Donkey Kong Bananza finally answers the question: “What if everything in Super Mario Odyssey was made of Play-Doh?” The two titles are much more similar than you might think, especially given Nintendo’s hesitance to confirm that they both hail from the same development team – a fact that was finally made official by a representative at my preview session.
I was definitely surprised by just how familiar parts of Donkey Kong Bananza felt in my roughly three hours of playtime, though it’s hard to argue that sharing a lot in common with one of the best 3D platformers of all time is a particularly bad thing.
Far from seeming like a simple retread, peel away the surface and Donkey Kong Bananza offers just enough innovation to be fresh and exciting. Plus, a bombastic, replayable, open-ended adventure like this could be just what the Nintendo Switch 2 needs if the momentum built by its exciting launch is to continue throughout the first year.
An a-peeling world
Structurally, Donkey Kong Bananza apes much of Odyssey‘s open-ended design. Set in a series of subterranean caverns, it’s not fully open world in the traditional sense of games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild or The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, but still packs more than enough freedom to explore at your own pace.
Progression is split into levels, literally the levels of the cave in this case, with their own unique themes and interconnected sublevels to explore. From a basic underground mineshaft to a poison swamp, none of the themes I experienced were anything that you haven’t seen in a Super Mario game before, but I did still appreciate the bright, colorful, almost Super Mario Sunshine-esque tropical sights of the early Lagoon Layer.
While a series of main objectives will guide you through each of them, you can also return to previous environments later in order to hoover up the countless collectibles on offer.
The most significant of these are the Banandium Gems, which, for all intents and purposes, are the Power Moons from Odyssey. They’re hidden all across levels, with a satisfying animation that shows Donkey Kong eagerly shoveling shards of rock into his mouth every time you find one and smash it – something that left me more concerned for the state of his teeth.
Banandium Gems even share the same pithy naming convention as the Moons, with a few words appearing on screen to denote how each one is obtained as the animation plays.
It was already a fantastic formula in Odyssey that encouraged me to stick around for hours in order to track down as many as I could, even after the credits rolled, but Donkey Kong Bananza takes things to the next level by tying them to an overall skill tree.
Five moons translates to a skill point, which can be used to upgrade DK’s existing abilities or acquire new ones. This ensures that your efforts always feel rewarded and gives you a great reason to actively seek out Gems as you go, rather than leaving them right until the very end, like me and many others did in Odyssey.
Small monkey business
Every level has its own unique currency and, like the regional coins in Odyssey, these can be spent on new outfits at a little shop.
This time around, however, every item of clothing from a new pair of pants to a fresh tie and even a full-body fur dye can offer powerful buffs. These can even be upgraded through further investment, reducing incoming damage or increasing resistance to certain effects, to give just two examples.
Part of me is sad that the focus here has shifted from pure personalization and self-expression to something a little more mechanical, but it does undeniably incentivize you to see what each shop has to offer and spruce up your look often rather than stick with one or two favorites for the whole game.
I also noticed the odd bit of unique dialogue from non-player characters (NPCs) pertaining to your current getup, namely complimenting you if it matches the current region, which is the kind of attention to detail that is always great to see.
Donkey Kong Bananza also introduces a few other types of vendors, including one that sells consumable items such as the red balloons from Country that save you from falling off the map and another that can build a property for you in a range of pre-determined spots.
Having your own place is much like entering the Odyssey (that’s the hat-shaped ship in Odyssey), with a bed to lie down in order to restore health, a closet to change your outfit, and a music box for unwinding with a selection from the soundtrack.
Acquiring a few properties even grants you access to a special vendor that stocks items from all the other shops on a layer so that you don’t have to haul between them every time you want to buy something – a very practical idea.
Go ape
Most things that aren’t an outfit need to be purchased using gold, which is omnipresent. Almost every surface in Donkey Kong Bananza is destructible, and tunnelling through the ground will shower you with little nuggets.
These are hoovered up with a Hand Slap, a clap-like move triggered by tapping the right shoulder button, which also doubles as something of a radar that alerts you to nearby hidden items such as chests. Chests are mostly full of even more gold, but can at times contain little treasure maps that clue you in to the location of a Gem by placing a mark on your map.
I tried my absolute best to test the limits of the destruction and came away pretty impressed. While certain core parts of the map, be that a metal platform with an NPC on it or the rock-solid ground where a story sequence takes place, cannot be broken, everything else is fair game. I spent almost half an hour systematically destroying an entire corner of one environment, and I was able to do so freely.
It certainly helps that DK’s movement feels absolutely spot on. It should come as no surprise that the Odyssey team knows how to make a character that’s a blast to control, and there’s no shortage of techniques to master.
Rip a large chunk off a wall using your grab, and you can ride it around like a surfboard for a big burst of speed. An unlockable ability also lets you use chunks for a quick double jump, though I never struggled to gain height, given the fact that you can climb on practically anything.
An adorable companion, Pauline, is freed from a strange rocky form early on in the game and further augments your moveset. She can sing, conjuring magical music notes that guide you to the next objective, and can be called upon to break down certain barriers with her voice.
She is fantastically animated, enthusiastically riding on the great ape’s shoulders in a manner that conveys their inseparable partnership. There’s also plenty of dialogue, both in and outside of the story, which helps their dynamic feel even more life-like.
Having been united with Pauline, we had to work together to unlock Bananza transformations – super-powered special forms that turn DK into a hulking version of some other jungle animal. I was able to experience two in total: the Kong and Ostrich Bananza transformations.
The first is very straightforward, simply increasing your size and the power of your punches so that you can decimate the environment quickly. The other is more movement-focused, letting you glide around and get to otherwise unreachable parts of the map.
These forms can be upgraded with your skill points, and I soon outfitted the Ostrich form with a powerful egg bomb. Sure, the idea of Donkey Kong becoming a massive egg-laying bird is a little weird, but I’m still eager to see what other surprising transformations might be in store when Donkey Kong Bananza drops as a Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive on July 17, 2025.
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dash.wood@futurenet.com (Dashiell Wood)
