>>FULL REVIEW
Most platformers spend a lot of effort teaching you where you are allowed to go.
Donkey Kong Bananza gives DK fists and basically stops caring.
A wall blocking something interesting is rarely a wall for long.
You can smash through terrain dig downward rip chunks out of the ground and turn entire areas into a mess because you thought there might be something hidden underneath.
Usually there is.
That is what keeps the destruction from feeling completely pointless.
Nintendo fills these environments with enough secrets that destroying everything starts feeling like exploration rather than vandalism.
Donkey Kong himself controls much better than his size suggests.
He feels heavy when he hits something but never sluggish while moving around. Rolling climbing grabbing terrain and chaining abilities together gives him far more movement options than simply walking toward the next thing and punching it.
The Bananza transformations add even more variety later.
Pauline is probably the part I expected to care about least and ended up appreciating most.
Her relationship with DK gives the game a surprising amount of charm. Their journey feels like an actual adventure instead of an excuse to move through increasingly strange underground layers.
Nintendo clearly learned plenty from Super Mario Odyssey.
The open-ended maps constant collectibles and freedom to get distracted are familiar.
Bananza still finds its own identity because Mario cannot simply erase half the level when he gets annoyed with the intended route.
The destruction creates problems too.
Dig around enough and the camera sometimes has absolutely no idea what you are trying to look at. Big effects and collapsing terrain can also cause noticeable performance drops.
Some players eventually find the constant smashing repetitive.
I get it.
Nintendo probably could have made boss fights tougher as well because many of them look far more intimidating than they actually are.
None of those complaints outweigh how consistently creative the rest of the game feels.
The public reception is unusually unified for a major Nintendo release.
Bananza is not simply the game Switch 2 owners bought because there was nothing else available.
It is one of the games that gives people a reason to own the system in the first place.
WHO THIS IS FOR
Players who love open-ended Nintendo platformers and want to explore worlds that barely care whether you follow the intended path.
SKIP IT IF
You prefer the precise linear style of Donkey Kong Country or quickly get tired of collectathons.
