I found a nice game again. I look at the overall structure and gameplay dynamics of the game that took me to a strange wonderland.
Pros
+ There are good ideas
+ Musics
+ Different visuals
+ Character designs
+ 80 different costumes
Cons
- Bad and cumbersome gameplay
- Repetitive structure
-Bad decisions made
- Storytelling is bad / absent
- Most of the costumes have useless features
- Costume system badly applied
- One-button play enforcement
The game is a platform game created by the creators of Sonic the Hedgehog and attracts attention with its different visual style. Balan Wonderland, a new game that Yuji Naka took over many years later, is also the producer's only chance to prove himself to Square Enix. How well did he use this chance? Let's examine it together.
Balan Wonderworld comes up with a very interesting topic. but that wouldn't be true. The main story of the game is that they choose one of the two main characters of the game, Leo and Emma, find themselves in Balan's world after their personal problems and help other people. In the strange land we come from, we go to the world of 12 different people and make them cope with the problems they experience. We ensure that people get rid of their bad sides by beating the person who has a problem and dancing together afterwards. On the other hand, we are trying to balance our own hearts.
System requirements
MINIMUM:
Operating System: Windows® 8.1 / 10 64-bit
Processor: AMD Ryzen ™ 3 1200 / Intel® Core ™ i5-4430
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: AMD Radeon ™ R9 270X / NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 760
DirectX: Version 11
Storage: 20 GB available space
SUGGESTED:
Operating System: Windows® 10 64-bit
Processor: AMD Ryzen ™ 5 1400 / Intel® Core ™ i5-6400
Memory: 16 GB RAM
Graphics: AMD Radeon ™ RX 480 / NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1060
DirectX: Version 11
Storage: 20 GB available space
What's Happening to These People
First, let's look at the problems of our main characters Leo and Emma. Leo performs cool dance moves on the street, while the kids around him applaud him, and all of a sudden our character drives away from him and away from the environment. I guess he's sorry for a lost friendship, but we don't have a chance to understand that from the prologue. Emma, on the other hand, lives in a huge mansion full of servants. The servants whispered behind Emma and avoid direct contact with her. This situation makes Emma very sad and she leaves the house and finds herself in Balan's place. Here comes Balan with a very nice intermediate video, we give both children a "chick" and we head out to Wonderworld where they will help others to balance their own hearts.
The main story takes us to worlds where different people's hearts are broken as a result of the problems they go through and are captured by an evil being and turned into monsters. In fact, these people look quite normal at the beginning of the episode, but at the end we learn about their troubles and face them. We help people with serious problems, such as a farmer struggling with a storm, a clown who has trouble making a girlfriend, an engineer who can't fly his plane, and a diver who, I don't understand, gets a tail blow from his dolphin friend.
The story we learn through intermediate videos in certain parts of the episodes (usually at the last part) does not mean much. For some reason, the storytelling reminded me of Souls games. It is another matter that although there are more intermediate videos, he cannot explain less and explain it properly. For example, I still could not find an answer to the questions "Why did that dolphin hit the diver, why did they get upset, why did they make peace after dancing". Intermediate videos are great, but the storytelling is bad.
It is also clear that Balan is a very powerful entity, we do not understand why he needs us. We explode the rocks that appear out of nowhere in the episodes of "Balan's ", which we reach by finding his hat in each episode, and shatter the rocks that I guess are the source of evil, but I still haven't been able to connect this with the story.
One Click Big Adventure
The game, which has not achieved a great success on the story side, has the chance to make up for this shortcoming with more than eighty costumes and talent, and enjoyable platform-type gameplay. After all, Yuji Naka, the head of Sonic, one of the best-known names of platform games, is at the beginning of this game and it is his only chance to prove himself. So if you expect innovative gameplay and a great gaming experience that flows like water, I would say don't wait in vain.
Our main character is just a kid who has the ability to jump. All keys except the arrow keys allow the child to jump. Unaware of what is going to happen to us, we think, "So as the costumes arrive, new abilities will be added to these keys." After all, there are at least 80 costumes, and each one has its own skill. I guess they will not make a game that can only be played with a single button in 2021. It would be an indie game, but after all, this is a game published by Square Enix, with well-known names behind it.
There are 12 people in Balan's world who need our help. Each of them has its own world and each world has its own unique costumes. The most important thing about the costumes is that each one has its own special abilities. There are lots of costumes such as a fire-spitting dragon, jellyfish with electric jumping ability, sheep that hover in the air, a wheel to operate the mechanisms, and a fox that allows us to turn into boxes when the head is blown. The costumes are everything of the character because our character is dysfunctional on his own. Our character, whose only skill is jumping, cannot stop them even if he jumps on the heads of the enemies without his costume. The enemies we can stop even with unqualified costumes, the only benefit of which is to be a night light, become immortal without the costume.
The costume system may have been a very interesting and enjoyable system, but it didn't. As we thought that the abilities open up as the costumes arrived, it really does open, but there is one condition, only talent in one costume. Want to spit fire? Then say goodbye to your jumping feature. Did the fight suddenly start while trying to reach far away in the lizard costume? You will probably be hit and lose the costume until you change the costume. Want to combine two costume skills and develop tactics? You have no chance outside of co-op.
Who came out of the idea of playing the game on a single button, who supported this idea and why did anyone say "What are you doing?" I am very curious. Even the PlayStation 1 platform games were not that cumbersome. There is a costume called the sickle, for example, he throws a sickle as the name implies. Aside from the fact that this costume doesn't bounce, the sickles you throw go somewhere according to your head. One thinks that I will switch to a costume that has the ability to jump and then go back to the other one, after all, we can carry 3 different costumes at the same time. But this time, animation of long change comes into play. You stop for a single jump move, change costumes, jump, then change costumes again and continue on your way. The fluency of the department is flying away.
Changes Talent Like Changing Costumes
There is one more point that sticks in my mind about the costumes. We cannot buy the costumes directly, we need to find the key first and then buy the costume. But the keys are usually next to the costume, at most a very short distance away, and the more we get, the more new ones come. It is a system that has no effect on gameplay and is only made to waste time. Since we lose the costume when it is hit, it becomes very annoying when we need to return and buy a new one.
The fighting part is a little awkward. Depending on the costume you have, you attack the enemy or jump on the head. It is possible to run away from the enemies that appear out of nowhere and make them disappear. The enemies at the mini boss level protecting the doors and the boss fights contain mini games. Mini bosses usually make copies of themselves and you have to hit the real thing. Boss fights are the most enjoyable ones. Each boss can take damage in three different ways, with the help of the costumes you have. Every different attack you make rewards you with one of the Balan statues that you have to collect in the game. Boss fights are generally very simple but visually the most enjoyable. Of course, there are some annoying details such as if you lose the costume you have to wear in the final boss fight of the game, you will not be able to complete the fight and have to start over.
The biggest problem of the gameplay is that it seems to be made with the logic of "a structure so simple that children can play" and it is full of unnecessary things that even adults can be nervous about. When the children see that they cannot shoot or jump, they give up the game (tried), the adults are bored with the time-consuming details despite the simplicity of the game. The game fails to reach both groups of players.
I would also like to touch upon the episodes of "Balan's Wonderworld", which look very beautiful but become boring in a short time. One of the sculptures we need to progress in the game is taken from these sections. In the episode where we control Balan, we try to stop various rocks in a deep blue place and sometimes the arch enemy Lance. It progresses with the QTA sequences where we try to press the right button at the right moment. You have to do all of them perfectly to get the statue, but after a while you get bored because you are doing the same things all the time. The location change according to the episode, the contribution of our fight to the story, has no connection with the events. Always the same place, always the same music and always the same things. At least if you changed the background. The point system is also very brutal. With 3 gold and 2 silver degrees, I have achieved an unimaginable achievement such as winning a total of bronze hats.
Finally, I will talk about the main venue where we made the selection of departments. In the Hub area, there is a small side quest played with the chick-type animals named Tim, which Balan gave us. We find these types named Tim in the sections we visit and feed them with the crystals we collect. When you come over the flower of the right color and throw the crystals, it is lunch time. Tims eat these and grow up, and sometimes new Tim hatches eggs. Then they play games on the slide in the middle of the zone and make a counter run. The higher their number, the faster the counter rotates. The counter advancing as you stand in the zone unlocks more game tools. If you leave the game open in this area and go, you can make the tower rise continuously. I have neither understood nor intended to understand the purpose of this secondary task. At the end of the episode, I managed to feed the animals and raise the tower, but the lack of goal made me lose my motivation. Probably an area made for players who want to do it 100%.
Balan's Visual Feast
So far, we've talked about the bad or annoying parts of the game. Let's talk a little bit about the beautiful sides. I really liked the game visually. The designs of the characters, NPCs and costumes are beautiful. Again, character designer Naoto Ohsima, whom we know from the Sonic series, did a very good job. The atmosphere is almost amazing. The creatures dancing around (all showing our upcoming costumes) are human and a colorful world the episode is about.
The episode designs are not too bad, but the repetitive zones start to draw your attention when you have to go back to the beginning to get the costume you lost with one hit. The game is sort of self-sabotaging. Also, the characters dancing around with joy disappear suddenly when you approach and reappear when you move away, which you cannot understand until you see how absurd it is. Sometimes the characters that appear to congratulate you when you pass through the checkpoint areas disappear before the music starts. I don't know why something like this happens, but I always manage to laugh because of the absurdity of the situation. If only the characters hadn't disappeared.
The music is very good. Episode music, martial music, songs played on the dance scene, all of them are music that can be listened to with pleasure. Of course, there are minor problems in some episodes such as the music not being suitable for the environment. No matter how good it is, music that is unrelated to the rest of the episode can be disturbing. If you want to play the PC version of the game at 1080p / 60 FPS, it is recommended to have a Ryzen 5 1400 / i5 - 6400 processor, RX480 / GTX 1060 graphics card and 16 GB RAM. It is recommended to have 20 GB of free space, but the size of the game is around 14 GB. I was able to play the game without any performance problems on the PC, which is slightly above the recommended system.
Result
I have been criticizing the game well and badly from the beginning of the article. When I reread what I wrote, I felt that it gave an air of almost dislike the game. Actually, there were parts of the game that I enjoyed, I saw ideas that I liked. I am sure I would praise it much more if this game was not a game that included famous producers, released by Square Enix and sold with a price tag of $ 60. It is like an indie game that looks extremely beautiful in its current form and has great music. It might be a game that I can say "They tried some things and they can improve themselves by learning from their mistakes in their next game" but we all know that there is no such thing.
The visuals are great, the intermediate videos are visually high quality but meaningless, the music is awesome, the character designs are very nice, but there is a potential that would be considered bad even years ago, wasted due to gameplay and bad decisions that could not fully appeal to any audience.
