It is an odd feeling, playing through Donkey Kong Bananza. On the one hand it is a very direct followup to what this same team achieved in Super Mario Odyssey. It embraces the feel and elements of the structure from that game, while attempting to address some weak points. On the other hand, it is also clear that Nintendo isn't starting fresh with Donkey Kong. In fact Donkey Kong Bananza is perhaps more aware of its own gameplay and narrative lineage than most titles within the greater Marioverse.

When an evil banana stealing conglomerate (Konglomerate?) called VoidCo steals all of the giant banandium gems from the mines where Donkey Kong is working, destruction sends DK tumbling into the dark below. Here he’ll encounter a mysterious young girl named Pauline who seems to have some role to play in VoidCo’s plot. Together they set off to reach the core of the world, where legend tells of a power that can grant their greatest wishes, be it infinite bananas or simply returning home.

Donkey Kong Bananza plays out as a mostly linear series of levels. There is one point at which you’ll be able to choose which order in which to play through a couple areas, but it's an oddly one off scenario and then it's back to a single course. While each level constitutes a layer of the planet’s crust, the scale of each layer varies wildly. Some are short one off environments while others contain multiple sublayers and biomes. This does at times feed into an uneven feeling in the game’s pacing. You may spend hours in one layer only to plow through the next one in ten minutes. It almost felt like the team had a large list of level ideas, but was only permitted time to invest fully in half of them. That being said, each layer generally presents its own unique gameplay and hazards.

Uniting each layer is DK’s ability to punch his way through almost everything. Layers are made up of unique materials that all have specific qualities in terms of how they interact with DK and each other. For example, concrete is particularly difficult to destroy, often requiring some extra force from a more explosive material. While sand or dirt may actually stick to other surfaces allowing you to create structures with it. There are of course some metal surfaces that can’t be destroyed. But most surfaces you’ll encounter can be dug through, smashed, or picked up and hurled across the level. DK’s moveset in general has a fantastic feeling of momentum to it. He can attack forward, up, or down, in addition to climbing, ripping material out of the ground or wall, jumping, rolling, swimming, and even surfing on chunks of the environment. It is something this team achieved extremely well in Super Mario Odyssey and they have clearly brought that fluid and chainable movement system to Donkey Kong Bananza.

Adding to DK’s moveset are the slowly unlocked Bananza transformations. These are earned from the larger layers by helping the various animal elders. Each one has specific traits. For example the first one, a larger guerilla form, gives DK a super powered punch that can blast through all but the absolute toughest material. A little later you’ll get one that will allow you to glide, or one that lets you move faster. These forms have to be charged up by collecting gold but gold is so plentiful I generally had a charge ready to go by the time one ran out.

Exploring layers yields banandium gems (Interchangeably just called bananas). These can be found lying around, earned by helping NPCs, or won in challenge stages. Challenge stages are presented as hidden ruin chambers and constitute both the best and worst of what Donkey Kong Bananza has to offer. Sometimes you’ll enter a ruin and be presented with a fun and original platforming challenge or puzzle to solve. Often-times this will test your mastery of understanding how the different materials within the ground interact with each other. A few even recreate environments from prior Donkey Kong titles offering some 2D nostalgia alongside the challenge. Unfortunately, just as often you’ll simply be asked to fight a few enemies. Enemy variety gets better as the game goes, but at no point is it a strength, so you’ll fight the same club wielding rock monsters a lot. These areas remind me of the shrines in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and its sequel Tears of the Kingdom. Like in those titles, the challenges built around using your knowledge of the game are excellent, but those that simply ask you to fight the same enemy repeatedly are a disappointment every time they pop up.

Bananas earned gradually feed into skill points. Skill points are then used to upgrade DK’s abilities. It is worth highlighting that unlike 3D Mario or even Donkey Kong’s previous 3D platforming excursion in Donkey Kong 64, these primary collectibles do not gate progression. In fact by the late game as I had my skill tree largely filled out, my desire to delve into challenge stages to earn extra bananas started to wane and by the end I was knowingly walking past them. To be honest, the skill tree system feels like a justification for having giant bananas to collect, rather than a natural and necessary game mechanic. Nothing would be lost by simply allowing DK to get stronger via progression through the game other than the absence of an opportunity to say “Oh Banana!” every few minutes to prove that we all remember Donkey Kong 64.

Beyond bananas you’ll also earn banandium chips (small chunks of banana), gold, and fossils (of three rarities, each of which is unique to every layer). The chips can be combined into a single banana, fossils unlock outfits for DK and Pauline that have various boons, and gold unlocks things like rest points and barrel cannons. With the exception of fossils which are legitimately hidden throughout each level, you will have more gold and chips then you know what to do with within an hour of starting the game. The fact that chips in particular can be traded in for bananas further obfuscates the drive to collect bananas. It feels like two or more of these currencies could have been combined to increase demand on them and thus make them a more legitimate progress gate. As is, by the first time I was asked for 100 gold, I had already accrued more than 10,000 of it. Now, those nitpicks aside, did I joyously wander through piles of dirt looking for bananas? Yes I did. Because while the actual collectible system can be critiqued at a game design level, the simple joy of engaging with it is hard to ignore. Even in the few areas where it awkwardly stumbles, this is an incredibly endearing game.

While at a glance, Donkey Kong Bananza presents a similar looking set of worlds to Super Mario Odyssey, the technical feature-set on offer is indeed a generational leap ahead. The fact that this was ever even considered as a Switch 1 title is remarkable given the scale of what they’re doing. I have seen other games build destructible environments out of voxels, but never with the density, flexibility, variability, and material diversity of Donkey Kong Bananza. While the game does occasionally drop from its target of 60 frames per second, I could always clearly see why. Particularly in the late game the level of absolute chaos during some boss fights is unlike anything I’ve seen before. I do wonder if a lower resolution mode or a 120hz 40 frames-per-second mode could alleviate some of these bottlenecks.

As a follow up to Super Mario Odyssey, Donkey Kong Bananza is a fascinating experiment. It attempts to solve that game’s progression issues by making the primary collectible unrelated to actual progression. It arguably creates new issues in the process but is, if nothing else, an acknowledgement that there is room to improve the formula. And all of that so quickly falls aside as you flow through these richly crafted worlds. On the other hand if we take as a basis for comparison Donkey Kong 64, then Donkey Kong Bananza is a monumental improvement. The relationship between DK and Pauline develops into something pretty heartwarming by the end, and the story goes places I wouldn’t have dreamed. I don’t want to spoil anything here, but the phrase “oh hell yes” was shouted multiple times by me during the final hours before rolling credits. Donkey Kong Bananza tries a lot of new ideas, and the vast majority of them not only work, but revolutionize the idea of a 3D platformer. There are definitely problems along the way, and it is a long way from perfect, but I can’t argue with how much pure fun there is to be had in playing Donkey Kong Bananza.