Donkey Kong Bananza review – Nintendo Switch 2's first must-play exclusive is bananas but brilliant

Donkey Kong's first 3D platforming outing for 26 years is less elegant than Mario and Cappy's adventure, but it's equally as inventive in new and satisfyingly destructive ways.

If there’s one thing more satisfying to do in games than building, surely it’s destroying. The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction understood it, Red Faction: Guerrilla understood it, and now it’s the turn of the geniuses at Nintendo to have a bash at it in the form of Donkey Kong Bananza. Much more than just an endless destruct-a-thon presented in the guise of a wholesome 3D platformer, though, Donkey Kong’s first full-fat adventure in over two decades is also more thoughtful, inventive, and satisfyingly in-depth than you might think.

In several ways, DK’s layer-hopping adventure follows in Super Mario Odyssey’s joyful footsteps, true, yet it also forges its own path by leaning into DK’s natural strengths (literally) to make demolition the ultimate form of expression and creativity.

As the first proper first-party Nintendo Switch 2 title not to confine you to a vehicle, Donkey Kong Bananza instantly makes a good impression through just how drop-dead gorgeous it is. It’s been close to 10 years since Mario’s hat-throwing adventure impressed in both hybrid and handheld mode, after all, so it shouldn’t be surprising to learn that DK’s explosive solo outing blows it out of the water visually. Colours pop and the sheer scale of environments astound in almost every different layer you dig deep into. It helps that there’s a generous number of them to mash your mitts into.

One minute you can find yourself swimming up and through the beautiful rivers of the Lagoon Layer, while the next you’re rolling through the wonderful green fields of the Hilltop Layer in search of that next, shiny Banandium Gem. Because yes, like all good 3D platformers seeking to pay tribute to the genre’s golden age, collecting items is very much the name of the game in Donkey Kong Bananza too. Bringing a touch of spice, of course, is the fact that pretty much every type of surface can be bashed, crashed, thrown, and dug into.

A premise as ambitious as this could have easily fallen flat, but in the hands of Nintendo? It’s a magic trick that regularly rewards your freedom of expression – as well as Donkey Kong’s penchant for destruction. It works so well since every biome you visit is essentially made up of voxels. This, combined with the ability to smash forwards, downwards, and upwards, often means that no chunk of land is safe from DK’s endless hunger for bananas.

Ensuring that each layer you visit on your journey to reach the planet’s core still has some identity, however, is the fact that you
indeed limited to how much havoc you can wreak upon them. Unlike, say, a Minecraft world, layers in Bananza all have a beginning, middle, and end – it just so happens the gaps between them are generously large.

Opting to make each layer be handcrafted by design also allows Nintendo to populate them with a near unfathomable number of hidden secrets, collectables, and Easter Eggs to find. So much so that players wanting to find everything should expect to spend more than a couple hours alone in some of Donkey Kong Bananza’s biggest layers.

Doing so is always worth it, too, since there are always so many Banandium Gems, costume-unlocking fossils, and so, so much gold to gather. This is a game where, quite literally, carving your own path means bumping into a prize worth discovering around almost every corner. Not once over the course of the game's 15- to 20-hour runtime does finding something new to discover get boring.

READ MORE: Wuchang: Fallen Feathers repeatedly kicked my butt with its firm but fair suite of eclectic bosses

READ MORE: The 10 best Nintendo Switch 2 games you can play right now – must-play titles to try at launch

King of the jungle

Of course, joining DK on this bombastic adventure through a whole planet is Pauline, here presented as a younger incarnation trying to discover the power of her own voice. In terms of gameplay, having her sing means revealing the best path to reach the next objective, but it also comes in handy to remove the evil Void Company’s malicious tape.

The latter is the only way to unveil each layer’s bonus gates and challenge stages, which serve as a mostly great way to break up the main story by testing your abilities with DK’s power set within tightly contained platforming scenarios. While trying to turf surf your way through obstacles down a large hill to reach the finish or overhead climbing while dodging enemies proved fun enough, it’s in these challenge rooms that Bananza also occasionally pays tribute to the great ape’s 2D days in the Donkey Kong Country series.

Working out all the best ways classic mechanics like barrel blasting and rolling work during these scenarios also makes for an interesting setup, which, when combined with all-new mechanics like turf throwing and downwards digging, makes trying to find each bonus stage’s Banandium Gems a true test of timing and skill. Better yet, each one being totally optional helps to avoid any frustration setting in, since you can always move on and come back later.

Speaking of which, completing challenges both in and out of specific stages is given a new dimension and depth as the adventure goes on, as DK collects different types of animalistic Bananza transformations. Powered by the endless amount of gold you collect, each one has its own specific uses, whether it’s Kong Bananza’s ability to punch through particularly tough surfaces, Zebra Bananza’s nature to charge over gaps and bridges at pace, or Ostrich Bananza’s generous flying and gliding sensibilities.

Nintendo is definitely keeping the best one a secret for players to discover naturally, but I’d be lying if I said all were created equally ,since the last Bananza’s skills feel particularly undercooked. That said, all do well to make you think differently about your environment and offer ways to traverse them uniquely.

For as great as letting you unleash your destructive creativity as Donkey Kong Bananza is, however, there are a few areas where it’s less successful. One is in how gold as a currency becomes almost pointless the further into the adventure you continue. Sure, there’s a small penalty on the rare occasion you lose all lives, but it’s just so plentiful that gaining it back is rarely an issue.

Then there’s the bosses, which start out pretty inventive, but the game’s decision to bring many back in remixed form eventually grates since the method to take them down doesn’t change all that much. Thankfully, Bananza’s final boss mostly makes up for this by leaning big into visual spectacle – and being absolutely, well, bananas.

Donkey Kong Bananza’s main verb, being ‘destroy’, could have so easily made exploring stages simple and uninteresting, yet Nintendo has found multiple ways to ensure this is not the case. From encouraging discovery by peppering every layer with countless collectables and secrets, to making DK and Pauline’s powers work harmoniously well together, it succeeds in being a new breed of 3D platformer – the type of which I can comfortably say I’ve never played before.

A few niggles aside, Donkey Kong Bananza might be less elegant than Super Mario Odyssey’s brand of precision platforming, but that’s by design. The result is something a tad messier, but by no means less creative or charming.