The Truth About the Bananza DLC (I 100%’d it)
I’m not going to bury the lead. This is not a good look. I quite enjoyed the recent Nintendo Direct where we got looks at some decent looking Galaxy ports, really cool merchandise, an absolutely gorgeous Yoshi game, new Fire Emblem, and being caught off guard with DK Isle coming to bonanza. And then I saw the prices. I was a bit distracted while watching the direct, so I kind of missed the whole uh pay $20 thing. A lot of people are speculating on DK Isle being cut out of the game and resold. And while I don’t believe that premise for reasons we’ll get into later, it’s kind of slimy to charge a premium for something everyone was assuming would be in the game to begin with. People are drawing the obvious parallels to Odyssey’s usage of the Mushroom Kingdom and Balloon World. Because yeah, why wouldn’t they? This is the same team and vibe. And comparatively speaking, it looks like you’re payating stuff that used to be free. More than that, this is the first 3D Donkey Kong game in a quarter of a century. Everyone was expecting there to be some sort of DK64 throwback. While this island was probably not in the original scope of development, it feels like such a natural extension of the game they made that it should have been a free update. When you establish a history of giving something to your audience only to pay wall it in later entries, you’re rightfully going to get called out for it. It’s like when Breath of the Wild put hero mode in the expansion pass. Sure, it was slightly different than the traditional mode, but this is a concept that has been included in most Zelda games since the days of the Wind Waker on Gamecube. It’s like when Smash 4 reintroduced Lucas, a semi-clone character from the last game and wanted us to pay extra for him. They didn’t even give him the Mewtwo and Roy glow up. It’s not even an issue with the price here. The problem is that you would sell it in the first place. With the breath pass in this, they should offer the things we used to get with the game purchase, you know, with the game purchase. We’re entering a strange generation, though. I was withholding my judgment with Nintendo’s variable pricing prospect. Like, I would gladly pay a higher price for a once- ina- generation masterpiece like Smash Ultimate if that meant getting all the other small Mario Party type games and lazy ports for appropriate prices. Instead, we’re just raising the price on everything. I thought it was weird that only $10 separated a lazy, broken port of a 15-year-old Wii game and a modern 4K AAA project, but apparently they think Bonanza should actually cost $90. I also played the Kirby expansion and was not really impressed with the offering. I digress. There’s a much larger nuance discussion on pricing we could have at some point, but that’s a different video. That’s what’s annoying about this. They could have dodged this whole PR debacle if they made DK Isle a free update with Emerald Rush behind the payw wall. That would reinvigorate interest in the game and be a better sales funnel than just demanding money in front of a gate. Regardless, in this video, I want to explore the Bonanza DLC, and somewhere along the way, you can decide if this is right for you or not. I’m not your dad. While I think charging for DK Isle was lame, I was curious about how much fun the Emerald Rush mode would be. Let’s start with the island itself. It’s funny. I rewatched the trailer from the direct and after finishing the DLC, if you’ve seen the trailer in the website, you’ve kind of seen everything that DK Isle has to offer. Don’t get me wrong, as a certified DK freak, really enjoy having this incredible little museum of references to look through, but this isn’t really a new level. There are no fossils or bananas to collect, just some recycled challenge stages in case you need to farm gold. That’s why I think this area was made after they were done with the main release. This was designed specifically for the Emerald Rush mode. While it is jam-packed with cool references, the structure of the stage itself is tailor made for this side mode. Maybe that’s why they felt like they needed to package them together, but I still think they should have given the island part out for free. The attention to detail here is fascinating. You open up on a little chunk of rock looking out toward the giant mountain in the shape of DK’s head. It looks every bit as cool as you thought it was on the 64. Grant Kirkop’s famous overworld theme is remixed to great effect while you can explore. King Kru’s ship is crashlanded, similar to the DKC2 world map, and you can find neat little details inside, like this disc from the end of the stages in that game. Speaking of small details, Funky is nowhere to be found, but both of his surfboards are here. This is probably coincidental, but the way that the surfboard spins when you start to surf in the air calls back to Funky’s playable appearance in Tropical Freeze. Squawks has a little hut where he can exchange benandium chips for these neat statues. He’s kind of an odd choice. I mean, there’s any number of Kongs that you could have pulled to do this task, but whatever. I like the touches like his animal crate. I went to DK’s house to see the full crew, and I kid you not, Diddy makes a reference to the TV show here. Cranky is there to call you a weenie for using the island to farm gold, which is great. And with DK’s house, we have a bit of a fusion going on here. The outside of the hut looks a lot like the retro games, while inside is largely pulling from DK64 with some light notes from both DKC and the Smash trailers. Cat makes a little cameo with a slight redesign that suits her. Under DK’s hut, we probably have my favorite call back of the whole island, the Banana Horde. Exploring this little bit in 3D is quite a treat. They have these pads on the ground meant to represent the warp pads from DK64. They have a DK bongo island, ladies and gentlemen. They’re all out of little Easter eggs to observe while you’re going about the island. But as far as challenges or content go, you just have a few of these gold farming challenges. They’re all recycled from the game, so there’s nothing new to see here. On the floating island, there’s a banana fractton that’s speaking gibberish. The boys in the chat were talking about it being some sort of puzzle, but I didn’t have an interest in decoding it quite yet. There are rambies throughout the island that will teleport all the Kongs to you to pose for photos, and that’s about it. This is the only layer totally devoid of fossils and benandium gems, which is disappointing because they went through the trouble of figuring out locations for them for the Emerald Rush mode, but not for the main game. If they would have let those exist in the regular overworld, along with some new type of fossil and a couple classic throwback challenge rooms, this could have been the stuff of legend. This would have been the perfect place to recreate some DK64 mini games. the Bonanza engine. It would be pretty easy to pull off Kremlin cauter, busy barrel barrage, or even the battle arena pad by just reusing assets. Even copy and pasting the classic challenges with the Kremlin crew enemies inserted in would have gone a long way. After spending like 20 minutes on the island, I felt like I had seen everything. This was the issue with stapling DK Isisle to the paid DLC. It’s a strong selling point, but one that will disappoint with the lack of work put into the layer itself. Don’t get me wrong, I think the visuals are incredible and it’s surreal to explore all of this, but there is a real lack of interaction with this new stage. I was feeling pretty sour on the purchase as I spent 20 big ones on 20 minutes of exploration. Next, I wanted to check out the Emerald Rush mode to see what it was all about. We find Void Kong chilling off the coast in some kind of laboratory. He’s lamenting that he has no workers to do the heavy lifting on his new scheme, so he recruits Donkey Kong for the task. Story-wise, we were told that Voco had disbanded after the But here he is, ready to go again. There is a sort of cosmic irony that a greedy corporate boss is demanding that you collect money for him, and I paid $20 for the privilege. There is a little backstory here, which is not asking a whole lot, but appreciated all the same. Emerald is unripened banandium, which is hilarious. Void says he wants to monopolize the emerald so he can quote charge whatever he wants to make an obscene profit. They set the expectations that there will be no crocs in this DLC. He’s done with chasing the bananium route and he’ll sell the emerald energy to wealthy buyers. Nintendo’s really telling on themselves here. So, here we start with the Emerald Rush mode on DK Island. You start with no skills, no money, and a time limit to change that. Getting fossils in this mode will let you gain perks. And immediately, I’m getting big poles. If you smash certain bananas, they’ll give you skills and perks, while other bananas just give you a bunch of chips. Already, we can see what I was talking about before. There are fossils and bananium gems hardcoded into the island. And I’m left wondering why we couldn’t have collected them in the overworld. Anyway, we’re trying to make the best use of our time. We have to get our quota filled and make sure that we’re picking up skills and perks along the way to make that task easier. This is a rog light, meaning every new round I reset back to zero. But I would be gaining extra gear and unlocking perks for future runs. Inside of each round, I have competing interests. Do I beline for the fossils and bananas, or do I just pursue goals? Every time a new goal was given, I had to establish a path that would not only get me there fast, but also provide an opportunity to pick up resources on the way there. This is where you see the purpose of the DKIL design. It’s pretty small with a lot of caves that intersect, giving you a lot of control on how you want to make your approach. I got the A rank on my first try and moved along. Every time you complete an Emerald Rush, you get benandium chips for the statues and points that will unlock goodies on your ID card. There are stages, new perks, and outfits to gather on this quest. Not only can we do Emerald Rush on DKI, we can also do what looks like five more stages. With some chips burning a hole in my pocket, I had to trade in for a statue or two. First, I got this Donkey Kong and Pauline one, and then this happened. Yeah, but you know me, like every While lots of other games have galleries, it’s kind of neat how this one is integrated into the world. Turf surfing is hilarious, and since these statues can’t be broken, they can be pretty useful for Emerald Rush, too. This is the gameplay loop. Do a rush, cash in your chips, and work toward earning stages and costumes. I jumped into the canyon next and bumped the difficulty up as high as it would go. Three for this part of the game. While DKI fit really well with this new mode, some of the other stages really don’t, like at all. I learned in the canyon that they can just throw a new goal at you that’s three layers deeper, and that’s where you need to make use of the void barrels. While this is a nice band-aid for that problem, barrels are limited, and the somewhat linear design of moving through the sub layers can be annoying if you’re commuting on a time limit. I ended up losing at round eight. The nice part about losing is that you still earn a proportional amount of chips and points, so it doesn’t feel like any run is wasted. I bumped back down to one and was fine, unlocking the hilltop layer next. So there I streamed for like 5 hours and it felt like two. It’s repetitive in some sense, but I was having such a great time crafting builds to increase point multipliers. I ended about 2/3 of the way to the last goal. I mostly did DKI along with the intro difficulties to the levels I was unlocking. And after 2 and 1/2 more hours, I completed my little battle pass thing. There’s a small cut scene that plays, and I won’t spoil it for you here, but also you’re not really missing much. Just a neat little character interaction. It’s here that we roll the credits for Emerald Rush and DK Isle. It’s actually kind of a really cool way to do credits. I just move around the island and see the names in 3D, smashing them along the way. It’s this that really suggests that the DLC was made apart from the real game and not cut out of it. We all know how Nintendo feels about crediting people for their work, but we’ve got a full team of people that cranked this out, and they’re all listed here in this little uh 3D credits thing. It’s kind of strange that it’s not scrolling. I think this coupled with how well the stage integrates into Emerald Rush confirms that for me. They still should have given the island for free though. So, I completed the mode and was given the gift of DKI at Sunset. I will say this is a vibe. There’s a new version of the song along with it. An excellent bookend to my 1,000 banana and millions of emerald journey. Here’s the thing though, my achievements multiplied five-fold after this. The point total went from around 2500 to 10,000, doubling the number of stages and putting new perks and outfits along the way. I also earned the ability to block perks on runs, which would give me a lot more agency in what kind of build I wanted to pursue. As I went for more emeralds, I focused on the skills that had nothing to do with bonanzas. I know that’s the title of the game and everything, but I prefer to play with regular old DK and relish in the extra challenge it provides. The cherry on top was being able to use the skills like lonely heart and bonanza, rewarding me for my skimpy skill build and lack of transformations. I would usually end up getting the turf surf perks, and the results can be pretty nutty. I started tackling every level at max difficulty, which I wouldn’t recommend right off the bat. In the main game, my only goal was to go downward, and the stages are designed as such. Emerald Rush flips the level design on its head, forcing you to really think about how you traverse the different sub layers on each map. It was pretty tough in the freezer and forest layers, as lava and thorns could destroy a lot of my progress. The void upcharge on apple juice is wild. If you scale up the difficulty at a smoother pace, you’ll give yourself the chance to discover which build you might want to try and where the good spots to farm fossils and enemy encounters are. There were some levels I deemed impossible or too reliant on RNG my first few times through. But as I familiarized myself with the map and established better priorities, I found that sweet score going higher and higher. That being said, the RNG can be cruel. Sometimes I would be out of barrels and it would ask me to go down three layers for one goal. The skills you do get seem to crowd around whatever bonanza you’ve unlocked, but I was avoiding them to preserve my other bonuses. I would sometimes go through a whole max difficulty run and never see something basic like gold champ. The problem gets worse the farther you climb because there are a lot of skills that are added to the rotation. It’s ironic, but that was more the exception than the rule. Blocking perks was nice, but the cost to do so jumps pretty fast. I only got punch power, surf surf, and better collecting usually and still found myself short on chips. Though eventually you get perks to make chip collection a lot easier. Near the end of my run to fill out my void co punch card, I got to the point where I was getting multipliers upward of 4,000% on enemies I was fighting. I discovered there was a rank beyond A, and a few times I even got close to a million points. That’s what’s cool about this mode. Every level is its own set of intricate details to master. I had hit enemy hotspots as much as possible in the forest layer to compensate for all the commuting from one goal to another. Getting around in the freezer layer without the zebra took some careful thought, and I made little highways in the resort layer to get quickly from one part of the map to the other. It’s such a rush because all the time that I’ve put into the game thus far informed my strategy and decision-making. I even picked up some new tricks along the way, like the fast aerial turf surf. There’s a cool video from Twirly about how to do it. It’s no secret that this game is on the easier side, so having a mode that’s more about pushing a score than passing a test makes a lot of sense. It’s totally scratching the itch of having a bigger challenge for me. Losing even a single heart can mess up my multipliers. And while I usually have a balloon, falling off of a ledge wastes an astronomical amount of time. It’s all punctuated well with the bombastic soundtrack. There’s not a whole lot of new stuff here, but it totally works for the mode. I wish there was an option to change the music around as I imagine the theme might get old on my 100th rush, but so far I’ve enjoyed it. The last round has an absolutely bonkers track. Pauline starts belting out this wild scream and the race is on. There’s a jazzy tone accompanied by electric guitars and references to past DK tracks within. It’s an amazing listen as you frantically try to close out your high score. Such a rush. An emerald rush. I don’t know if I was hitting the right bonuses or something, but I didn’t have to grind at all for the goals. When I finished my achievements, I had only beaten three layers on the highest difficulty. If you beat every one of these difficulties, you get a green medal. So, I started chasing those. thinking that I’d be ready for the toughest version by the end. And after doing that with two and a half stages, I was ready to collect my final reward. What was that final reward? A new outfit for Pauline and a secret boss battle. There’s not really any story pretext for this, just an opportunity to fight Void on DK Isisle. For some reason, it seems to work a lot better. I noticed a lot less lag in this instance of the fight compared to the Forbidden Leader. There’s not much new with this boss battle, but the path he takes while he’s running and throwing things at you is really neat. I love this minecart segment as well as this epic part where you chase him up and down the mountain. [Music] There isn’t really anything that happens after beating him. It’s just kind of a fun little gameplay bonus. It was around this point that I got more lore details from these fracttons behind Void. Apparently, Grumpy and Poppy rescued him after he got upilted in the forbidden layer. It sounds like they scolded him, but he went away to find his ped pile driver and start making money again. I feel like it would have gone a long way to put in some sort of slideshow or cutscene, but we just have a lore dump from a random fractum. Seeing how void recuperated would have been cool, but whatever. Not in the budget or purview of the DLC, it seems. It is only $20 after all. Anyway, now that I had thousands of chips, it was time to fill in the rest of this island with trophies. With this and getting 1,000 bananas, I swear no one play tested this. Please, for the love of everything that is good, make options and games to trade in bulk. Even Odyssey at least did groups of 10. Anyway, there’s a trophy for just about every creature and critter in the game. They’re all posed together in groups and scattered around the island. In the end, DK Isle seems a lot more like a museum than a level. It’s a neat museum, but there’s some missed potential here. Last on my list of collectibles was the Fracttone banana. Lucky for me, Parrot Mode did a video helping me through the very obtuse puzzle. The reward for that is a costume randomizer, which is cool, but not for me. I got the costumes, but almost always stick to the vanilla box art look. I talked to Cranky one more time, and he said that he’s given me all the advice that he can give, and he gives a hearty well done to DK. No more scolding. Just kidding. His next sentence is asking to be left alone. How he didn’t ask to be in the DLC. Classic Cranky. So, there I was looking at this beautiful island with a sense of bittersweet dread. I’ve enjoyed this game and DLC so deeply, but it’s time to move on. That’s where this video was supposed to be wrapping up, but the truth is I just couldn’t stop playing. While I had completed most of the content on offer, there was one more thing to do. Get the emerald medal on every layer. This doesn’t do anything for your save file, but it’s a nice little check box indicating you’ve sufficiently conquered the challenge. I would prefer that the metal would be based on completing the hardest difficulty rather than completing every difficulty. But I digress. While this is certainly repetitive in some sense, it acted as a permission structure for me to keep playing. While I had previously only seen level seven as a challenge, playing the lower difficulties gave me a chance to R&D the maps, looking for the best spots to farm enemy encounters or scoop up a handful of fossils. The forest later had initially whooped me at the highest difficulty. Moving between layers was tough. the thorns would sap my health and it didn’t seem like I had enough barrels to win. I probably would have rammed my head against it enough times to win eventually, but going for the emerald medal had me gradually lift the difficulty. By the time I had revisited the max challenge, I found that I can make crazy jumps in and out of the eggshell hotel. I could reliably nab the rarest fossil, and I understood how to budget my barrels to balance my time between farming enemies and going for the next goal. I went from overcoming a challenge to chasing a high score. All of a sudden, the RPG mechanics of the clothes you wear become a lot more impactful. The skill tree becomes actually consequential with how important and rare chips are. And this game just transforms into something else entirely. I’m not playing to see a cutscene. I’m not playing to get some kind of reward. I just want to see that number go up. I watched Dunkey’s video on the mode and I was wondering like how did Dunk get 4 million on the Lagoon layer? Then I refined my plan a little bit and got my own 4 million plus score there. I’ve even seen someone achieve a score of 10 million there. Lagoon has a bunch of places to farm the most point- richch enemies, but I would need a different plan going forward. Each level has their own distinct personality and mode of engagement. In the resort layer, I’m smooing through rainbow highways I made for myself, while in the Tempest layer, I’m making dangerous jumps to get from one goal to the next. Landfill has me spelunking looking for peekaboo nests. In the process, I’m learning new tricks to keep bumping up my score. Let me give you an example. So, my strategy is usually based on enemy ore multipliers. We go with the lonely heart, bonanza, and surf and beat to maximize multipliers for the base and get other helpful skills when they’re available. A bunch of goals will have you fighting buzzoids that are in the air. So, I learned to fat into them rather than throwing rocks at them. It’s sick. It’s fun to pull off, and the bonuses are crazy. During my initial 1,000 banana playthrough, I never thought about this mode of engagement, but this mode has refined it into muscle memory. We know the feast layer. It’s a bunch of challenges for the bonanza forms, and at the top of the zebra tower, they want me to hit some buzzoids. There’s just one problem. I’m zebrasless. Do I get a fossil to change the goal? I mean, that’s an option for normal people, but I’m a sicko. So, I go to the top of the ferris wheel and just go for it. [Music] The way this mode has me engaging with the maps and enemies is incredible. I could have played the main story 15 more times and it wouldn’t have pushed me as hard as Emerald Rush has. This all culminates in perhaps my favorite Emerald Rush stage, the Radiance Layer. It’s a little weird to navigate at first, but you learn how to get around the limitations. I found I could deal with the illuminoids really fast by grabbing glowstone and turf surfing with it. I locked in for the top difficulty and came out not with 1 million, not with 4 million, but over 9 million, close to the 10 million cap. There’s no bonus or collectible for hitting that coveted V rank. It’s all for the love of the game. This is the most video gamey modern video game that I have played in a long time. I was watching the most recent PlayStation presentation and we finally got to see some more of that Insomniac Wolverine game. I like Logan. I like Insomniac. This will probably be a great game. But the whole unveiling made it seem like they were making a movie instead of a game. We hear about Logan’s character. We hear about the acting. We hear about the most impressive Spice Rack graphics to date. But I’m wondering the whole time if we’re going to get a look at how the game plays. And no, no, we’re not. Gameplay trailer is a bit of a misnomer here, huh guys? I like my cinematic games as much as the next guy, but as that becomes the norm in the industry, it gets all the more refreshing to see a game so unabashedly singularly concerned with gameplay, especially a game from the AAA space. Score chasing has become as antiquated as the cabinets they used to reside in, which is extra apparent when you hit the 10,000 plus multiplier on enemies. That’s what makes this mode so interesting. The game wasn’t necessarily designed for any of this, but the way they make it work altogether is genius. It’s getting me excited to do subsequent runs of the main story mode because I know how to sequence break every map now. I can’t wait to see what they do with the planned event content for the mode. Going back to that original question on everyone’s mind after the direct, I have to amend my answer. Like, I haven’t moved an inch on my criticisms of the price or holding this nostalgic payoff at ransom, but at the same time, I think I got my $20 worth. I know this is a Donkey Kong channel, but to be honest, I’m just addicted to the gameplay loop. That’s the tricky thing about making some sort of value judgment on whether or not something is worth your money. It just kind of depends on your taste. If you’re exclusively interested in putts around DK Isisle, it’s definitely a ripoff, but the Emerald Rush mode is a ton of fun. And after over 40 hours of play time, I’m still struggling to be responsible and write the script instead of going back to another run. But this is coming from me. Someone who can’t gush enough about the movement and combat of Bonanza and someone who really enjoyed their time with Shovel Knight Dig and Crypto the Necrodancer. I never thought in a million years we would get a Donkey Kong Rogue Light, but here we are. It’s an incredible combo for me, but you might not enjoy that as much based on your taste. There’s also so much more that they could have done to make the price feel good, like a few classic inspired DK costumes and the aforementioned Bandium gems and fossils to collect. In some sort of objective sense, $20 is a wild price I can’t justify. Personally speaking, however, I’m having a blast. Even if this is just a fancy reuse of assets, that’s the ultimate frustration in this whole discussion, though. They could have dodged all the groaning about price by giving DKI away for free. I honestly feel like the Emerald Rush mode can stand on its own, and they could have spiced that up with a couple of more cutscenes detailing how Void got back to the surface. We didn’t get that, though. We got a bunch of corners cut with a premium price tag, which is becoming an unfortunate trend with Nintendo in general, and Donkey Kong in particular. Still waiting on that co-op performance patch for returns. Regardless of the profit, margin, retention strategies of the suits, the artists cooked up something truly incredible here. You want to know what else is truly incredible? The DK rap. Check out the whole story in this video we made about how it came to be, as well as the lasting impact it had on the culture. [Music]
We need to talk about Emerald Rush and DK Isle.
#DonkeyKongBananza #EmeraldRush #NintendoSwitch2