Yuji Naka's Balan Wonderworld

At least it has fantastic music, which is more than I can say for Yoshi's Island DS and New Island. (I was so looking forward to DS as a kid because of the gameplay mixed with a good OST like the first game...)

EDIT: So how does the patch improve gameplay? I assume you're made faster, but what else?

Edited by lalalei2001 on Mar 27th 2021 at 12:44:32 PM

The Protomen enhanced my life.

I just think its cool that within the last week we've had a really fun platformer come out that boasts some really charming graphics. effective gameplay, cool gameplay, and fairly well executed, albeit simple plot.

Unfortunately for Yuji Naka, that game was Kaze and the Wild Masks which is much cheaper game than Balan Wonderworld and from what I can tell is of far better value.

The novelization of the game goes into way more detail on...everything, really, and the dance segments are replaced with Leo and Emma having a conversation with the other humans.

Edited by lalalei2001 on Mar 27th 2021 at 6:18:59 AM

The Protomen enhanced my life.

Is the novel any good?

Nach jeder Ebbe kommt die Flut.

Haven't read it, but the details from the trope pages seem pretty cool or even necessary to understand the game, like Balan being a creation of Lance's.

The Protomen enhanced my life.

Given that this game is a Spiritual Successor of sorts to Ni GHTS into Dreams..., it's not too surprising that Balan is Lance's creation. In Ni GHTS into Dreams..., Ni GHTS was a Nightmare created by Wizeman.

Edited by M84 on Mar 30th 2021 at 4:50:55 PM

Disgusted, but not surprised

The novel also explores connections between the human characters a lot more, with some having presences in others' stories.

The Protomen enhanced my life.

So the sales in Japan have been... Not good.

This is a major oof for Naka. It's currently the fourth worst-rated game of all Switch games on Metacritic currently.

I'm sure there's a cheeky 'Naka hasn't learned from his time at Sonic Team' joke in here somewhere, but eh. Honestly, despite its poor reception, I did like the overall presentation and aesthetics of the game.

Its a potentially good animated project tethered to a particularly lackluster game.

Should have been an anime. Also I see he is getting an Inafune treatment - in that people wrongfully attribute him as Sonic's creator it seems.

How's it faring on non-Switch platforms?

The Protomen enhanced my life.

Why is it that, whenever they do a multi-platform game, the Switch version is always the worst?

Nach jeder Ebbe kommt die Flut.

Well, the Switch is less powerful- there's no use in pretending otherwise. So much more work needs to be done to optimize, and if corners are cut, it shows.

There's no reason the optimization couldn't have been done with a game like this one, so the fault is entirely with the developers.

SoundCloud

Its why The Super Switch Rumors hopefully come true.

Watch Symphogear

Well overall, no technical improvements could savage the game. Even the PS 5 version has it at 57 on Metacritic which by a wide margin is better than 27, but for a full price game that's still not very good.

I'm not inclined to cut the team much slack about the Nintendo versions given that there's been a Spyro title and two Crash games that also had less powerful Switch ports and they were still playable and reasonably nice to look at.

That's not true though. Hollow Knight is considered to have the best version on Switch.

You can only write so much in your forum signature. It's not fair that I want to write a piece of writing yet it will cut me off in the mid

Okay, so not every game. But it's not uncommon for the Switch version to have problems that other versions don't.

Nach jeder Ebbe kommt die Flut.

The performance issues didn't help, but as said other Switch ports are fine if not better than contemporaries (Hades, Hollow Knight, etc.) and the real issues seem to be the gameplay and level design.

The Protomen enhanced my life.

Not necessarily. This one is just poorly programmed.

For a Spiritual Successor to Ni GHTS, it sure does look like a rather cookie cutter platformer.

Ni GHTS had the flight thing going for it. This game has...an awkward costume change mechanic.

Disgusted, but not surprised

I think they wanted to make a game like Super Mario Odyssey, where the character's ability and playstyle could shift significantly, but they didn't know how to actually do it.

Nach jeder Ebbe kommt die Flut.

Heck, even Super Mario Bros. 3 handled costume changing better. Pretty much every costume was good in that game.

Except the Frog suit. Fucking Frog suit.

Disgusted, but not surprised

If you beat a Koopaling with the Frog Suit you get a funny message from the King!

The Protomen enhanced my life.

Did they ever say that they wanted this to be a Spiritual Successor to NiGHTS? Because, as far I can tell, everyone just started calling it that because it just looks like NiGHTS.