Donkey Kong has always been about brute strength and playful chaos, but Donkey Kong Bananza takes that spirit and smashes it into something entirely new. This isn’t just another side-scrolling romp or nostalgic callback—it’s a full-blown reinvention of what a platformer can be, built around destruction, exploration, and sheer, joyful mayhem. From the very first moment you rip through the terrain with Kong’s thunderous fists, it’s clear that Nintendo isn’t just giving us another banana hunt—they’re giving us a playground where every wall, every tunnel, and every discovery feels like your own.

Donkey Kong has always been one of Nintendo’s most recognizable icons, but his outings have often been overshadowed by Mario’s globe-trotting adventures. For decades, Kong’s legacy has largely rested on the legacy of Donkey Kong Country and the more recent Retro Studios reboots, both of which leaned on challenging side-scrolling design. Donkey Kong Bananza, however, feels like Nintendo’s attempt to finally give DK the kind of flagship, system-defining adventure he’s long deserved.

Arriving on the Nintendo Switch 2, the game comes with enormous expectations. Not only is it the first new mainline Donkey Kong title in over a decade, but it’s also being positioned as one of the console’s early showpieces—an answer to the question of how Nintendo’s next generation of hardware can push its most beloved characters forward. From its voxel-style destructible environments to its layered underground worlds, Bananza immediately sets itself apart from traditional platformers.

Thematically, the setup is as classic as ever: Donkey Kong finds himself battling against the shady Void Company, an exploitative corporation digging too deep into the jungle’s core. Yet the twist isn’t in the villainy—it’s in how you interact with the world itself. Every punch, every roll, every ground pound doesn’t just dispatch enemies, it reshapes the terrain around you. That simple change reframes exploration, making discovery feel personal and earned, not just a matter of running left to right.

All of this raises an exciting question: can Nintendo reinvent Donkey Kong the way it reinvented Mario with Odyssey or Zelda with Breath of the Wild? Bananza doesn’t just pay homage to the past; it tries to carve out a new future for Kong, one that feels as ambitious as it is unpredictable.

Game Concept & Story

At its core, Donkey Kong Bananza is a game about smashing through limits—both literal and figurative. The central concept is deceptively simple: every level is built on destructible, layered terrain, meaning you’re not just running across platforms, you’re burrowing beneath them, carving new paths, and uncovering secrets that feel genuinely hidden. It’s a natural evolution of Donkey Kong’s trademark power, finally giving his colossal strength a mechanical role beyond just knocking out enemies.

The story framing this chaos is classic Nintendo: light, playful, and just serious enough to give weight to your adventure. The antagonist this time is the Void Company, a corporate empire greedily drilling into the jungle’s heart for a mysterious resource. It’s a setup that instantly resonates—simple enough for kids to follow, but cheeky in its satirical edge for older players. Donkey Kong, alongside familiar allies like Diddy and Dixie, steps up not just as a hero, but as a protector of the environment, battling back against industrial exploitation with raw, joyful force.

What makes the narrative work is its layering. While it never bogs you down with cutscenes or heavy dialogue, each new area you uncover feels tied into the theme of excavation and discovery. Early stages tease the scale of destruction you can cause, while deeper zones reveal more exotic biomes—lava flows, crystalline caverns, ancient ruins—all hinting at a history beneath DK’s island that’s bigger than any single villain. In its own playful way, the game builds mystery through its setting rather than exposition.

Importantly, Bananza doesn’t try to be a story-driven epic like Zelda. Instead, it embraces Donkey Kong’s cartoonish roots, weaving in slapstick humor, expressive animations, and cheeky villain encounters. Bosses are often larger-than-life corporate caricatures, and their battles double as mini-comedy routines. It’s a world where humor and wonder go hand in hand, and that tone keeps the game from ever feeling self-serious, even as it experiments with bold new ideas.

Gameplay

What sets Donkey Kong Bananza apart from past entries—and most modern platformers—is how much of the world bends to your fists. The game’s core loop revolves around destruction and discovery: ground-pounding through walls, rolling into crumbling cliffs, and tunneling down into layered stages that hide new paths and rewards. It’s a refreshing twist on the genre, giving each level the feel of a living puzzle box rather than a fixed obstacle course. Bananza’s transformations, from gorilla-sized drills to temporary elemental powers, keep movement fresh while cleverly tying into environmental design. Coupled with collectibles like Banandium Gems that encourage you to dig deeper (literally), the mechanics strike a balance between chaos and control, rewarding both reckless smashing and thoughtful exploration.

Core movement and platforming

At its foundation, Donkey Kong Bananza feels immediately familiar—rolling, climbing, and leaping across platforms retains the weighty, momentum-driven feel fans expect. Yet the Switch 2 hardware allows that movement to feel sharper and more responsive than ever, with Kong’s iconic roll chaining seamlessly into wall smashes or vaults across gaps. Unlike Mario’s airy precision, Donkey Kong’s platforming has a sense of heft and impact, rewarding timing and rhythm over delicate finesse. The level design leans into this physicality, often asking you to build speed before crashing through barriers or stringing together rolls and jumps in flowing sequences that feel almost musical. It’s a system that makes even simple traversal satisfying, grounding the game’s wilder mechanics in rock-solid fundamentals.

Destruction and Environmental Interaction

The headline mechanic of Donkey Kong Bananza is its fully destructible, voxel-style world, and it’s nothing short of a game-changer. Every punch, roll, and ground pound doesn’t just feel powerful—it reshapes the environment in meaningful ways. Crumbling walls reveal hidden caverns, tunnels collapse into shortcuts, and secret chambers lie just beneath the surface, waiting for players curious enough to dig. Unlike scripted set pieces, destruction here is systemic, giving a playful sense of authorship to exploration. You’re not just moving through a designed path—you’re carving your own. It makes levels feel alive and unpredictable, as though the jungle itself is something to wrestle with, not just race across. That tactile satisfaction of smashing through a barrier never loses its charm, turning brute force into a form of creativity.

Transformations

Adding variety to the destruction-heavy core, Bananza introduces a set of transformations that let Donkey Kong temporarily bend the rules of platforming. These power-ups feel like playful extensions of his brute strength: a drill form that chews straight through rock, a magma-charged punch that melts obstacles, or a springy vine-swinging mode that opens vertical paths. Each transformation isn’t just a gimmick—it ties directly into level design, encouraging experimentation and rewarding players who think beyond brute force. While some are clearly situational, the best ones create surprising moments of freedom, letting you approach challenges in multiple ways. The result is a toolkit that expands Kong’s identity beyond sheer muscle, giving his adventure a layer of strategy and creativity without ever losing the primal joy of smashing through the world.

Exploration, Collectibles & Level Design

Exploration in Donkey Kong Bananza is more than a side activity—it’s the heart of the experience. Each stage is layered like a vertical cross-section of the jungle, tempting you to burrow deeper and uncover hidden routes rather than simply sprinting to the exit. Collectibles like Banandium Gems, golden idols, and puzzle fragments aren’t just shiny distractions; they serve as incentives to experiment with the terrain, nudging you to punch through suspicious walls or plunge into unmarked shafts. Level design thrives on this sense of curiosity, blending sprawling open areas with tightly constructed puzzle chambers that reward observation as much as brute strength. It’s a structure that makes progression feel organic, as if you’re peeling back layers of a living world, and it keeps the hunt for secrets just as satisfying as the main platforming challenge.

Difficulty & Flow

One of Bananza’s biggest surprises is how smoothly it balances accessibility with challenge. Early levels are deliberately forgiving, letting players experiment with the voxel-style destruction and get comfortable with the weight of Donkey Kong’s movement. Even when you make mistakes, the game rarely punishes you harshly, instead nudging you back into action with clever checkpoints and generous health pickups. It’s a gentle introduction that sets the stage without sapping the fun.

As you dig deeper—both narratively and literally—the game steadily ratchets up the tension. Environmental hazards become trickier, enemy placements more demanding, and level design begins layering puzzles on top of platforming. The transformation mechanics also start to play a bigger role, often requiring precise timing or clever use of abilities in quick succession. Boss battles, too, escalate from slapstick scuffles to genuine tests of reflex and pattern recognition, keeping the sense of escalation alive.

What makes the flow work is Nintendo’s trademark pacing. Bursts of high-intensity action are always followed by calmer stretches of exploration, giving players time to breathe and experiment before being thrown into another gauntlet. Optional side paths and collectible hunts provide a natural difficulty slider—casual players can stick to the main route, while completionists will find some of the toughest challenges hidden away in the depths.

The result is a game that feels approachable for newcomers while still rewarding mastery. It doesn’t quite reach the punishing heights of Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, but it strikes a more balanced rhythm, one that feels perfectly suited to showcasing the Switch 2’s new hardware without overwhelming the player. It’s a flow that keeps you hooked, always wondering what lies just a little deeper underground.

Visuals, Audio & Presentation

Visually, Donkey Kong Bananza makes an immediate impression. The voxel-style destruction gives every environment a tactile, almost toy-like quality, with walls crumbling into satisfying cascades of cubes. Yet the game never feels blocky or crude—lush jungle foliage, glittering underground crystals, and molten caverns all pop with detail, blending Nintendo’s cartoonish charm with a new sense of material weight. The Switch 2 hardware really shows here, rendering environments that are both vibrant and dynamic without sacrificing clarity in the chaos.

The art direction leans heavily into contrast. Sun-dappled surface levels feel breezy and familiar, while the deeper layers reveal stranger, more alien biomes that keep exploration fresh. The way these shifts are staged creates a genuine sense of discovery—you never quite know if the next chamber will be filled with glowing mushrooms, bubbling lava, or the relics of an ancient civilization. It’s a visual rhythm that mirrors the game’s mechanical depth, making the act of digging down as exciting as finding the collectibles themselves.

Performance is generally strong, though not flawless. The sheer amount of destruction on screen occasionally leads to frame dips or camera hiccups, especially during more chaotic boss fights. However, these moments are rare, and the overall polish is impressive for such an ambitious system-driven platformer. Importantly, the camera—long a sore spot for 3D platformers—handles the chaos better than expected, usually framing both traversal and destruction clearly without stealing control away from the player.

On the audio side, Bananza is pure Nintendo magic. The soundtrack blends funky jungle beats with experimental underground motifs, making each layer of the world feel sonically distinct. Classic Donkey Kong percussive riffs return in remixed form, often dropping in just as you smash through a new area, punctuating the sense of triumph. Sound effects are equally crucial: walls crumble with a crunchy pop, enemies squeal cartoonishly, and Kong’s ground pound lands with a bassy thud that’s endlessly satisfying. It’s a soundscape that matches the physicality of the gameplay, giving every action weight and personality.

Strengths / What Works Really Well

The greatest triumph of Donkey Kong Bananza is how it takes a simple concept—smash everything—and builds an entire adventure around it without losing depth. The destructible voxel world isn’t just a flashy gimmick; it fundamentally redefines how you approach exploration, making every level feel alive and pliable in your hands. That sense of agency, of carving your own path rather than following a fixed one, is what gives the game its staying power.

Nintendo also nails the tone. From the slapstick humor of Kong’s animations to the tongue-in-cheek boss encounters, Bananza never forgets its playful roots. It’s a game that can be laugh-out-loud funny one moment and awe-inspiring the next, as the camera pulls back to reveal the scale of the world you’ve just torn through. That balance of lighthearted charm and ambitious scale makes it uniquely Donkey Kong—different from Mario’s whimsy or Zelda’s grandeur, but just as confident in its identity.

Another strength lies in pacing and variety. Levels constantly introduce new twists, whether it’s a transformation that changes how you interact with terrain or a fresh biome that reshapes the rules of exploration. The collectible design also deserves praise: Banandium Gems and hidden treasures aren’t busywork, they’re carefully placed incentives that make you rethink how to use the environment. It’s a design philosophy that encourages curiosity and experimentation, rewarding both casual players and completionists without alienating either group.

Finally, the presentation ties it all together. The lush visuals, kinetic destruction effects, and funky, varied soundtrack create a world that’s as fun to watch and listen to as it is to play. When Bananza is firing on all cylinders, it feels like a showcase of what the Switch 2 can do—both technically and creatively. It’s proof that Nintendo can still surprise with fresh ideas, even for characters who have been around for more than four decades.

Weaknesses / What Could Be Better

For all its innovation, Bananza isn’t without rough edges. The destructible world, while exhilarating, sometimes feels overwhelming in its chaos. In certain levels, the sheer freedom to smash through walls can lead to confusion, making it unclear whether you’ve discovered a clever shortcut or simply broken the intended flow of the stage. That ambiguity can be thrilling, but it occasionally tips into frustration, especially when hunting for specific collectibles.

Performance, though strong overall, also isn’t flawless. The voxel destruction system pushes the Switch 2 hard, and during especially busy sequences—like boss fights with multiple collapsing structures—the frame rate can dip noticeably. Camera control, while improved over past 3D platformers, sometimes struggles to keep up with vertical exploration, leaving you fumbling for perspective in the heat of the moment. These aren’t deal-breakers, but they do occasionally break immersion.

The transformation abilities, while inventive, aren’t all created equal. Some—like the drill form—integrate beautifully into level design, while others feel underused or gimmicky, appearing in only a handful of stages before being forgotten. It’s a missed opportunity, especially given how central these mechanics are to the game’s identity. Similarly, boss battles, though stylish and funny, sometimes lean too heavily on spectacle at the expense of depth, with patterns that repeat once too often.

Finally, pacing can occasionally sag in the mid-game. After the thrill of discovering the destructible world’s possibilities, some zones feel like they’re retreading familiar ground without adding enough new wrinkles. Completionists may also find the collectible hunt drifting toward padding in the later stages, with certain gems requiring more patience than ingenuity. It’s a reminder that even bold ideas need careful restraint to stay fresh across a full-length adventure.

Comparisons / Relative Value

It’s impossible to talk about Donkey Kong Bananza without comparing it to Nintendo’s other heavy hitters. In many ways, this is to Kong what Super Mario Odyssey was to Mario: a redefinition of the character’s possibilities, built around a bold new mechanic. Where Odyssey celebrated creativity through Cappy’s possession system, Bananza celebrates brute strength and curiosity through destruction. Both games invite experimentation, but Bananza feels rougher, more chaotic, and more physical—fitting for DK’s identity.

Compared to Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, the difference is even sharper. Tropical Freeze was laser-focused on precision platforming and razor-tight difficulty, rewarding mastery above all. Bananza trades some of that rigor for open-ended exploration, shifting the series away from pure challenge and toward discovery. Some longtime fans may miss the relentless difficulty, but others will welcome the broader appeal and the sheer variety baked into the new structure.

Stacked against third-party platformers, Bananza stands out for its ambition. Few games dare to make terrain destruction more than a gimmick, but here it forms the backbone of progression. It’s not always as polished as Mario or as elegant as Zelda, but it has a distinct identity that makes it feel worthwhile in Nintendo’s crowded stable of mascots. At a full price tag, it offers solid value: a 20–25 hour main story, plenty of side content for completionists, and enough replayability to justify digging back in after the credits roll.

Ultimately, Bananza doesn’t just succeed by comparison—it thrives because it gives Donkey Kong his own stage again. It may not eclipse Nintendo’s crown jewels, but it proves that DK doesn’t have to live in Mario’s shadow. This is his game, his style, and his chaos, and for many players, that alone will be worth the price of entry.

Final Verdict

Donkey Kong Bananza is the kind of reinvention fans have been waiting decades for. It takes Kong’s defining traits—raw power, slapstick energy, and a love for chaos—and builds an entire game around them, letting you smash, dig, and explore in ways the series has never attempted. The destructible world is a bold gamble that mostly pays off, delivering a sense of freedom and discovery that feels uniquely Donkey Kong, not just a reskinned Mario adventure.

That said, the game isn’t flawless. Technical hiccups, uneven transformations, and occasional pacing dips remind you that ambition can come with growing pains. Yet even in its roughest moments, Bananza radiates personality and charm. It’s a platformer that makes you grin as much as it challenges you, and that balance of joy and innovation is what makes Nintendo magic endure.

For longtime fans, this is a triumphant return—one that finally gives Donkey Kong the spotlight he’s long deserved. For newcomers, it’s an accessible, energetic entry point into one of Nintendo’s oldest franchises. It may not topple Super Mario Odyssey or redefine the genre in the way Breath of the Wild did, but it doesn’t need to. Bananza succeeds on its own terms, carving out a new space for DK that feels fresh, fun, and endlessly replayable.

Verdict: A bold, chaotic, and joyfully destructive platformer that proves Donkey Kong is more than just Mario’s muscle.