It's sad to saybut I Have gotten Accustomed to disappointment When it has to do with religious successors of legendary games created by their original creators. For every return as striking as Bloodstained, there seems to be a far less powerful attempt including Mighty No. 9. Its character designs, cutscenes, and songs are certainly charming, but allure alone is not enough to make this half-baked platformer any less boring to really play.
When you're hopping around Balan Wonderworld's Simultaneously creative yet bland phases, it doesn't necessarily feel like a complete trainwreck. A number of its barebones obstacle classes can occasionally produce signs of what I could call fun, and it's not much more than a complete bore the rest of the time. However, while you take Balan Wonderworld as a complete, it sinks lower than the rudimentary platforming that hardly props it up. From the misguided one-button controller strategy, to its random transforming costume mechanic as well as the levels that utilize them, into the half-hearted Chao Garden-like hub globe between these, it will get a great deal wrong -- and very little of what it gets right will help balance the scales.
This is usually the area where I would break down Balan Wonderworld's narrative for you, however there's not much to tell about the rotten crap it calls for a plot. You play as a boy that goes from happily breakdancing to being super bummed out in record time, or some woman whose housemaids whisper about her behind her back for no clear reason. Your choice means very small, though, because either way you are quickly abducted by a magical tophat guy named Balan and dropped right to a fantasy land filled with weird birds and crystals or something? It's unclear, but that's all the setup you will get before it starts you via 12 different worlds (each with only two degrees, a supervisor, and also an excess level once you beat the narrative ) that are arranged around another gloomy person, all of whom appear completely unrelated to anything that's happening.
I've enjoyed lots of games with incomprehensible Tales, however Balan Wonderworld's inanity is very disappointing when its own animated cutscenes are so well made. They're full of life and energy, and may even tell a few genuinely entertaining bite-sized stories about each world's subject. Cutscenes primarily play right before a boss to swiftly introduce the person for this world and a problem they are facing -- make it a boy trying to build a flying system or a scuba diving girl whose dolphin friend maimed her and left her to perish -- but a second cutscene right after the boss then immediately resolves it (do not worry, the dolphin are cool today ). That pacing not just makes every character's narrative feel different from everything else, including your protagonist, it means that the levels you perform before fulfilling them will be devoid of circumstance. If the very first cutscene had played at the beginning of the world, then perhaps I would have linked to those characters as I played their reference-filled levels, like a baseball player's world being littered with chess pieces. However, by holding their entire story to the end, Balan Wonderworld becomes more than a mess of heterosexual but incoherent thoughts.
Irrespective of its narrative, the festering decay in the heart of Balan Wonderworld is the most bizarre decision to make it a one-button game. Aside from using the joystick to maneuver along with also the shoulder buttons to switch between ability-altering costumes, almost every other button in the controller does the same thing. That idea is shot laughably too much by making them the same from the menus also, forcing you to scroll into specific"back" buttons rather than just having the ability to hit B/Circle, which would be hilarious if it weren't so stupid. If you're not wearing a costume (that is extremely rare), your lone button is a simple and underwhelming jump, but all Balan Wonderworld's greater than 80 different outfits change that function to something else. Even a jack-o-lantern costume makes your only action a punch attack, even though a sheep suit lets you hover jump, and there are a needlessly high number of other choices to stumble across.
The idea of a one-button controller strategy is not an inherently Bad one, however Balan Wonderworld doesn't supply one good reason for why it limits itself this manner. What it will do, however, is supply innumerable examples for why it shouldn't have -- most seriously, it prevents certain costumes from doing that most fundamental of platforming tasks: leap. Some suits work good with one button, particularly the jumping-focused ones (who'd have guessed?) , but others range from perplexing to downright horrible as a result. Things like a clown that could only jump by gradually charging up an annoyingly little explosion, or even a flower that may stretch up a yearlong brief space. When a costume utilizes its button to attack then odds are you can't jump at all while wearing it, while others may still allow you to jump but at the cost of making their ability activate when you are standing -- or worse, entirely randomly. Why in Wonderworld is that the better choice?
Balan Wonderworld isn't necessarily an awful platformer, but It's a consistently Dull one. It is filled with charming character designs along with the occasional Hint of a smart concept, but its insistence on being a one-button match With heaps of overlapping skills that are thrown apart Just as quickly as they are introduced rots it to your core. It's a wreck of Undercooked concepts and clunky mechanics that slow it to a crawl, and It seems to take inspiration from greater matches without properly Recapturing what makes them enjoyable. Its own platforming never evolves Past the most fundamental potential hurdles it could throw at you, but it's The fundamentally flawed choices behind this mediocrity that require Balan Wonderworld from unamusing to outright bad.