Nintendo is literally bananas if it thought that charging nearly $20 for nostalgia wouldn't even turn the heads of hardcore Nintendo fans. Still, here we are, discussing the latest Donkey Kong Bananza DLC that was released late last week, and despite its stunning attention to detail, it's left a pretty sour taste in my mouth.
To its credit. The DLC adds a new DK Island area to the game that lets you walk down memory lane of many of Donkey Kong's previous games, from the DK 64 setting, to the Kremling Ship on the harbor, and a bunch of other areas that actually brought a tear to my eye as I looked around each area and found secret after secret to DK past. You can see THE labor of love that has gone into this area, but it doesn't really excuse some of its glaring problems—and the price is just one of them.
And looking online, it appears like I'm not the only one who even felt a little scammed by what we got.
Moving away from DK Island for a bit, the main gameplay you'll find here is Emerald Rush. Think of it like a rogue-like game, where you start off with no abilities and have to grind bananas, fossils, and more, to reach a certain quota of emerald (think the gold you see normally, but more green). At the end, you are given a score, and by accumulating scores, you can unlock new cosmetics, items, and unlockables. It's a fun mode in theory, but it honestly feels like something they could have added as free DLC akin to Luigi's Balloon update in Super Mario Odyssey.
Additionally, my biggest gripe with all of this is that DK Island lacks its own collectibles. You have all this labor of love and detail, but there aren't new Banadium Gems to find around it or Fossils that give you cool stuff; it exists as a sandbox to walk around with nothing to see and discover. It's gorgeous, don't get me wrong. Still, the fact that it is so empty (outside of the new collectible statues you can unlock at random for 100 Banadium Coins a piece) really made me care less about what I was exploring when there is nothing to do after the initial "oh that's neat" moment.
I loaded into the DLC, ran around to take it all in, started Emerald Rush, and haven't been back to DK Island since, apart from to buy new statues to try and find them all. There is no real reason to be there, especially if you have other collectibles to find still in the different worlds. It feels like a glaring issue, one that had excellent execution but lacked substance.
It all makes it feel like a very tacked-on micro-DLC akin to the various Switch 2 edition games Nintendo has been releasing lately, where you have the base game with a little bit of something new to warrant an extra purchase. Hopefully, there is more stuff to come in the future for the game that might add something more to DK Island, but for now, I think I'm good putting this one to rest.
Disclaimer: A copy of Donkey Kong Bananza DK Island & Emerald Rush was provided to Destructoid by Nintendo
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