Welcome to our review of Balan Wonderworld, a game I looked forward to after playing the demo.
Balan Wonderworld is a wondrous action-platformer game themed around a mysterious musical theatre. The stars of the show will use special abilities from a multitude of characterful costumes as they adventure in the bizarre and imaginary land of Wonderworld. Here memories and vistas from the real world mix with the things that people hold dear. Twelve different tales await our stars in Wonderworld, each with their own unique quirks. They will explore all corners of these labyrinthine stages, using all the tricks and gimmicks hidden along the way, to get to the heart of each touching story.
The stars of the show can use powers from the inhabitants of Wonderworld by wearing their colorful costumes, with over 80 different ones to try on! Bash your enemies, walk in the air, freeze time or manipulate all kinds of objects… the possibilities are endless when you pick up a new costume.
Not so long ago, I played the demo of this game, which was possibly the best possible experience to date. I played it on PlayStation 5, with the sole purpose as to try this game at its best. The best graphics and the quickest loading times. At that time, I was so excited by Balan Wonderworld, I even called it the best platformer I played since the day that I had Mario Odyssey for the first time. A game that I have now beat four times. In my humble opinion the real GOTY that year and no, not Breath of the Wild. All this to show how much I enjoyed this demo and I even mentioned to a work colleague to give the demo a try, even though he normally only played shooters, he agreed Balan Wonderworld was one heck of an experience.
As mentioned before, Balan Wonderworld is what could be called a mechanics-based platformer, I have even heard people describe it as a costume platformer, which I can see too. The idea is simplistic yet fun. The best approach to any platformer in my humble opinion. During my first gameplay, I think I even went back into levels more than once just to try out different costumes, because those really make the game flourish.
Not just them, also the crazy themed levels, like the one where you seem to be walking around a gigantic chessboard or when you walk around the fields of the very first level you enter. The game is very hectic, yet not overly busy. Nothing like Sackboy which was at times a sensory overload.
And then I started playing it on Switch…..
Sure, I was expecting the graphics to be less pretty compared to PS5, which makes total sense. They were a lot blander, but I was able to live with that. In itself, a great game will always be a great game regardless of what it looks like. My main gripe however isn’t graphics-related. The framerate is so clearly different, that it kind of ruins the flow of the game.
Imagine that your jumps go from supersmooth to just average. The camera did not do its thing and I often felt that it was too slow to follow the action displayed on the screen. Heck, I actually fell down the void in the game more than once, all due to how the game responded to my input. It was such a disappointing experience that I wanted to pinch my cheeks and make sure I was awake.
So, wanting to make sure it was not just me, I invited my friend over to have a look at the game with me. He then basically confirmed everything I said, but I had not yet shown him the game on PS5 at that time. He literally complained about laggy movements and slow camera redirects. He called Balan Wonderworld a bad game, at which time I let him try it on PS5. The funny thing is that he asked if this was the same game, meaning if they were both final versions or not. He was very surprised, to say the least.
I know it is unfair to compare a game from Switch to its counterpart on the clearly more powerful PS5, but it just gave me a well-needed point of view on this game. Yes, at its core, Balan Wonderworld is really a decent enough platformer that will even be a great experience on the right console. I think this is one where graphics do matter when the entire package is affected by it…
In conclusion, Balan Wonderworld is a solid 9 as a platformer, sadly the experience on Switch was far below expectations. Laggy movements, lower quality graphics, and bad camera work really did lower my score severely…
