Just like most of Yuji Naka’s 3D games not called Phantasy Star Online (that game is as perfect as it gets), Balan Wonderworld fails in its gameplay, but shines when it comes to its presentation. Not all costumes feel useful (in fact, most of them feel redundant), but there’s quite a lot of room available for experimentation.Īs expected, boss battles are a pushover. I have to give Yuji Naka and his team credit for the level design: going from A to B is straightforward enough, but each level masterfully hides its trophies in interesting ways, with nice puzzles to solve. The game incentivizes you to replay levels with different costumes in order to locate all of the trophies. The neat thing about these trophies is that most of them require costumes that aren’t always available in the level you’re currently playing in. The more gems you feed them in the main hub world, the bigger they’ll grow, to the point they’ll get so big they’ll lay an egg that will grant you an additional Tim. You can also collect gems that can be used to feed the Tims, Balan Wonderworld‘s take on Sonic‘s Chaos. They are this game’s equivalent of Super Mario 64‘s stars. Your objective in each level is to simply reach the end goal, but each one of them features eight trophies you can collect in order to unlock more worlds later on. That’s all you need to know.īalan Wonderworld’s level design is utterly bizarre. Furthermore, the game only uses two commands besides walking with analog stick: you perform the sole action tied to the costume you’re currently wearing (you’ll find them across all levels) with a total of six different face buttons, and you can change costumes with R1 and L1.
Most of my complaints regarding Balan Wonderworld‘s gameplay now lie on a truckload of pile up small inconveniences and not necessarily deal-breaking problems. The collision detection has been slightly improved, and jumping doesn’t feel as egregious as before. Those things are expensive, make sure to take care of them. The camera, while still not very good, is a lot more bearable here than how it was in the demo, but you will need to slightly increase its sensitivity in the options menu in order not to want to throw the DualSense across the room.
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Between the weird movements and physics, you’ll need to relearn how to get used to early 3D platforming unreliability in order to properly enjoy this game. I called Balan Wonderworld a Dreamcast game for the year 2021, and that comment still stands. The main villain, Lance, is so edgy he looks like what would happen if the creators of Sonic were in charge of making Kingdom Hearts characters designs. There is fun to be had here, and this game features some aspects that are worthy of a lot of praise, but it’s janky, a bit messy, and most importantly, it feels dated. 9 kind of disaster, this is not the case. But I’m also here to tell you that it’s actually… okay. Sadly, despite being way more enjoyable than its disastrous demo, Balan Wonderworld is still far from perfect. Such a detailed (and honestly, quite original) story for what’s essentially a by-the-books platformer.
The creepy-looking Balan is dead set on helping out these people, while the villain Lance takes advantage of one’s biggest fears to transform them into monsters. Behind the ultra colorful and ultra cheerful art style lies a game that’s mostly about mental health and trying to find a solace to the problems each person is facing. These all revolve around the psyche of an anxious or depressed person, such as a scuba diver who’s afraid of swimming after almost drowning. I was shocked to realise that Balan Wonderworld was actually very story-heavy, with a big background plot for each of the two playable characters, as well as a detailed story for each of the worlds in the game.
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