Support NeoGAF

[Chittagong]

Being a massive fan of Super Mario Galaxy and Odyssey, I was so hyped up for this game and its new innovative concept. I even marked the release day in my calendar:

That soured in the first few hours, however. The game begins just pure boring, and occasionally it escalates to frustrating. Specifically:

Crap camera
The camera clips constantly. It's so fundamentally ingrained to the concept that they had to craft a clipped camera view, which is just disorienting and ugly. But it's not just the destruction mechanics and ground, the camera is constantly your enemy in the bosses.

Frustrating mechanics
So many encounters had me cursing the design of this game, how trial and error it is, absolute frustration at times. The two final bosses are the epitome of this, with a mandatory minute long run up to them you need to repeat every single time, and a mechanic where each punch takes 1% out of the boss energy bar so you need to grind forever, while battling the rubbish camera. Equally frustrating are the house destruction missions, where you battle against the controls as much as the clock.

Collectibles I stopped caring about
For the first few worlds I tried to max out all the bananas, like I was a completionist in Odyssey. I quickly lost interest, not caring to ram through everything and slam the ground to find seven hundred of them. Not to speak of the other collectibles which were truly meaningless.

Powerups that don't matter
The different costumes were a nice touch, but so irrelevant that I ended up upgrading almost none of them, I just sat on the skill points until the final bosses where in my frustration I maxed out the elephant.

Exploration made cumbersome
I might have been more prone to explore and find bananas if it wasn't for the cumbersome mechanic of changing levels, where you need to always go to the warp guy in the level. With dozens of layers, that gets tedious.

Ugly environments
Because of the conceptual design of the game - you can break almost anything - the geometry is low poly and low res. There are tons of misaligned textures that don't properly warp around their objects.

The only good things I have to say about this game is that the character art and animations are stunning, and I do have respect for the risk taking - even if it failed this time. Oh, and the logo rendering is beautiful.

My wife asked me several times that why do I keep playing the game although I seem to hate it so much.

Well, obviously I need to compete the game to bitch about it on GAF. The cost of this thread: 25 hours of my life.

I hope 2032 rolls around better.

 

[kizito]

Yeah, Mario Odyssey also suffered from the syndrom of giving you too many collectibles easily, making them way less impactful. Finiding Bananas in DK Bananza doesn't procure any emotion when so many are found completely randomly. Banjo-Kazooie on N64 had 9 puzzle pieces per world, that was the perfect number, each one felt significant. Nintendo's output in 3D platformers has been subpar, especially compared to stuff like Astrobot.

And the praise on DK Bananza's art direction makes no sense to me. All the saturated purple and blue the world's are filled with are such in bad taste, every world is just a floating platform in a one color cubemap, it's really super ugly. The destruction mechanic made them sacrify most of the art direction. Game is still decent fun, but 7 years for such a result is disheartening. Characters art and animation are very good though.

 

[clarky]

Felt the complete opposite. Had a blast with this game.

 

[playbignbox]

You are objectively wrong on several points, mainly regarding the design of the final boss; literally all the mechanics of the fight were previously presented.

 

[Danjin44]

Felt the complete opposite. Had a blast with this game.

Same, this was absolute blast to play....even after 65 hours 100% this game I never got tired of it.

 

[FoxMcChief]

Sucks to be you. Most of us loved it.

 

[tr1p1ex]

It can get repetitive if you destroy too much stuff.

But overall great game. And one that doesn't drop off as you play. Every sublayer has a new gimmick that delivers.

I do agree on the camera being a little annoying. It seemed like I had to adjust it way too often.

 

[Rran]

Some of these sound really nitpicky, I gotta say. Having to find the gong to change levels? Man, try running around Gruntilda's Lair or the massive Isle o' Hags every time you want to go to a different stage and that 15 second Eelevator is going to feel like a godsend.

I can understand not liking the smash-everything-apart mechanic, but it worked for me. I did have to take occasional breaks from all the wreckage just because it was sort of sensory overload. But I had a great time with it.

 

[Tobimacoss]

Beautiful setup you got there. You should dress up as Donkey Kong and go wreak havoc on the Islanders.

Might be more fun.

 

[Dirk Benedict]

Being a massive fan of Super Mario Galaxy and Odyssey, I was so hyped up for this game and its new innovative concept. I even marked the release day in my calendar:

That soured in the first few hours, however. The game begins just pure boring, and occasionally it escalates to frustrating. Specifically:

Crap camera
The camera clips constantly. It's so fundamentally ingrained to the concept that they had to craft a clipped camera view, which is just disorienting and ugly. But it's not just the destruction mechanics and ground, the camera is constantly your enemy in the bosses.

Frustrating mechanics
So many encounters had me cursing the design of this game, how trial and error it is, absolute frustration at times. The two final bosses are the epitome of this, with a mandatory minute long run up to them you need to repeat every single time, and a mechanic where each punch takes 1% out of the boss energy bar so you need to grind forever, while battling the rubbish camera. Equally frustrating are the house destruction missions, where you battle against the controls as much as the clock.

Collectibles I stopped caring about
For the first few worlds I tried to max out all the bananas, like I was a completionist in Odyssey. I quickly lost interest, not caring to ram through everything and slam the ground to find seven hundred of them. Not to speak of the other collectibles which were truly meaningless.

Powerups that don't matter
The different costumes were a nice touch, but so irrelevant that I ended up upgrading almost none of them, I just sat on the skill points until the final bosses where in my frustration I maxed out the elephant.

Exploration made cumbersome
I might have been more prone to explore and find bananas if it wasn't for the cumbersome mechanic of changing levels, where you need to always go to the warp guy in the level. With dozens of layers, that gets tedious.

Ugly environments
Because of the conceptual design of the game - you can break almost anything - the geometry is low poly and low res. There are tons of misaligned textures that don't properly warp around their objects.

The only good things I have to say about this game is that the character art and animations are stunning, and I do have respect for the risk taking - even if it failed this time. Oh, and the logo rendering is beautiful.

My wife asked me several times that why do I keep playing the game although I seem to hate it so much.

Well, obviously I need to compete the game to bitch about it on GAF. The cost of this thread: 25 hours of my life.

I hope 2032 rolls around better.

Really enjoyed reading this because it sounds like pure critique and nothing else.
I personally have not found a reason for a Switch 2, as of yet.

 

[Chittagong]

Some of these sound really nitpicky, I gotta say. Having to find the gong to change levels? Man, try running around Gruntilda's Lair or the massive Isle o' Hags every time you want to go to a different stage and that 15 second Eelevator is going to feel like a godsend.

I am sure there is an amount of bitch-eating-crackers about how I began to perceive the game when it started to annoy me, but I genuinely would have enjoyed it a bit more if I could have just zapped back to some of those triangle levels where I didn't get all three bananas.

Clearly I am in the minority, I have seen how people really love this game.

 

[DownLikeBCPowder]

Definitely wasn't a perfect game and i have my own complaints, some of which mirror yours (mostly useless upgrades, cool idea on bonus stats for outfits but mostly irrelevant in long scheme, etc). But for the whole package I enjoyed it so kuch, easily willing to overlook existing flaws. Transportation wasn't much of an issue for me as I didn't often find myself looking to change layers- if I wanted to more often, perhaps it would have been.

Awesome game for me, killer app for Switch 2. Just wish there were more such games for Switch 2 right now ...

 

[Horatius]

extremely fun game

 

[HAYA8U5A]

 

[Sooner]

Not as good as Mario Odyssey (or Astrobot), but it was okay.

 

[bender]

I got pretty bored of it once the novelty wore off and it drags on and on with no real difficulty curve. I know the post game content is supposed to provide some challenge, but once I was done with the slog of the main campaign, I'd had my fill.

 

[Nvzman]

I just beat it as well and I disagree with several of your points (especially the "underutilized" abilities; theres a metric fuckton of bananas tied to animal-specific abilities so idk how the fuck you beat the game without using them much, some of them also make some challenges piss-easy), but I don't think the game was amazing either.

To be honest Odyssey was an incredibly short and kind of lame game (the "worlds" just feel like diorama sets and not actual worlds), but imo Bananza was a good step up. If Odyssey was a 7/10 for me then Bananza was a 8.5/10. They still really don't match Galaxy 1 and 2 in terms of amazing engaging level design.

 

[Exede]

When.... you disliked it that much, why even invest 25h on it? Drop it, game something else, easy enough.

 

[Chittagong]

When.... you disliked it that much, why even invest 25h on it? Drop it, game something else, easy enough.

Yeah I know

It started with "come on man, EPD only puts out one of these every 6-8 years so cherish it".

Eventually it turned into "goddammit I am on layer 10 so there is not probably that much left, might as well finish it"

 

[clarky]

To be honest Odyssey was an incredibly short and kind of lame game (the "worlds" just feel like diorama sets and not actual worlds), but imo Bananza was a good step up. If Odyssey was a 7/10 for me then Bananza was a 8.5/10. They still really don't match Galaxy 1 and 2 in terms of amazing engaging level design.

Spot on.

 

[Robb]

Oh wow, I loved every second of it. That game is absolute crack. And the finale is one honestly one of the best I've played in any game period.

Completed pretty much everything at around 50h+. It's very rare for me to go for 100% these days. Awesome stuff.

 

[kevboard]

imagine dying in this game
like, what do you mean runback? the fuck? I didn't even know there is a runback... because it never occurred to me that I couldn't first try a boss.

the biggest issue of this game is how insanely baby easy it it... the banaza transformations are OP as fuck.
I purposely didn't upgrade my health until I was done with the main story and it still was easy as hell

 

[existensmaximum]

Yeah that's an opinion that one can have. For me it's like a 95/100 game and a masterpiece whereas I thought Odyssey was mediocre/bad and the worst 3D Mario by far. You have valid complaints if that's the way you feel, what can I say. I just don't agree.

 

[DreamcastSkies]

I think you bring up some valid concerns.

 

[Blueghost]

I'm with OP, collectibles are my main problem, this is a stupid trend nintendo needs to drop ASAP, just take a look:

Zelda BOTW - 900 koroks, 120 shrines
Zelda TOTK - 1000 koroks, 152 shrines
Mario Odyssey - 999 moons
Mario kart World - 644 collectibles (p-switches, peach medallions and question marks) All of them gives you the same stupid useless stamps
DKC Bonanza - 1000 bananas to compete skill tree

DKC demo was enough for me, honestly this is just too much for me

 

[taizuke]

I kind of agree. At first, it was fun to wreak havoc and destroy everything, but that grew tired quick. You can easily waste time breaking stuff.

Also, the levels are huge and i echo the "too many things to collect". As a completionist, i tried focusing on just the collectibles, but it felt overwhelming. I've only played the first three levels or so, but i never really felt like i was doing much progress. I enjoyed Odyssey way more. I haven't touched DK in a month and i'm not sure if i going to again.

I think this game would've benefited from being more linear.

 

[TexMex]

Damn he even marked it on his calendar

 

[ADiTAR]

I agree on artstyle. The char models are amazing (esp the sages) but the einvronments are bad taste.

The gameplay is addictive, but if you try to 100% each world it can become a bit tiresome.

The boss fights were easy, really didn't need more than a second chance at most.

 

[SpiceRacz]

Huge Mario fan and this game did nothing for me. I actually traded it in earlier today.

 

[Touch fuzZy. get BizZay]

Thought it was great, saving the dlc for a rainy day

hope their next game is mario or something completely different tho

 

[Apocryphon]

Played it for about 5 hours on launch day and then dropped it in favour of Cronos and Silksong. I'll go back to it at some point I'm sure, but it didn't have the initial impact I'd expected. It's nowhere near as good as the Galaxy games, and even though I thought Odyssey was also disappointing, at least that kept me playing for a lot longer.

 

[kevboard]

I'm with OP, collectibles are my main problem, this is a stupid trend nintendo needs to drop ASAP, just take a look:

Zelda BOTW - 900 koroks, 120 shrines
Zelda TOTK - 1000 koroks, 152 shrines
Mario Odyssey - 999 moons
Mario kart World - 644 collectibles (p-switches, peach medallions and question marks) All of them gives you the same stupid useless stamps
DKC Bonanza - 1000 bananas to compete skill tree

DKC demo was enough for me, honestly this is just too much for me

you are not meant to collect all korok seeds or do all shrines in Zelda. there are this many so that the player finds them without needing to go out of their way to look for them. you're supposed to stumble upon them while playing.
there's a reason you'll get a literal piece of shit as a joke if you collect them all.

Odyssey's moons are similar. they are designed in a way that you never have to actively look for them in order to progress. you just notice them, find them, accidentally get them by doing something etc.
you don't really get anything special for getting them all. you don't need all of them to unlock the final bonus stage either.

and you also don't have to complete banaza's skill tree. it doesn't even count towards completion on the save file.

collecting all of these is only something people do if they really love these games and want to 100% everything. none of them are designed in a way that at any point asks you to do it... it's an option, and nothing more.
none of them are issues.

the actual main issue of modern Nintendo games is that they are way too easy. this also clashes directly with this "you don't have to do every" design. DK Bananza had ZERO challenging segments in the main game... And only moderately challenging stuff in the post-game.
and that is IMO just bad design. you already make most of the game optional, so why not offer increasingly difficult optional challenges that bad players can just skip, and good player can use to progress the skill tree faster.
DOUBLY so because the game even had an "I am a 2yo toddler" mode that makes the game even easier than it already is in the normal mode.

so THAT is a way bigger issue than completely optional collectables that are not designed with you getting them all in mind in the first place.

 

[Chittagong]

How did this get the OT tag

 

[vaibhavpisal]

It feels like you were overhyped, and wanted something specific out of the game that it didn't had.

Happens with me as well sometimes.

 

[Windom Earle]

100% agree. The mechanics are very solid but it is a boring game. Also Pauline is annoying.

 

[ahtlas7]

It's fun in short bursts but people need to stop with that GOTY shit. No way.
I never feel it's frustrating but gets boring after 20-30 min of play.
My 8 year old says it looks like a game for babies and doesn't even want to play it.

 

[Hyet]

I agree with you, the issues point out keep It from Glory. It's a great game. For me its around 7.5 to 8. I don't get the people that think its a 10 or GOTY material. I'm happy for them but I think It will age poorly and people will come around. Give It 3, 4 years.

 

[Hero_Select]

My 8 year old says it looks like a game for babies and doesn't even want to play it.

One sophisticated and grown up 8 year old you have there.

You should have them play Last of Us - big game for big grown ups.

 

[ahtlas7]

One sophisticated and grown up 8 year old you have there.

You should have them play Last of Us - big game for big grown ups.

I didn't solicit advice from you.

 

[Hudo]

Well, I really liked it.

 

[deriks]

Nintendo's output in 3D platformers has been subpar, especially compared to stuff like Astrobot.

Yeah... Don't push it

 

[GymWolf]

Always looked like a gimmicky ass game.

 

[Chukhopops]

Out of the two modern "collect-a-thons" I liked it a lot more than Odyssey:
- actual incentive to find bananas since there is character progression;
- a few transformations with proper gameplay impact instead of hundreds of gimmicky one-button ones;
- way more and way better challenge areas;
- postgame is quite vast and challenging compared to Odyssey;
- it's fun and rewarding to break the game in various ways while Odyssey forces you into a single path.

That being said I wish Nintendo would go back to Galaxy game design instead of the current one.

 

[Forth]

for me personally I found it to have the greatest impact in it first hours of play but it then falls off a cliff.
I find Nintendo games have employed gacha mechanics with barely meaningful awards.
It's why I sold my Switch 2 last month and I'll never be back.

 

[Fermbiz]

Its an alright game, nothing more.

 

[DanEON]

Agreed. I sold mine. I got to layer 6 and had enough, couldn't continue. Game is boring!!!

 

[TintoConCasera]

Props to OP for writting a detailed critique. Also I like your living room, looks very nice.

I haven't played the game but the camera clipping sure stood out for me during pre-release.

 

[Kenneth Haight]

 

[Baemono]

I preo-ordered it as Odyssey is one of my favourite games of all time, but so far I am not impressed. Maybe I'm getting old

 

[KungFucius]

Weird how people react so differently. I really enjoyed it but the DLC was meh and I dropped it. Still think it should have been a launch game.