This review contains spoilers
The thing about Balan Wonderworld is that I can see how it could have been a good game. You can see how switching between costumes with different abilities to traverse and explore these levels meant to represent different characters' interests and anxieties, all with a sort of musical theater presentation and extremely earnest storytelling, you can see how it could make something really fun and different. I don't need this game to feel like Mario, the one-button gameplay is weird but I don't think it has to automatically mean the game is bad. Ultimately, Balan fails because it just can't do anything all that well, but I just wanna root for it for being so different.
The whole costume system becomes frustrating when you're stuck in an annoying section with costumes that can't jump, and the system for stocking costumes is completely hidden away from the player. Even when you do have good costumes, many levels end up feeling cramped more than anything else, and there are so many collectibles that require costumes outside of the level they're in really dampens the chance for exploration in these levels. When you get a level that's actually laid out well, has several objectives that are all reachable with the costumes in the level, and the costumes are actually fun to use, the version of Balan Wonderworld I wanted exists for that brief moment. And then you fall off a platform because you never get used to how slow your jump is, and the magic leaves.
I think the Balan's Bout segments are easily the saddest part of this game. I genuinely like Balan as a character, I think his design is good and I always liked this sort of "eccentric and slightly sinister weirdo who ends up solving people's problems through unconventional means" character, so it's a heartbreaker to find out all you do with him is play QTEs of smashing rocks in a void.
I'm so here for this game's presentation and story, even the weird and kind of dumb parts like how wildly the backstories of people who show up in Balan's Wonderworld vary in severity, or how all the character dances look like when people rip models from games and make them do the default Fortnite dance. The way the backstories of the characters are presented too is also really fun, even when the models can sometimes look kind of "off". These would all simply be more charm points if the game was actually consistently good. Like I said, there are moments of genuine fun, but they eventually end up getting interrupted by the game's flaws, it's just too incompetent to get it right and that just makes me sad. I get why this game became the big laughing stock of the year, but it really isn't as like irredeemably bad and repellant as people make it out to be (then again I didn't play the Switch version lol). Balan is about to take me to his Wonderworld because I'm in despair over how this game turned out.
Side note: At the end of the game Balan reveals his true face and he just kind of looks like an anime pretty boy which is sort of a Beauty and the Beast situation where his original form is way hotter.
The whole costume system becomes frustrating when you're stuck in an annoying section with costumes that can't jump, and the system for stocking costumes is completely hidden away from the player. Even when you do have good costumes, many levels end up feeling cramped more than anything else, and there are so many collectibles that require costumes outside of the level they're in really dampens the chance for exploration in these levels. When you get a level that's actually laid out well, has several objectives that are all reachable with the costumes in the level, and the costumes are actually fun to use, the version of Balan Wonderworld I wanted exists for that brief moment. And then you fall off a platform because you never get used to how slow your jump is, and the magic leaves.
I think the Balan's Bout segments are easily the saddest part of this game. I genuinely like Balan as a character, I think his design is good and I always liked this sort of "eccentric and slightly sinister weirdo who ends up solving people's problems through unconventional means" character, so it's a heartbreaker to find out all you do with him is play QTEs of smashing rocks in a void.
I'm so here for this game's presentation and story, even the weird and kind of dumb parts like how wildly the backstories of people who show up in Balan's Wonderworld vary in severity, or how all the character dances look like when people rip models from games and make them do the default Fortnite dance. The way the backstories of the characters are presented too is also really fun, even when the models can sometimes look kind of "off". These would all simply be more charm points if the game was actually consistently good. Like I said, there are moments of genuine fun, but they eventually end up getting interrupted by the game's flaws, it's just too incompetent to get it right and that just makes me sad. I get why this game became the big laughing stock of the year, but it really isn't as like irredeemably bad and repellant as people make it out to be (then again I didn't play the Switch version lol). Balan is about to take me to his Wonderworld because I'm in despair over how this game turned out.
Side note: At the end of the game Balan reveals his true face and he just kind of looks like an anime pretty boy which is sort of a Beauty and the Beast situation where his original form is way hotter.