How Donkey Kong Bananza Improves on Mario Odyssey

Comments · 453

• NI

  @Nickk7878-v8t · 1 year ago (edited)

  I think the K Rool plot twist was neat because it adds to the story by explaining where he and his army have been in the last good while once the linear Void Kong plot line was resolved. I would also say that it was subtly foreshadowed through the enemy designs as well. I saw someone make a theory video about how K Rool was in the game based on only pre-release footage, showing how the pieces are there.

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• NI

  @Nickk7878-v8t · 1 year ago

  They removed the Toadette achievement system of Odyessy. That’s a huge win.

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• TH

  @ThessaTheCat · 1 year ago (edited)

  I definitely think K Rool didn't come out of nowhere, and at least to me, didn't feel particularly out of place either. I do think that Void Co having more of a presence during the endgame would've been awesome- but by the time you reach K Rool's reveal, Void's henchmen have already abandoned the guy, and the Banandium Root set piece seems suspiciously underwhelming (and K Rool belly shaped). It's never directly stated in story dialogue but I think the game leaves enough breadcrumbs for you to pick up on K Rool eventually showing up. Grumpy Kong crafts the first Crockoid right in front of you from a crocodile skeleton, practically every enemy in the game has big, cartoony, lopsided eyeballs just like K Rool, and Cranky won't stop yapping about him and does basically everything to say "K Rool is down here" besides call him by name. By the time K Rool showed up, I wasn't like "Where did he come from?" instead I was like "*Finally!*" lmfao.

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• WI

  @williambajilliam · 1 year ago

  In the postgame you can actually trade banandium chips for disks instead of bananas to make collecting disks easier and less rng based

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• DI

  @Diamondking599 · 1 year ago

  Fun fact! The prototype design for dk was a goomba with the sand kingdom boss’s hands

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• B0

  @B0ssguy · 1 year ago

  disagree that k rool was just shoved in at the end and made void co's buildup meaningless, from the start your goal was to get to the planet core, not to beat void kong, he just happened to be the one in the way most of the time. in odyssey your goal was to stop bowser so if like wart came out of nowhere at the end it would be really weird. i think it was perfectly reasonable that you beat voidco to the planet core but now someone else is also trying to get to the core. the core is the goal, just now k rool took it over

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• AR

  @aruce9 · 1 year ago

  I think it’s worth noting this team got their start with a donkey Kong game before going onto Galaxy and eventually odyssey. The game is donkey Kong jungle beat. I mean the clap mechanic is pulled straight from donkey Kong jungle beat

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• UC

  @ucantbeme · 1 year ago

  I think one of the biggest differences is that Bananza is an evolution of DKC's iconic gimmick based level structure that Tropical Freeze improved and is also seen in tbr NSMB series, while Odyssey borrows more from the Super Mario Bros 3 to Galaxy take on level design where its more focused on memorable moments and surprising the player. That's also I think why Wonder works the way it does and is a good way to distinguish it from DK, though I also understand why one might prefer the latter. I'll need to give it time, but I think I might prefer Odyssey's structure at least in terms of memorability, though Bananza's moment to moment might have it beat, which is obviously more important.

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• MO

  @monganeo · 1 year ago

  I think my biggest problem with Bananza comes in the postgame. In contrast to Odyssey, which utilizes the moon rocks to inject each kingdom with new collectibles after the main game is finished, with a few exceptions, basically every collectible in Bananza is able to be collected the first time you visit the world. In Odyssey, revisiting each kingdom in the post game felt like re-experiencing the kingdom with a fresh perspective. In Bananza, revisiting layers feels like clean up work since I have already collected almost all of the collectibles the first time through. <br><br>Also adding to this problem is I actually really like Talkatoo in Odyssey, allowing the player to get a hint for a collectible without an explicit location marker. Feels weird Bananza did away with this system.

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• RA

  @Raphe9000 · 1 year ago

  I think Odyssey is great, but Bananza is one of the best games I&apos;ve ever played and truly does feel like it improves on its predecessor in almost every way IMO.

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• KI

  @kingnewcomer2029 · 1 year ago

  I don’t think King K.Rool’s reveal in Bananza was necessarily forced especially considering the game already gave subtle hints to his potential inclusion in the game such as the Crockoid enemies, the golden exoskeleton of said enemies, Cranky Kong mentioned a “banana bandit”, K.Rool’s stomach being part of the Banandium Root design, among other factors, plus, the big guy hasn’t done much activity throughout the DK series since his last appearance in a main title was Donkey Kong 64 in 1999 (and Donkey Kong Country 3 in 1996 for 2D games), while his last main role in a spin-off game, and the whole franchise, was Jungle Climber in 2007, and his general main appearance last time was Super Smash Bros. Ultimate in 2018, so this was a nice gift for longtime fans such as myself! Nevertheless, looking back, I think there were ways that Nintendo could’ve included him better that didn’t feel completely robbed of Void Kong’s villainous role, while still keeping K.Rool as the main antagonist of the game (plus it is pretty strange that he doesn’t even recognize DK, so that already felt kinda disconnected). Despite all these issues Bananza has (especially the frame rate, and constant pop-ins), it’s still an excellent game for DK’s second official 3D game that greatly improves Mario Odyssey in almost every way (though I do hope Nintendo will ditch open world formula for a while, and keep innovating, Bananza’s constant pop-ins, and frequent frame drops are a good example of this)!

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• RA

  @RandomJtv · 1 year ago

  I actually think that Bananza does do a good job of giving you landmarks in each layer. But the destructibility of every layer plays such a key part in this. In the first couple of layers, I was fucking up all of the terrain. But by the time I got to the Canyon Layer, I realised that destroying the terrain was making it harder for me to get around and harder for me to pinpoint landmarks. So I had to start being selective about when I went crazy on terrain.

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