel like they should be capable of better with this game.

the bosses suck but as of level 500 the ice and fire stuff is starting to challenge me some

but maybe I also suck lol

Personally Im glad they didnt just do Rule or Three for the boss fights

Well, I agree that as of Layer 500, the levels themselves are getting a bit more challenging, but the bosses are still rubbish. The Ostrich boss was initially promising, with these windy paths with thorns and moving hazards you had to dodge, but then you just use the Ostrich power to fly over everything and it's another 30 second boss.

The zebra level might have had good bosses, unfortunately I sequence broke the game a bit and all the bosses disappeared, whoops.

only boss I had some trouble with was the last boss but I think I might have been doing it wrong (?)

before that bosses were easy but they became literally 0 effort when I had a second player. 2P just spams the pauline shout, doesn't even need an element, and it will sometimes stunlock the bosses while you just nail them in the dick over and over

I don't know if it's true here, but Nintendo has a long history of making easy games with a few challenging post game levels and I just hope it's the same here. I'm only at SL300 but I'm having a blast.

I briefly did one of the first postgame levels and I wouldn't say it's hard but it's not easy.

If it didnt have checkpoints, Id be willing to call the one I did hard

ctesjbuvf posted...

I don't know if it's true here, but Nintendo has a long history of making easy games with a few challenging post game levels and I just hope it's the same here. I'm only at SL300 but I'm having a blast.

I'm not surprised that a game that's flagshipping a system has no real difficulty. They don't want to make the kids work for it.

My nephew would gladly play a game that beat itself for him.

Yeah me neither and I don't really mind it either. I appreciate games where everybody can see the credits and those of us that want a challenge can find it as well.

I dunno, a game where you can basically destroy anything seemed like it would be pretty easy to me

Ive decided that the controls for Zebra Bananza are bad. I dont mean how its hard to turn when running fast, thats fine. I mean the mechanics of how to initiate the Charge Dash and maintain it

I'm about to leave layer 300 and really just not having fun so far. I enjoyed Odyssey a lot and I was really looking forward to this game but it's a little too mindless for me. Like you'll see some platforming challenge that looks interesting but then you can just punch through a wall and bypass the whole thing.

And then you find a banana by doing that and it's like the game is rewarding you for skipping the levels they're designing for you. It's really confusing to me to spend time creating levels but also just let the player completely skip it sometimes too.

The novelty of punching through endless terrain has already worn out for me too.

I'm really trying to find the appeal because I was so excited for this game but I can't find the fun everyone else seems to be having. It feels like I'm playing Odyssey and 90% of the stars are the ones where you randomly ground pound sections of the map.

That being said the game is very charming and polished but it's feeling like a chore to play so far.

What are you guys enjoying so far that I'm missing?

Coming into the game with the major worry that DK's moveset would trivialize level design, the main fun that I have is in how densely littered everything is within the game. Donkey Kong is absolutely too strong for the world around him, and every Bananza transformation or new level gimmick does not so much give you a constructed challenge but a way to even further destroy the level design. And a lot of stages KNOW that and add further gimmicks exclusive to them that give you mobility and platforming arrangements that would be frankly absurd. I liken Bananza's movement more to something like a Spider-Man game; the area and level design around you is more there to facilitate the strength of the basic movement rather than a constructed challenge around it, with Bananza then escalating that going "ok here is a new toy, break this now" with every layer. Progression exists for the sake of getting bananas so that DK becomes stronger so he can then break it more.

I will say that around 500F is when it all REALLY started to click for me, but the sheer novelty went a long way and stimulated my mind like nothing else. Though I'll gladly say DK is my favorite series regardless, so my propensity to TRY to like the game is probably higher than most.

skullbone posted...

What are you guys enjoying so far that I'm missing?

Almost every layer beyond the first handful adds some new terrain type that you can interact with in a novel way

Also you can simply choose not to bypass the platforming challenge by destroying terrain if you find doing so to not be fun

I'd say it's more of a dazzling audio/visual experience than a game.

BUT, that experience is an insanely impressive one! It's constantly making my jaw drop. The physics, sfx, and vfx.

Wish the music was better, have to admit.

I knew this game would be Odyssey 2 but there's even more Odyssey here than I thought there would be. The layers are basically kingdoms. You've got costume shops in each level that use unique currencies. You've got buttons that you press to trigger timed challenges. There are doors that lead to self-contained challenges that have multiple stars- I mean moons- I mean bananas.

Also it's a bit weird that bananas don't seem to be tied to any sort of main story progression. As a lark, I skipped over as many in the tutorial as I could to see when the game would finally start requiring me to collect them. I'm just playing chicken with the game and it hasn't actually happened yet.

Hit credits last night. Fun game, but still way too easy overall and all of the bosses were bad, except for the last one. You're just too overpowered too soon and can just literally strong arm your way through every mechanic. It starts getting a bit trickier as they introduce more hazards, but then the elephant power drops it back down again. The last level was pretty rough though, so I'm hoping that's a sign of things to come in the post-game.

I just got the elephant power and it's so good

I'd rather be way overpowered and dunk on everything than struggle to explore to my hearts content

I just want a balance. Even if the little side challenges were actually challenging, I'd be happy.

I kinda wish the portal levels were more difficult. But I have also long affected that family games aren't gonna be hard for me unless they do some more difficult postgame stuff and Nintendo is generally pretty good at giving me that so it's a fine compromise as long as I'm having fun with the game.

I have been a good bit busy, so I've still got a while.

to use a word from Tim Rogers

The final boss fight of Donkey Kong Bananza might not be the most difficult fight, but it is the most luxurious final boss fight I've ever seen in a Nintendo game

The final boss gave me exactly what I was craving from the game while also being extremely fucking awesome

Legit maybe one of the best final stretches of any Nintendo game

Still thinking about the ending to Bananza a day later

It's been awhile since a game has nailed the landing so hard

Okay, 100%ed. The post-game was more the level of difficulty I wanted. Just wish there was more of it.

I should finish 100% today just got a few more bananas until I hit 1000

Then secret ending I hear I don't know how much is different

SHINE_GET_64 posted...

Still thinking about the ending to Bananza a day later

It's been awhile since a game has nailed the landing so hard

Definitely thought about it for like 3 days straight afterwards. And yep, one of my favorite game endings ever for sure

Set aside a bunch of time to play Iwakaura Aria today, before realizing it was just a preinstall and the game isn't out for several days.

So I caved.

Monkey.

oh banana

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I beat the last boss today. Great game! It'll probly go into my top 20.

Here's some thoughts, mostly negative for some reason.

Yeah good last boss, didn't quite live up to the gigantic hype I've been hearing everywhere, but it still came surprisingly close, I definitely had a very good time. (But, I thought I was going to be witnessing some playfully brilliant physics miracle, or something, by the sound of all the hype. But no, it was just a fun sequence that fit the game really well.)

I do think the game dragged on a bit. I suppose it's possibly a bit my fault for lingering in early parts of the game too long, savoring the digging and collecting too much, not realizing how much game was still ahead of me. By the time I was in like 800 or 900 I was kinda ready for the end.

Maybe I'm used to Odyssey where each kingdom introduced so many new captures to play with, and this just isn't that game, it's a different thing.

But still, that was a LOT of layers. The final layer felt unnecessary. I would have cut that one entirely (the core layer) and maybe just reduce it to be just a boss fight, that's it. Maybe cut the 2nd-last layer too (forbidden layer).

There were a lot of layers that were too long. I don't think any layer needed sublayers. Almost all my favorite layers were the ones that were super duper short, like (landfill layer) and (racing layer) and (groove layer). Just show me a cool gimmicky layer, and lemme move on to the next gimmicky layer--that keeps me interested. (Admittedly I did love the feast layer and that one is pretty big.)

I also think the game had too many moments where there was basically no music playing. Why is this such a common thing with modern games now? Please play good music at all times. Do you think you're making a horror game or something? Music is like 75% of why I play video games.

...

OK besides all that though, it's a supremely satisfying, stunningly beautiful, mind-blowing technological marvel, that's doing a lot of things I didn't think a video game could possibly do, and it's hard to imagine how anyone could ever make a better game, in this very unique new destruction-platformer genre. Also I love Pauline.

Epyo posted...

I do think the game dragged on a bit. I suppose it's possibly a bit my fault for lingering in early parts of the game too long, savoring the digging and collecting too much, not realizing how much game was still ahead of me. By the time I was in like 800 or 900 I was kinda ready for the end.

There were a lot of layers that were too long. I don't think any layer needed sublayers.

At layer 900 now and this is exactly what Im feeling, that its time to mainline this a bit and stop trying to 100% each layer first.

Its like Im having a lot of fun but feels like Im close to the limit of the I could eat pizza everyday for the rest of my life of smashing through everything in sight.

Beginning of 900 I was sorta feeling that, but then you get the best Bananza power and it kept me going

actually it was kinda interesting to see a different play style yesterday. I was watching someone play and they only used Bananzas when they needed them and then immediately turned back to regular DK when they were done with that because they wanted to preserve as much of the environment as possible

while I was either Kong Bananza or the one you get SL900 like 90% of the time because it recharged your meter so quickly I just would immediately transform again as soon as the last one ended and use those to quickly destroy the entire environment

Waityoure supposed to be in Bananza all the time?!? I only transform when absolutely necessary

I dont think youre supposed to, necessarily, but the game does let you stay transformed almost indefinitely if you want to. It is neat that the game is so open in how you complete most things that you can kinda self-impose restrictions like that to make it more challenging. I played most of the post-game with DK naked and wearing just his DK tie, for example.

Yea for the first half of the game I'd just keep Bananza-ing and destroying everything. But then I started to realize this was distracting me from making mainline progress, so after that I kinda only bananza-ed when I needed it. Plus the level design starts to be less prepared for massive destruction anyway.

Didn't realize you could cancel a Bananza though! That's kinda nice.

Oh, one stupid thing I didn't notice until right before I finished it, I thought Pauline was pronouncing 'teleport' weird the whole game and then realised it was a pun.

Finished this earlier. Great game! Excellent final boss. People complaining about the bosses in this are crazy, IMO. They're way better than Odyssey's crappy bosses, and even those weren't enough to ruin the game.

Elephant transformation is so good! And yeah, now I can see why/how you'd be in bananza mode all the time.

MacArrowny posted...

Finished this earlier. Great game! Excellent final boss. People complaining about the bosses in this are crazy, IMO. They're way better than Odyssey's crappy bosses, and even those weren't enough to ruin the game.

I just think the actual boss fight should be longer than the cutscene introducing them.

Firm disagree in platformers! Every Mario game has bad regular bosses that would benefit from being shorter. Demoloshing Reznor in 5 seconds is much more fun than waiting for a koopa kid to bounce back and forward invincibly for a minute.

I mean you can beat most of the Koopa Kids in less than a minute too

I'm fine with short fights or longer fights as long as every boss fight isn't a multiphase battle that takes 5-10 minutes that usually takes several attempts to beat because of trial and error in each phase

Yeah I'm talking about you Tropical Freeze

Haha yeah Tropical Freeze has some of the worst bosses in a Nintendo game.

Man I adore Tropical Freeze's bosses but that seems to be a minority opinion

You can do those fights sometimes

It can't be every boss

I've been hearing the criticism that the bosses are over too fast, but I wonder if I had a different experience:

First 33% of the game: bosses take 15 seconds. I pretty much walk up and kill them.
Middle 33% of the game: bosses take 30 to 60 seconds. I can't just walk up, there's a trick to make them vulnerable first, and I'll have to do the whole process 2 or 3 times.
Last 33% of the game: bosses take 1.5 minutes or more. I can't just walk up, there's a trick to make them vulnerable, and I'll have to do the whole process 3 or more times.

Does that pretty much match up with everyone else?

I could understand the criticism, if literally ALL the bosses took 15 seconds each... but that just wasn't my experience in later parts of the game. But maybe I just wasn't playing correctly?

Yeah, it wasn't that short for me either.