I really did enjoy Donkey Kong Bananza and would recommend it to anybody interested in the Switch 2, but I do think there was a bit of a overreaction to it. I think honestly it’s down to the fact that folks are so desperate for another 3D platformer from Nintendo, that pretty much anything would get rave reviews. Similarly I wasn’t blown away by Bowser’s Fury like everybody else was, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.
I’d rate Bananza as a solid 9/10 game. It’s amazing. Do not get me wrong on that, but the 10/10 reviews are a bit suspect to me. For one, the game is shockingly easy. Like I’m a scrub and I hardly had any challenge that I couldn’t overcome pretty quickly. And there’s an assist mode on top of that to make it even easier! Two, the performance issues really are a problem. Not in standard play, the game feels/runs great most of the time when wrecking your way through the world, but on certain bosses I feel like they overreached what the Switch 2 is capable of. Like the CPU just can’t handle certain situations… which I honestly can’t blame it for… as when the FPS tanks to single digits, yes it’s that bad, it’s usually down to a billion things happening at once on screen. Astro Bot had similar moments of physics chaos, but it was on a PS5. The Switch 2 is powerful… but it’s not THAT powerful.
So while I really enjoyed my time with Bananza, I feel like it’d be a disservice to the consumer to say the game is a perfect 10/10. And the game only becomes a 9/10 after halfway through the game. Honestly the first hour felt rather mid to me and I only gave it another hour because I was trying to understand why folks loved the game so much… and because I didn’t wanna feel like I wasted my money. It does get tremendously better after a few hours, as it’s basically teaching you the game mechanics and slowly introducing you to Bananzas (the animal transformations) that you later use interchangeably in really clever ways. And the deeper you go into the skill tree additional mechanics are unlocked as well. But yeah.. the game starts out kinda… boring.
It actually makes me excited about the potential of a sequel. Where they don’t have to teach the player as much and can make it more polished in the performance department. A bit more experience with the Switch 2 hardware capabilities would be nice. I believe it started out development as a Switch 1 title, but I think when the development shifted to Switch 2 they just misjudged what the performance ceiling was and certain situations just overreached what the CPU was capable of. With a sequel I’d imagine they’d reel that back a bit and we wouldn’t see such dramatic FPS drops.
With the criticisms outta the way, I LOVED everything else. The gameplay was a super refreshing take on platforming and plays like a delightfully weird Red Faction / Mario 64 / Minecraft hybrid… with a dash of Spiderman in the climbing up nearly anything department… The skill tree is unlike anything Nintendo has done before (even the outfits have stat bonuses!) and is something I actually quite enjoyed playing with. And speaking of ‘unlike Nintendo’ the story and voice acting was fantastic! It’s not a typical Nintendo game where the story/characters don’t really matter and the focus is only on the gameplay. I was genuinely surprised by this. The relationship with DK and Pauline was cute and the overarching story was actually decent, for this sorta game I mean. The voice actor for Pauline nailed it and she has a ton of lines, every time you take a nap at a little rest spot you get a unique little dialogue from her. Oddly enough she’s pretty much the only voice acting, everything else is text you read with grunts. I guess it makes sense as they’re animals… but I guess this makes Pauline a sorta Dr. Dolittle type as she has no issue understanding them… ANYWAY the Bananza transformations are slick and once you get em all and can juggle between em, it’s super fun! Even minor stuff like the 3D map was really well done. I haven’t delved too deeply into the DK Artist mode, but it’s neat that it’s there. I can imagine it was a tool the devs were messing around with and were like “hey this is kinda fun.. why not let the player screw around with it too?” The co-op and gameshare capability is nice to have, but I haven’t tried it myself.
A great game? Yes! A perfect 10/10 game? Hell no.
-K
