As I crashed and smashed my way to the first official stage of Donkey Kong Bananza, the Lagoon Layer, I was excited to check out how the developers of Super Mario Odyssey would go above and beyond with customization. I wanted to make DK look fly as hell. Or at least dress him up like Waluigi.
During my stop at the Lagoon Layer Style Shop, the equivalent of the Crazy Cap stores in Odyssey, I picked up the Treasure Tie, an ensemble-clincher that was also most useful for my treasure-hunting journey. Bananza being a collectathon, and having the 100%-everything brain worms, I wanted to get every Banandium Gem and every fossil. With the banana-adorned yellow tie, which increased the chance for discovering Treasure Chests under the rock, I saw clues to fossil and banana locations popping up everywhere. I also picked up some pants for DK that increased his swim speed — no diss to Donkey Kong’s original britches, but they’re meh and lacking in bonus features.
The thing with the outfits and costume options in Bananza is that very few of what you can pick up in later stages tops those original purchases. They’re just not that special! Or cool-looking. So I am never browsing through the possibilities, wanting to unlock it all to see how it looks in motion on DK or Pauline. A hat is a hat. A tie is a tie. And because of that, I spent the entirety of my Donkey Kong Bananza playthrough, almost 30 hours, wearing the same exact thing: the glorious Treasure Tie.
I went to the next layer’s style shop and the next layer and the layer after that to maybe find at least one solid outfit that I would keep DK in for the rest of the game, or perhaps a lewk half as iconic as the Super Mario 64 polygonal suit in Odyssey. Hell, I would have taken the opportunity to just chill and roam with no shirt, boxer shorts, and a backwards cap. It’s just not the same.
Even the act of purchasing outfits in Bananza isn’t as gratifying as it is in Super Mario Odyssey, because the currency that you have to use in Bananza (Fossils) isn’t as satisfying to collect as the Purple Coins in Mario’s 2017 adventure. Those coins back then were placed so carefully and delicately, they were sometimes hidden in places you worked hard to find, or you might’ve thought were inaccessible.
In Bananza, not only are there way too many fossils, but most of them can be located by randomly breaking everything in your path. Is it fun at first to be a monster and literally tear the world layer by layer? Well, yes. Yes, it is. But it gets old, and tracking fossils down isn’t fun without the prizes to lure you in.
The fashion game might be a different situation if the bonus effects on the outfits you find later on were spectacular and game-changing, but they’re fairly mundane. Increase the amount of health you gain with apples? By wearing an ugly apple tie? I am not incentivized by making a relatively easy game easier.
You can become invisible, but few enemies need to be thrown off course in that way. You can increase the chance of getting Banandium Chips, but fossils and gems are more important. Even Pauline’s outfit effects are primarily involved with keeping your Bananza Forms going for longer. Still, everyone who’s played Bananza knows that the forms already last a reasonable amount of time, and being able to freely switch between them already feels like cheating.
Maybe one day I’ll get the Halloween DLC I so deeply crave, but right now, my dreams of dressing up and constantly switching my outfits around to match the surrounding environment have been dashed. Let the ape wear a Mario outfit! Give him a Link tunic! Let him run around in boxer shorts or something, please.
In the next 3D Mario game (soon, please), I don’t want Mario to get 5% poison resistance for wearing a stupid hat. I just want him to strut around in some fun clothes. Let the residents of Mushroom Kingdom, Kong Isle, and New Donk City work it, Nintendo.
