Donkey Kong Bananza (2025)

Acknowledging that it probably does get better the later you get, since it has got more interesting than it was in the first few worlds for sure, I think I have played enough to feel like I'm not really getting much out of this. The main hook of smashing and tearing off bits of the environment was briefly kind of fun, even if I didn't feel like the camera always worked well with it, but even as they expand the terrain to do things like lava and ice interacting it just feels "okay". The game is not all that, though, with some decently fun moments here and there and continued expansion of your movement and fighting abilities through timed animal transformations, but nothing about the platforming, combat, or story is exciting enough to keep me wanting more.

I think the pairing of DK and Pauline is smart both as a subversion of series history and because they're both tied to music. It would be nice if music were more tied in with the gameplay somehow, or at least something to make the levels themselves more interesting. The game has been quite easy but for some reason has a skill tree that's kind of pointlessly gating small upgrades that would make the game marginally nicer to play. Most annoying is the upgrade to your ability to draw nearby collectibles to you, something you wouldn't even have to do in the first place if they didn't break the currency into a million fractional pieces as a side effect of the destruction gimmick.

I can see that the game has had effort put into it, and it's not bad by any means, but whatever is making people love it is not really registering for me unfortunately. Pretty disappointed as I enjoyed Mario Odyssey a lot at the time and have nowhere near the enthusiasm for this one.

I just beat Donkey Kong Bananza. No spoilers, but the final hours of this game are some of the craziest, hypest moments in any 3D platformer. That final boss might be my favorite final boss in any 3D platformer.

What are some final bosses that you adore?

Here's some that stand out to me as some of my favorites.

• Raven Beak from Metroid Dread - A brutal test of all of your skills. By far the greatest boss in the series. Insanely intense on the first go where you feel like you have no room to breathe until you get his patterns down well enough. One of the very best examples of tough but fair. Comes with a very cool victory lap fight too.
• Ganondorf from Tears of the Kingdom - The moment that the game broke the 4th wall made me lose my shit. He flurry rushed my flurry rush too. That's nuts.
• Earth Mimicry from Sin & Punishment - You protect Earth from a mimicry of itself by countering that mimicry's attacks. Coolest shit I have ever seen.
• Vergil from Devil May Cry V - It's Vergil. One of thr most replayable boss fights due to so many dynamic interactions. When I was into DMC, Vergil was a boss I fought against very often.
• Lost Judgment's final boss - On top of being the best antagonist in any RGG game, he has my favorite final boss track in the series, his fight is a clash of ideologies (one of my favorite tropes ever), he also mirrors your stances, and he had the dopest mortal attack. One of the my favorite rival fights ever.
• Sephiroth from Final Fantasy VII (1997) - I'm very late to FF7, but One Winged Angel is one of the greatest tracks in any video game so I can't not mention Sephiroth.