Balan Wonderworld Reviews
Balan Wonderworld is a visually beautiful adventure that even tries to have a captivating story. However, its flaws stand out and make it a very uninteresting game. Not even Yuji Naka's name can bring anything striking to this title, which is a shame.
Review in Portuguese | 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.
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 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
Balan Wonderworld presents itself as having a world filled to the brim with imagination, ambition, whimsy, emotion and more.
The unwavering cheerfulness that permeates every ounce of Balan Wonderworld can't overcome the shallow gameplay and questionable design choices that come every step of the way.
Balan Wonderworld is sadly an old-school platformer with all of the 90's worst flaws. Yet colorful, Yuji Naka's first game with Square Enix lacks almost everything, and everyone who likes even a tiny bit the genres should look somewhere else to find some fun.
Review in French | Read full review
There's a lot of content in Balan Wonderworld, but the amount of backtracking and costume swapping makes returning to previous levels feel too demanding. Pairing Balan Wonderworld's small environments with its lackluster 3D platforming fails to provide the AAA entertainment players come to expect from similar modern titles. The main issue with the game isn't its outdated take on an already niche genre, but that its core gameplay isn't fun and its supporting elements aren't amusing. Balan Wonderworld is hard to recommend to anyone outside of diehard genre fans considering the quality of other 3D platformers on the market.
A slightly embarrassing attempt to recall the early days of 3D platforming, with a central gimmick that never really captures the imagination and clunky controls and gameplay.
All the charm in the universe couldn't save Balan Wonderworld's half-baked platforming and ill-advised one-button design from being a complete bore.
Unlike what it preaches, Balan Wonderworld made me sad after finishing it. Sad not because I had a bad experience, but because of the opportunity missed by Yuji Naka, Naoto Ohshima and their team. It is clear that the developers had passion for the project. After all, nobody would make such a creative story, with very well produced cutscenes and great soundtrack, if they didn't care about their work.However, the way in which this project was carried out leaves much to be desired. Lack of explanation of the narrative and in-game mechanics, slow and confusing controls and gameplay, repetitive combat, poor stage design and performance problems make this visit to Balan Theatre one of those difficult to endure.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
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
You’ll have fun if you like puzzle platformers, but you’ll lament what Balan Wonderworld could have been, and deserved to be. I do want to close out saying that I did enjoy Balan Wonderworld, but I can appreciate the fact that it’s an unpolished game oozing with wasted potential. I just have a soft spot for 3D platformers.
Balan Wonderworld feels like it's shrouded in mystery because there's a woeful lack of explanation for the majority of its mechanics. Nobody should be left looking for external guides to gather even the most basic information for a game aimed at children. When added to the frustrating management of the game's costumes (including those that can't jump in a platformer), its underdeveloped story, the overly simplistic platforming, and the tortuous Balan Bouts, this is a game that had promise but is ruined by a multitude of bizarre design decisions.
Balan Wonderworld is a game of missed opportunities. It's simplified control scheme robs it of any of the subtle complexity that the genre is best at, its various ideas are half-baked at best, and its core gameplay is a taxing uphill climb through even the most basic of platforming principles. Amusing visual design aside, the only thing that Balan Wonderworld is good at is being consistently boring.
Balan Wonderworld is a dull game and a boring experience in a lackluster world.
Review in Italian | Read full review
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 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.
Balan Wonderworld is a game that I tried hard to love. It is not the pariah that the internet makes it out to be though. I think the game is charming and flawed. It has tons of issues, but I still finished it. I had some good times sprinkled in with the frustrations. It took me to a simpler time in platform games and there is truly nothing else out there with the same kind of presentation and whimsical ideas it delivers. That said $60 is a hard ask for a game that seems to want to frustrate players at every turn. I wanted to love Balan Wonderworld, but it did everything in its power to test my love every chance it got.