Balan Wonderworld Reviews
With a price point of $60, it's hard to recommend Balan Wonderworld, especially when other platformers (and even collections such as Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy, which contain multiple games) are a lot cheaper and are much better. The ingredients are all there for a great game, but everything has gone off and rotten. What's been cooked up is a bland, uninspired trip into a world that should have been anything but. Balan Wonderworld feels like bargain bin material that should be avoided at all costs... at any discount.
Balan Wonderworld is a great idea on paper, and it's perfectly playable from start to finish, but it's held back by some baffling design decisions and boring gameplay. The idea of a protagonist who swaps between costumes to collect Mario-style shines could be great, but the costumes are too simple, the environments are too boring, and the gameplay is too basic. It could possibly be a good game for extremely young players due to its low difficulty and cartoony graphics, but even then, I would recommend one of the many other offerings intended for that demographic instead.
Balan Wonderworld is not a complete disaster – there are some interesting ideas at certain points in the journey and the soundtrack is often striking. However, the mechanics of the costumes (that are the heart of the game) aren't very good and are very unbalanced. In addition, the design of the levels is strange and Balan's Bout minigame is just horrible.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
Balan Wonderworld is basically a game for no one. It can attract the youngest, but provided that they like the specific design. This one will rather reject older fans of the genre, as well as low difficulty. It also tires of repeatability and many missed solutions in the game.
Review in Polish | Read full review
I genuinely love Balan Wonderworld because it caught me at just the right moment to indulge its whimsy. I don't for a second think it's a great game or platformer, but then I also just don't care. It offers something much more viscerally engaging; raw creative energy, and I would rather a hundred games fall flat like this one has and at least give me something different than play yet another highly refined copy of something I've already played a hundred times. Sometimes, just sometimes, raw creativity is enough in itself.
Balan Wonderworld comes to market as a title designed to make the little ones enjoy. However, the title fails in most of its proposals, with the artistic section and the use of costumes being the only thing that allows the title to maintain composure at some point.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Not so charming all-action show, however still acceptable for young players.
Review in Slovak | Read full review
Balan Wonderworld is a boring, dull and dated platformer presented in a beautiful package to persuade parents who are looking to buy a game for their children.
Review in Persian | Read full review
Balan WonderWorld deserved to be far more than average, as the final game is a marked improvement over the demo. It's beautiful a lot of the time, character designs are mostly wonderful, the unique ideas that appear in each level are great fun… however the overall execution is simply lacking something important. The repetitive bouts, rough edges, and the sometimes awful physics make this a much harder title to recommend. It is full of bubbly unique charm, and is mostly heart-warmingly fun, but many will be put off by the slow, restrictive design, despite this being designed around it. Hopefully, the game will get some traction.
If you have a soft spot for classic 3D platformers and imaginative game worlds, you'll have a lovely time with Balan Wonderworld. With a heartfelt story, plenty of cuteness, a clever costume system, and oodles of stages to master; it's one incredible adventure.
I think the best way to describe Balan Wonderworld in a short but easy-to-grasp way is by comparing it to Yuji Naka’s Sonic Adventure. Both are graphically impressive, both feature phenomenal soundtracks, both are packed with a lot of content… but both are pretty underwhelming when it comes to their gameplay, even though you can get used to their jankiness and still have a great time.
Balan Wonderworld will be divisive, but I actually had a pretty fun time exploring its whimsical levels and using the creative costumes to overcome its platforming challenges. The level design itself is on point too, whilst the wonderful soundtrack and addictive nature of grabbing all of the collectibles kept me coming back for more. Of course, there’s no doubting that it’s VERY simple in design, whilst a lot of elements of the gameplay and its visuals are pretty dated too. There was nothing on show across the game that you wouldn’t have seen done before by plenty of other 3D platformers over the years, with Balan Wonderworld falling very short of the evolution of the genre some gamers might be hoping for in 2021. Still, there’s no doubting that there’s still a good time to be had in the game, especially for younger gamers or those who appreciate the genre. It’s certainly no masterpiece, but Balan Wonderworld still offers a wacky yet wonderful escapade that might pleasantly surprise those who give it a try.
No amount of good cutscenes or music can salvage a game with bad gameplay. Balan Wonderworld is average and mediocre at best. For a AAA 3D platformer with a AAA price, that’s not acceptable at all.
Balan Wonderworld contains elements of what could have been a stellar platformer with its compelling ideas of advancement notions. However, its ineptitude with several gameplay design decisions makes it a constant struggle of unfun progression, questionable execution, and ultimately a heap of lost potential.
What could have been another of Yuji Naka's great successes has finally turned out to be a standard game that doesn't stand out or stand out, inspired in its designs and visual style but without leading the title in the right direction. The best? the soundtrack, the large number of costumes and the imagination that overflows in each section. The worst? the numerous problems it has that wouldn't have been difficult to solve.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
While Balan Wonderworld has a few interesting ideas tucked up its costumed sleeves, none of them are executed particularly well, which makes the game feel like a real chore to play. From its dozens of forgettable costumes and frustrating mechanics to its uninspired visuals, it’s hard to recommend adding this one to your PS5 library, especially when there are much better platformers like Astro’s Playroom and Sackboy: A Big Adventure already available.
If you’re a diehard fan of 3D platformers and you’ve run out of better games to play in the genre, you might get some enjoyment out of Balan Wonderworld, but only if you’re willing to put up with a lot of tedium along the way.
Balan Wonderworld is a mid-level platform game that looks great, has great music but its potential was largely wasted.
Review in Turkish | Read full review
Outside of its design, I struggle to find anything praiseworthy about Wonderworld. It is an unfortunate example of inspiration exceeding innovation, and is borderline unplayable on Switch.