Back in July, I gobbled Donkey Kong Bananza up like an ape in a banana store. I couldn’t help myself; the punch-based puzzling was delicious. But by the end of my 40-hour binge, I ended up with a bit of a tummy ache. The destruction standbox grew stale the deeper I dug into its overabundance of layers. I left my playthrough satisfied, but wondering if there was enough flavor in the formula to leave me hungry for seconds.
I wasn’t expecting to find out anytime soon, but I have, thanks to a surprise DLC. Released during last week’s hour-long Nintendo Direct, DK Island + Emerald Rush is a new $20 expansion to the Switch 2 exclusive. Rather than adding more gems to collect or Bananza forms to try out, it transforms the base game into a roguelike, while introducing a nostalgic new hub area to send fans home happy.
It’s a clever, and unexpected, way to remix a game that felt like it had covered as much ground as it could. But after digging in, I’m not convinced that there’s much more to do with Bananza’s tasty but thin indulgence.
When I fired up Bananza after downloading the DLC, I was quickly whisked off to DK Island. The new area, comparable to Resort Layer in size, isn’t so much a full layer as it is a museum full of references to DK’s past. There’s an island shaped like Donkey Konga drums, for instance. It can be smashed up like any other area, but there are no gems or fossils in it. Aside from taking in the sights, all I can really do there is trade in my Chips for decorative statues.
That’s disappointing considering the $20, but DK Island’s actual function is to act as a tutorial area for Emerald Rush, the meat of the DLC. The idea here is that the Void Company tasks DK with gathering emeralds from previous layers. To do so, he’s dropped into roguelike runs where essentially every collectible is turned into an emerald. Each run consists of up to 10 90-second rounds, and each one asks DK to hit a certain collection goal that rises exponentially each time. It’s all meant to test how much you’ve mastered DK’s moves and how well you know the layout of each layer.
While it took me a few tries to really understand what was being asked of me, the premise creates some genuine challenges. I need to work as quickly as possible, remembering where gems are in each layer so I can get reliable caches of emeralds in a pinch. Midway through the first round, Void jobs begin to pop up that ask me to defeat some enemies, destroy a certain material, or pull off other goals to get a big chunk of emerald. It’s not too far from the pitch of Elden Ring: Nightreign: each round is a routing puzzle I need to work out to maximize my emerald gain. Once I got into it, I came to enjoy bouncing from objective to objective, knowing when to strategically use my available warp cannons to teeleport to far-away missions, and when to smash my way to the next job and get some emeralds along the way.
That thrill quickly wears thin, though, even with a roguelike hook and a progression system meant to fuel replays. Each time I clear a job or grab a fossil, I can choose an upgrade like you’d get in something like Hades. Most of these upgrades revolve around buffing my emerald gain to keep up with the rising goals. I could gain more emeralds from clearing jobs, or smashing enemies with chunks, or breaking terrain. None of those upgrades change much about what I’m doing; they just make the number go up. There’s very little in the way of real buildcrafting.
As I moved through repetitive runs, slowly unlocking more perks, playable layers, and outfits, some of my lingering critiques of the base game solidified in my brain. There’s an immediate satisfaction in Bananza’s smashing gameplay, but it’s a shallow thrill. After 10 layers, every challenge starts to feel the same. A big skill tree is meant to up the complexity of DK’s moves, but many of the abilities on it feel superfluous. There’s nothing more effective, or fun, than just throwing a punch. I can feel that problem in how Emerald Rush handles skills, too. In each run, you start with nothing and must upgrade as you go by collecting Chips. I found that I never really needed to upgrade anything other than health, punch power, and an occasionally handy Bananza form perk like flutter flying.
Skills are quietly the entire thrust of the base game. There’s no reason to collect gems other than to unlock more abilities. You don’t have to have a certain number of gems to go to a new area, so collecting is solely there for deepening DK’s toolkit – and that toolkit just doesn’t have a lot of handy tools in it. That leaves the final stretch of Bananza feeling aimless as it barrels toward its thrilling finale, digging through more layers that fail to introduce new challenges. Emerald Rush has the same problem in a more compact form, with the character-building loop struggling to make runs feel distinct. (It doesn’t help that layers and gem locations never change either, cutting into the procedural appeal of the genre’s best games.)
DK Island + Emerald Rush doesn’t make me like Donkey Kong Bananza any less, but it does make me feel like there aren’t many places for the idea to go next without some serious creative flexes. The base adventure already throws everything at the wall, dropping in well over a dozen biomes and tons of puzzle-platforming ideas. You will feel like you’ve done it all twice over by the end of Bananza. If a total genre recontextualization isn’t enough to make that hook feel new – something that worked for Splatoon 3 with its excellent Side Order DLC – then Bananza might be best served as a one-off treat rather than a permanent addition to Nintendo’s menu.
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