Topic: Donkey Kong Bananza

So what's the verdict? Fun enough to warrant a purchase?

@Hapless Very odd they would add a smallish paid DLC so close to the main game release rather than just combining it.

The Kirby and Forgotten lands DLC wasn't much for $20 either but since it also included Switch 2 updates and was long after the main game, it seemed more reasonable.

I know these are very different games and circumstances, but this dlc is the same price as Octo Expansion. Really makes you wonder if the price they’re charging for DK is justified

@SplatRay001
Huh? I don’t follow that logic. Are you saying Octo expansion was a way better deal? Didn’t that come out a couple years ago at this point?

@rallydefault yeah, I do think Octo Expansion is a much better value proposition than this. If this added a new Bananza transformation or DK island was a bit bigger, maybe I’d feel differently

@SplatRay001
I think I agree, but I will refrain from judging fully until I play this one.

I got a lot out of the octo expansion, but that was also many years ago at this point. Everything costs more now. If we’re gonna compare prices to stuff from years ago, we’re gonna fall into a black hole.

Hmm... I'm looking at some feedback about the DLC and I'm having some second thoughts on it. I like the base game for sure, but I don't think I'll get this anytime soon.

Question to anybody that's played the DLC, is it as bad as people have been saying? The reception I've seen from people that have played it has not been great.

Is it true, that there is nothing to collect on DK Island?

@Hapless
Thanks. Ouf, and they are asking for 20 €. That is just grim. Will definitely not waste my money to feel scammed.

I've seen some folks compare Emerald Rush to Luigi's Balloon World, and I think that's pretty disingenuous. LBW basically just allowed for user-generated content of a sort; very little effort was put in from Nintendo's side as far as I can see. Emerald Rush is a full-on roguelite mode for Bananza. It's probably not quite as robust as Splatoon 3's Side Order mode, but it's in that ballpark (and it's slightly cheaper than Side Order).

I'd say that if you love Bananza's gameplay and you want a highly-replayable mode that challenges your skills, the DLC is well worth it. And when I say it's challenging, I mean that. So far I've tried playing difficulty rating 5 once and beat it by the skin of my teeth, and the difficulty goes up to 7 (as far as the game lets on).

The website does a poor job of describing the actual mode, so I'll attempt that here. Basically you're let loose on a layer of the game and stripped of all your skill-tree abilities. All gold in the layer is replaced with emerald, which behaves identically. Over the course of several timed rounds (6 rounds on the lowest difficulty, but more as you increase it), you're tasked with collecting increasing amounts of emerald. A certain number of randomly-assigned banandium gems in the layer contain random skill-tree abilities. You can see where these are on the map. At difficulty level 3 and up, the Bananza transformations are also locked behind these randomly-scattered gems. When you get a fossil in the layer or obtain one of those aforementioned abilities, you get to choose one of three "perks", which are abilities that aren't on the skill tree and mostly revolve around getting more emeralds when you perform certain actions. These stack, like they do it Side Order. So if you stack ten levels of the ability that gains you more emeralds when you defeat an enemy with Kong Bananza's charge punch, then you'll get a ton of emeralds each time you do so.

In addition, Void Kong will give you "goals" to achieve, e.g. go here and defeat these creatures, smash a bunch of stone, high-five Cranky Kong, etc. Doing these will net you emerald ore and some banandium chips, which you can use in this mode to buy back skill-tree abilities that you want. And there are a few more wrinkles, like the warp barrels that allow you to teleport to getaways and various other points on your map.

DK Island is maybe the best place to do Emerald Rush, but you quickly unlock the ability to do it on several of the other layers. The game makes it clear that you can unlock the mode in the Canyon, Hilltop, Lagoon, Freezer, and Feast layers. But each layer has a difficulty rating from one to five stars, and the highest-difficulty layers only have a three-star rating, so I'm guessing you'll have the ability to unlock more layers later.

Anyway it's a really fun mode and so far it's worth the price of admission for me. If you enjoyed the game but thought most of the skill tree abilities were kind of pointless, this mode might change your mind. And I just found out from the website that they're planning timed events for it, which is potentially cool if they do it right.

Recently started with DK Bananza, so far I really like it (and it looks amazing). Camera can be a bit problematic though. No wonder with all the digging/smashing!

This Emerald Rush event was WAY harder than the first one. I knew it would be because it’s at the Hilltop Layer, which is surprisingly brutal in this mode because of the lack of enemies, but I had to resort to YouTube to figure out how to get the Lanky statue.

To keep it short: Bananergy skill, Elephant Bananza, Ostrich Bananza, Storage Groove, Encore Groove, Egg Groove, Turf Groove, Fossil Radar, Chip Negotiator and Emerald Negotiator!

@Dev-N It took me a while, but my strategy ended up focusing around the spinning perk after doing a few spins off the top of the banana-shaped mountain and picking up the Zebra Bananza, combined with spending some of the emerald gems on Better Turf Surf. I eventually racked up 1.7 million, but a lot had to go right to make it work and I had to relearn the fossil placements

You can see the next event in the game now. Starts on December 16. Landfill layer. The statues are Ninja Kong and uh Cactus King? I didn’t play DK Jungle Beat, so it’s all new to me.

@LastFootnote Landfill? Oh, Peekabopoids…

For some reason, Cactus King was renamed Ghastly King in the true final boss battle. I’d know, I loved Jungle Beat. But I don’t know why. The game had no story whatsoever! DK just ventured off his island to gobble fruit and beat the stuffing out of a bunch of red-eyed enemies and monsters, and he was literally the only familiar character in the game. Still loved it though.

Wow, this Landfill layer event was even tougher than the Hilltop layer one. I eventually won with 3.5 million by really exploiting the Stompoid-defeating bonuses, but it took me several tries to find a winning strategy.

And the two new statues are on a pretty large stage area on an otherwise empty island. I guess this is the Jungle Beat-related statue island? If so, there must be more statues coming than I anticipated. I'm looking forward to seeing what the next event will bring. Hopefully it'll be viewable in the game tomorrow, right after this event ends.

Also I hope they eventually cycle back to these events for those who missed them. Maybe it's foolish optimism, but I'm really hoping more folks look past the naysaying and take the plunge on this DLC.

I thought Landfill was noticeably easier than Hilltop, even with no Peekabopoid Demolisher. They were just swapped out for Stompoids. I had lots of Stompoid Demolisher with some Barrel Bump-Up, Treasure Hunter, and Hoarder perks, and used Snake and Elephant Bananzas.

Still, I almost lost my chance for Ghastly King in one rush. Time was running out and I needed the last goal to be the Stompoids, and it was! Couldn’t be more relieved to see those pink numbers pop up. Guess I should’ve hoarded more items and not wasted time getting Bananzas like Zebra and Ostrich that I never needed.

My strategy mainly consisted of leveling up the Melon Hoarder perk, plus the perk that let you find more treasure chests and melon juice inside those chests, and then maxing out the skill that lets you carry more melon juice
The Melon Hoarder perk scales up really fast so if you get a couple levels in that (plus the Stompoid Demolisher perk because that seems to be the most common enemy in the Void Goals on that layer) it's pretty smooth sailing, I ended up with 7 million

@Sylamp I went for the melon thing pretty early on, but without pairing it with the Stompoid bonus.

It is really fun to hear the retro Donkey Kong sound play every time you defeat a Stompoid with a 10,000+ multiplier.

EDIT: One semi-interesting thing was having to avoid Peekaboopoids so that they didn't eat up all of my defeat-enemies-by-punching bonus. Can't remember what that perk is called offhand.