Nintendo Switch Thread - Page 223

On July 27 2025 02:08 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:

Oh my god oh my god oh my god. Just finished playing Donkey Kong Bananza. This first part is obviously going to be my spoiler-free thoughts that anyone can read, and then I'm going to put the rest of my post inside a big spoiler tag.

I've always loved 3D platformers, ever since the days of Super Mario 64 and Banjo-Kazooie. The first game I played on Switch was Super Mario Odyssey, and it's been my #1 highest ranked S-tier game ever since I put together the tier list. I knew that Donkey Kong Bananza was made by the same team that developed Super Mario Odyssey, but I was skeptical that they could repeat the magic that I felt in Super Mario Odyssey.

Well... they fucking did it. Donkey Kong Bananza is arguably as good as, or perhaps even better than, Super Mario Odyssey. I think they are two of the best 3D platformers of all time, and I think that Donkey Kong Bananza is the best Donkey Kong game of all time. It's a beautiful love letter to fans of the Donkey Kong franchise.

The levels ("layers") in Donkey Kong Bananza have an open/sandbox feel that welcomes exploration and non-linearity, while still providing enough optional direction to not make the player feel lost or overwhelmed. The main gameplay premise of DKB is essentially "what would you do and where would you go if the entire world was destructible?", and the fact that you can smash and break through almost anything - and that's it's incredibly fun and rewarding to do so - really scaffolds even the most cautious, structured player into feeling adventurous and investigating in any direction they want. There are also easy ways to teleport and even reset the map to its original, unbroken state, if one wanted to do so, so there's essentially no risk to going ape (pun intended).

There are limitless collectibles that one can find in DKB, but the game doesn't lock story-related progress or vital benchmarks behind finding huge numbers of items. This was an issue in some traditional collect-a-thon platformers, such as Donkey Kong 64, where many players were forced to spend a significant amount of time backtracking, which disrupted any forward momentum that a player had been enjoying. DKB's approach is that it encourages you to find collectibles by offering new skills and buffs and perks if you feel like it, and the levels are structured in such a way that you'll naturally come across plenty of items anyway, if you wanted to tinker with these optional bonuses.

While the plot of DKB - much like the plot of most platformers - doesn't have mind-blowing levels of complexity, there is actually a respectable amount of in-game lore to discover by interacting with the hundreds of personable NPCs scattered throughout the game. The characters are as colorful as the rest of the game, and both Pauline and the new-ish/goofy-ish Donkey Kong fit right in. On a related note, the end-game and post-game content are both fantastic. For comparison, Super Mario Odyssey had the Final Bowser battle, and then Mushroom, Dark Side, and Darker Side Kingdoms (and optional backtracking for completionists), and Donkey Kong Bananza has so much more than that after the Final Void Kong battle.

DKB is at least a 20-hour game, more likely 30-40 hours if you're exploring a healthy amount, and potentially 50-60 if you're a completionist. I was pleasantly surprised at how effective the camera was, and how stable the frame rate was, for nearly all of the game. I wish the transformations were needed more during the regular game (they're used a lot more during the end-game and post-game). Most of the levels/layers were excellent, though I wasn't a fan of two of them. Most of the mini-games were fun, though a few felt redundant. Many of the mini-boss battles and boss battles were extremely simple and too easy - reminiscent of Super Mario Odyssey - though the ones at the end of DKB were vastly improved. There are some other minor nitpicks, but they're mostly subjective.

You definitely want to avoid spoilers if you haven't yet played this game, and there are a ton of Easter eggs for DK/Mario/Nintendo fans. If you've played the original Donkey Kong arcade game, Donkey Kong Country 1 and 2, Donkey Kong 64, and Super Mario Odyssey, you're going to really enjoy all the references that appear in Donkey Kong Bananza.


Huge spoiler alert for the rest of my post below / Do not click below if you still haven't played *and completed* DKB:
+ Show Spoiler +