Donkey Kong Bananza is the newest entry in the Donkey Kong 3D platformer series and the first in nearly two decades. While it does tick all the right boxes and leaves you with an abundance of things to find, collect, and do, it's hard not to see its minor shortcomings in an otherwise massive sandbox masterpiece.
Bananza is a great showcase of what the Switch 2 is capable of due to its various destructible environments and beautiful graphics. But it's only when you start to peel back the layers and begin to put the game to its limits that you finally realize what an amazing experience you are about to dive into.
He's finally here (and about time too)
You play as Donkey Kong, who, for the most part, was minding his own business, collecting and eating bananas, until he is swept away in a storm that forces him underground. Through exploration, you come across the group known as VoidCo, a gang of villainous apes that want to steal the bananas to reach the planet's core. And as a lover of bananas, you won't let that happen.
While venturing, you come across a young singer by the name of Pauline who wants to go home, so you endeavor to help her by going further underground to the planet's core, where it's said that anyone who reaches it will have their greatest wish granted.
Nintendo has gone all out with the story, and the budding relationship between DK and Pauline plays out naturally. There are unique interactions between the duo, too. When you stop to rest and sleep to regain your health, Pauline will talk about something that happened recently and share her worries and hopes with you as the player, spurring your drive to keep her safe and get her back home.
It's been a long time since DK was last in a massive open-world adventure, and the team over at Nintendo has not disappointed this time around. A huge game in scale and scope, filled to the brim with different destructible worlds, all hiding hundreds of secrets, it feels like the team took the idea of previous open-world games like Super Mario Odyssey and expanded it.
And while the world is not the only thing that feels alive and expressive. DK's remodel lets the ape be as expressive and zany in ways we have never really seen before. It creates hilarious cutscenes and interactions with the various characters in-game, coupled with the vast moveset for exploration and fighting that gives you a sense of freedom and excitement that other platformer games and characters can only hope to imitate.
You can destroy nearly everything around you, and while you can go through the game in a linear sense, you are rewarded for going off the beaten path and discovering (or creating) your own route to the various objectives. Whether that is climbing, destroying, or even using the terrain to create new platforms, there is a wealth of gameplay options at your disposal.
To help DK explore these vast worlds, you have access to new forms known as Bananza that turn DK into other animals like a Zebra, which allows you to run fast and on brittle paths, or an Ostrich, which lets you glide to reach obstacles unreachable. You can turn into these forms at any time, but only for under a minute before you need to get the various metres up by collecting gold.
You'll find yourself using and shifting between all these new forms not only to access new areas, but also returning to previous levels you have visited to use your new unlockable forms to reach collectibles and areas you couldn't reach before having them.
Banana Slammer
Bananadium Gems (Bananas) are the main collectibles and are a crucial part of your quest. Collecting them makes you stronger with new skills and power-ups (such as increased health, new abilities for your different forms, etc). It's a far cry from Super Mario Odyssey, where collecting Moons was fun but served little purpose other than unlocking the next level. Here, you are rewarded for slowing down and collecting things rather than speedrunning through the game.
And trust us, it's important you do so. The first few hours feel quite simple and easy, and you'll easily take down the first handful of bosses with ease. But the difficulty spikes rapidly the further in you go. We found ourselves backtracking to increase DK's power, getting more health, and more unique skills that made traversing easier down the line. It's by no means easy to find these Bananas, with some placements feeling completely random at times. We found ourselves smashing through terrain randomly as we tried to extend our search.
While there are missions you can complete to unlock Bananas, a lot of them are simply stuck in rocks or out-of-reach places, which was one of our biggest pet peeves. With Odyssey, you were rewarded with Moons for completing quests or tasks that all felt unique, whereas here it feels like you're constantly just smashing things in hopes of finding either a Banana or one of the other collectibles in-game.
While there are mini challenge worlds and recurring tasks like quizzes, a lot of the collectible placements left a lot to be desired. Thankfully, you can buy maps (or find them in chests): They point to the direction of these collectibles, which makes finding them a little more bearable.
It's easy to get lost if you start slamming your way into the Earth's depths, and you can easily become disoriented. I'd have liked more options to have visible pins on the map so I can see where I'm heading underground, but you are instead forced to open up your map countless times just to make sure you're going in the right direction.
This is where DK's Sonar ability comes into play, as it highlights nearby hidden items for a split second. It's a crucial tool and one we used a lot more than we care to admit. It was the one ability we maxed out, as it was useful to have the extra distance when exploring. Hidden chests hold maps that'll lead you to a collectible that you missed, but they are quite rare finds most of the time.
There are ways to increase specific stats with various clothing items you can unlock from stores in-game. While most of these are only for show, some give you boosts, like making it more likely to find the aforementioned treasure chests, increasing certain power-ups, or the time you can perform an action or skill.
A Switch 2 BANANZAAAAAAAA
Donkey Kong Banaza has everything I wanted from it. A gripping story, a wealth of different worlds, lots to explore, fun and unique bosses—a Bananza of a good time.
Admittedly, it can be overwhelming at times, especially at the beginning, and it did take me a couple of hours to get into it. But once I got a grip of the mechanics and slowly descended towards the planet's core to unlock new things, there was no turning back.
Nintendo hit it out of the park with this one, and I believe that any Switch 2 owner should get this game. You won't regret it, I assure you. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have one more Banana to find to increase my strength and hours of gameplay to enjoy.
BANANAZAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
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