Everybody loves to smash things sometimes. Rage rooms are a thing for this reason alone after all. Now imagine that you’re a giant ape, you want to collect upwards of a thousand bananas, and there’s no forced character switching mechanic to pick up those bananas like the last time you were in three dimensions. Sound familiar? It should because it’s Donkey Kong Bananza, DK’s first 3D adventure in over a quarter century. Now, 26 years is quite the wait time for a game because if you played Donkey Kong 64 back when it released on the N64, you now have to worry about your rent, mortgage, or how standing up too fast sometimes makes you dizzy for no reason. Seriously, make sure you stay hydrated as well- it’s important. So, is Donkey Kong Bananza worth the wait, or is this one banana that should have been left in the peel? Let’s find out.
The core of Bananza is that you’re allowed to punch and break practically anything that stands in your way. You can crush enemies, break terrain, make giant craters on your search to eat literally every banana in the world. You’re a Kong, a regular force of nature, and DK’s devil may care attitude is offset by the younger and more vulnerable Pauline. This title’s version of Pauline was captured by the aforementioned greedy CEO who wanted to use her ability to sing to awaken the Banandium Root, a magical power of bananas that can grant any wish. Due to the fact that Dragon Balls are apparently mundane in this universe, as well as circumstances outside of DK and Pauline’s control, the pair have to make their way to the core of their planet in order to safely get Pauline back to the surface where she belongs.
The stories in most Nintendo games are pretty subdued, but it’s surprising how charming the developers managed to make Pauline. She’s practically the only character that speaks in full voice acting, with the non-human members of the cast doing a kind of Banjo-Kazooie style gibberish along with their text boxes. Despite the fact that she’s young and unsure of her ability to draw in crowds with her singing, it’s pretty easy to get invested in this girl’s discovery of her self-confidence, with a banana-loving tour de force right behind her, spurring her forward. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed seeing her go from a frightened, timid girl to someone more confident in her abilities by the later stages of Donkey Kong Bananza. Everyone needs a bro to cheer you on like DK, is what I’m saying.
There are a lot of connecting threads from Super Mario Odyssey to Donkey Kong Bananza, which makes sense given it’s the same development team. You have a cute sidekick who helps you with powerful transformations as you explore a wide variety of unique locations with their own indigenous populations. Instead of the Broodals, the angry rabbit wedding planners, you punch your way through a quirky bunch of henchmen under the employ of a greedy mining company CEO who’s very clearly too childish to meaningfully care about anything other than gold. There are a lot of parallels, and there’s a ton of things to find beneath the planet’s surface.
As you explore the underground world, smashing and bashing through terrain and enemies alike, you’ll encounter both bananas and fossils practically all over the place. Bananas are your primary collectible in Donkey Kong Bananza, if you couldn’t tell by its name. You can explore the main path provided through each of the game’s 17 subterranean layers, but there are so many side paths, crevices, and alluring vantage points that you’ll exploring everywhere you can.
Huge portions of terrain in Bananza are destructible, with you being able to quickly and easily punch your way through ground to find fossils and bananas at a brisk and constant pace. There are always locations you’ll stumble across that are interesting, filled with bananas, fossils, challenge rooms, or treasure chests that will keep you exploring. There is obviously a limit, like a surface type that’s effectively like Minecraft’s bedrock preventing you from digging all the way through an entire zone, but you can do as much terraforming as you want in your search for banandium gems.
Movement in Donkey Kong Bananza is pretty simple, which makes sense considering this title is by the same team from Super Mario Odyssey. You can punch ahead, above, and below you, making navigating the subterrain a simple task when combined with DK’s ability to jump and climb. Being a Kong, DK is an expert climber and can clamber up and over any surface he can properly grip. The roll move from Donkey Kong Country returns as a core component of DK’s move set, and you can do it in the air to gain some distance and cross larger gaps (which works extremely well with the turf surfing mechanic to extend your aerial reach).
DK’s primary ranged attack is pulling up chunks of the ground and chucking them at airborne enemies to knock them out of the sky. This mechanic gets used a lot in Bananza for traversal, since you can do turf surfing to gain speed, and it’s even used in puzzles later in Donkey Kong Bananza since the health of the terrain you rip up is proportional to how long you can surf on it across lava, spikes, and other hazardous obstacles. You’ll also be able to find explosive terrain, like crystallized banandium ore, which is superb for dispatching pesky foes in a single, glorious burst.
As you progress, you’ll encounter village elders, wizened DJs who can teach DK the ancient art of Bananzas through the power of rhythm. Pauline is a core force for this, transmogrifying DK into a larger version of himself capable of punching through concrete, an ostrich that can glide over obstacles, or a snake that can bounce high up to reach higher locations. These Bananza forms, once unlocked, are quickly recharged by breaking terrain, defeating enemies, and collecting gold banandium ore, so you’re free to use them quite often throughout your journey. Bananzas aren’t a rare resource, make use of them whenever you have the chance.
Throughout your adventure you’ll find fossils in addition to bananas, and you can use those at the shops you find on each layer to purchase new costumes for DK and Pauline. The outfits you get from these shops all have an ability on them that can be useful during your journey, such as taking less damage from poison or spikes, or extending the length of specific Bananza forms. One particular tie for DK, the Treasure Tie, seemed too good to not wear for the entire adventure because it increases the chances of treasure chests spawning when destroying terrain, which a later Bananza form makes extremely easy. Treasure chests can give you boatloads of gold or, even better, treasure maps that can reveal the location of both fossils and bananas on the map, which effectively made it so that I never had to look up where bananas were in this game.
While each level does have a main set of story events that progress while you’re there, you’re free to explore off the beaten path as much as you’d like. The plentiful nature of bananas had me scouring each layer top-to-bottom, looking around at anything that even remotely caught my interest. Any time I ran out of leads on where more bananas were, treasure chests with treasure maps were just a Bananza and some clearing of terrain away. Hearing the iconic, “Oh, banana!” is so incredibly fun because every five bananas you collect earns you a skill point, which can give you more health, unlock new abilities, or allow you to perform existing abilities a little bit better.
There’s been some criticism of Bananza’s skill trees, but I find that unlocking new skills or enhancing existing DK abilities is enough of a reason to make me want to find as many bananas as I possibly can. One of the largest complaints about Super Mario Odyssey is that getting moons doesn’t feel special. Bananza rectifies this in a pretty elegant way because you’ll always be wanting bananas and fossils to upgrade your skills or to unlock new costumes that may have some beneficial gameplay elements attached to them. In this way, it’s plain to see the skill trees and abilities attached to DK and Pauline’s outfits as ways to address complaints that had popped up previously.
The level design of Donkey Kong Banaza is a giant toybox filled with challenges to complete, items to find, and objectives to clear. The vast majority of the title is by no means difficult, which makes this a collectathon for new and veteran gamers alike because it really just is fun to dig down to a banana, collect it, and then throw a rock at a bee that’s been annoying you for a couple minutes. Even after the game has been beaten, there will be new bananas to collect even if you 100%ed areas on your first time through, and some post-game challenge gauntlets that will require you use all of the skills you’ve acquired during your time in the underground.
The visuals of Donkey Kong Bananza are gorgeous, from the brightly lit, colorful, and cheery Resort Layer to the dark and brooding Radiance Layer that requires you to turn on the lights so you can explore even deeper. The musical score is charming in a great number of levels, with some layers having catchy tracks that seem like natural evolutions of music you would hear in something like Donkey Kong Country 2 or Bowser’s Fury. On the levels with more subdued background music, you can always activate a Bananza, which will cause Pauline to belt out a pretty catchy song while you annihilate anything that dares to stand in your way.
All in all, Donkey Kong Bananza is an incredible new entry for 3D Donkey Kong, making a stellar comeback after a 26-year absence. Bananza is everything a collectathon needs to be: Fun, engaging, and interesting, and while it’s lacking a little bit in the challenge department, the addictive nature of collecting bananas, unlocking new skills, and figuring out how to handle new environmental puzzles and enemies always makes for a great time.