Balan Wonderworld -

[Balan]

I've seen gameplay of later words, and costumes, but again why do some of them need to replace the jump button?

[...]

Can I also get what you think of Box Fox?

I don't completely hate the game, but the game doesn't give me many reasons not to dislike it out of the style.

You do make a good point. Dainty Dragon would sure be a lot more useful if he could jump. For better or for worse, Yuji Naka decided to make this a one-button game. (There is a belief that this was a mobile game that was ported over at some point during development.) I suppose it adds to the Strategy and challenge if some of them can't jump. You have to account for this and choose the three costumes that you hold wisely.

As for Box Fox, he can actually defeat the "indestructable" enemies that most others can't. In the area where you get him, two Negati appear. If you jump over them as Box Fox is transforming (the game sounds to tell you when) then you slam onto the enemy as the box and defeat it. Do it to both of them and a Balan statue will appear for you. Box Fox is challenging to use well, and isn't good in most situations (as he can slide off the map) but there are places where you can use him.

The game also keeps count of how many Enemies you defeat and adjusts the difficulty accordingly. Defeat enough and you unlock hard mode. There are so many little things like that, I believe they have put great effort into this game despite the naysayers who claim otherwise.

So what's the point of the dragon if it just gets immediately outclassed by other costumes because it's useless? Why not just have the useful costumes in the game?

It's a starter costume, it introduces you to the concept (that some of the costumes cannot jump.) To use an example you may be more familiar with, isn't Pidgey a useless Pokemon by this logic? Why not just have Mewtwo spawn on Route 1, after all, Pidgey also gets outclassed by better Pokemon after a few routes.

just look at the tag

The tags regarding the book actually raise a good question, although I'm probably the only person here who has in fact read it. There is no reason for the "creepy" moniker at all and it makes no sense in-world. I don't believe it is a "racist" motive as they claim (after all, neither of them are even human) but it is strange.

 

[Quijibo69]

Bubsy 3d is better than this game.

 

[Massively Strong Greed]

Bubsy 3d is better than this game.

Someone has clearly never played Bubsy 3D.

 

[Articuno4]

Bubsy 3d is better than this game.

I'd say Balan is better than Bubsy. Bubsy 3D is one of the most garbage games ever made. (In Bubsy's defense it IS 25 years older.) The story behind the development is sad, they thought they were making the first 3D plaformer ever, nothing like it existed when they started making it, but by the time they were finished, Mario 64 and Crash Bandicoot 1 had already come out and blew them out the water. Ouch.

(Fun fact: The developers of Bubsy 3D saw Mario 64 and completely freaked out. They wanted to do a complete rewrite of the game but the publishers told them no, they were releasing it as-is)

 

[Massively Strong Greed]

Can we turn pedo Balan into a meme?

 

[Bluey]

Bubsy 3d is better than this game.

Bubsy 3D was a broken mess of a game and released in the PS1's early years. This was before the Duo Shock 1 came to be when Ape Escape came out.

 

[Marissa Moira]

Bubsy 3d is better than this game.

It's about the same actually.

However Bubsy: Paws on Fire is a legitimate good game.

 

[Just wandering]

View attachment 2104747
Can we turn pedo Balan into a meme?

I do remember this part in south park

 

[Massively Strong Greed]

It's about the same actually.

However Bubsy: Paws on Fire is a legitimate good game.

Good is a strong word but it’s by far the best Bubsy, not that a 6/10 means much.

 

[Nagibatel]

I'm bummed because the art style looked so cool for what it was. I was really hoping this game would have been good.

 

[Peru oso donas]

Welp, looks like those chickens that try too hard to be the chaos from the sonic adventure games did have a purpose.

 

[Just wandering]

https://balanwonderworld.square-enix-games.com

the official site, the loading between page is way too long, btw why the boss and costume are all 2D art rather than 3D render? those are uglier

 

[Disc]

You do make a good point. Dainty Dragon would sure be a lot more useful if he could jump. For better or for worse, Yuji Naka decided to make this a one-button game. (There is a belief that this was a mobile game that was ported over at some point during development.) I suppose it adds to the Strategy and challenge if some of them can't jump. You have to account for this and choose the three costumes that you hold wisely.

The problem with the strategy/challenge argument is that there's almost no urgency to the game. Switching between an attacker and a good jumper isn't hard, it's just tedious.

As for Box Fox, he can actually defeat the "indestructable" enemies that most others can't. In the area where you get him, two Negati appear. If you jump over them as Box Fox is transforming (the game sounds to tell you when) then you slam onto the enemy as the box and defeat it. Do it to both of them and a Balan statue will appear for you. Box Fox is challenging to use well, and isn't good in most situations (as he can slide off the map) but there are places where you can use him.

Here's Box fox in action in that exact spot, btw.

Note that the guy switches out of it ASAP to get the trophy because he literally can't trust it not to box him over the edge.

Box Fox is a lot like Kirby's Stone form. Not counting recent additions, Kirby's stone form is useful in exactly 2 situations:
1: Pounding very specific stakes into the ground, that's otherwise locked to the much better Hammer.
2: Dealing decent damage to a character and being 100% invulnerable after the attack.

Even with buffs giving it a little more utility, it's still one of the most hated kirby abilities, and various games have tried to improve it in various ways.

And Box Fox is an objective downgrade to Stone, removing the player agency and being prone to long slides. Like... why couldn't it work like the ground pounding pig? Aside from the fact that 80 costumes with no redundancies is completely absurd.

If those enemies didn't exist, there would be literally no reason to use Box Fox. And making a powerup who's only purpose is to solve a very specific problem is bad powerup design, especially when powerup space is limited.

This game would have been great if 1 button was jump and the other three were costume abilities that you could activate on the fly. It would have felt soooo smooth.

The game also keeps count of how many Enemies you defeat and adjusts the difficulty accordingly. Defeat enough and you unlock hard mode. There are so many little things like that, I believe they have put great effort into this game despite the naysayers who claim otherwise.

Great effort definitely went in to it, but how effort was allocated is clearly mismanaged. So many things feel lopsided - just look at the boss intro cutscenes. Putting aside that they should have been at the start of each world, to explain what the fuck was up with them and why giant farmers hover all around the place, they flit completely randomly between 3d dioramas, semi-animated, and fully-animated, in a way that really doesn't make sense. Not to mention, nearly all of the ones after the bosses are fully animated regardless of the style of the intro, which seems to sabotage the differences being a stylistic choice.

And that's also not mentioning the gulf between the cutscenes and the presentation of the main game.

It's a starter costume, it introduces you to the concept (that some of the costumes cannot jump.) To use an example you may be more familiar with, isn't Pidgey a useless Pokemon by this logic? Why not just have Mewtwo spawn on Route 1, after all, Pidgey also gets outclassed by better Pokemon after a few routes.

I mean, putting aside Pokemon evolve and Pidgeot is fine for the story line, Pidgey has great utility in early routes, being good against the early bugs, and most of the games expect you to have a pokemon that can use fly in them. It's also thematically appropriate to start with small, weak but largely neutral animals like baby birds at the start of an adventure and in a relatively 'neutral' location. Dragons are not typically farmstead animals or underwhelming intro monsters, unlike the Pig or Plant costumes.

The tags regarding the book actually raise a good question, although I'm probably the only person here who has in fact read it. There is no reason for the "creepy" moniker at all and it makes no sense in-world. I don't believe it is a "racist" motive as they claim (after all, neither of them are even human) but it is strange.

One thing a lot of people have said is that all the plot explaining what happens in the game is in the book. I can't help but feel that's kinda a big mistake, as Balan definitely needs that context.

 

[Aquinas]

Box Fox is a lot like Kirby's Stone form. Not counting recent additions, Kirby's stone form is useful in exactly 2 situations:
1: Pounding very specific stakes into the ground, that's otherwise locked to the much better Hammer.
2: Dealing decent damage to a character and being 100% invulnerable after the attack.

The problem with this though is Most of kirby's games are in a 2D medium, so you have, in a sense, more say for what happens when you use stone power
unlike in balan, where you irregularly use box over time and can very easily kill yourself with it

 

[Just wandering]

https://www.inverse.com/gaming/balan-wonderworld-novel-twisted-reveals

according to the novel, the stories behind the game are quite dark. Sad they removed all exposure and sad and keep the intro at bare minimum, so now thing make barely any sense and are accidently humorous. I dunno if it was Yuji naka idea to remove any sad and mature content in the game to be as kid friendly as possible, but it just make the whole game dumb. Psychonaut is technically a kid game yet it dosen't shy away from mature theme like, trauma. Plus it way better that balan wonderworld

 

[Massively Strong Greed]

The problem with the strategy/challenge argument is that there's almost no urgency to the game. Switching between an attacker and a good jumper isn't hard, it's just tedious.

Here's Box fox in action in that exact spot, btw.

Note that the guy switches out of it ASAP to get the trophy because he literally can't trust it not to box him over the edge.

Box Fox is a lot like Kirby's Stone form. Not counting recent additions, Kirby's stone form is useful in exactly 2 situations:
1: Pounding very specific stakes into the ground, that's otherwise locked to the much better Hammer.
2: Dealing decent damage to a character and being 100% invulnerable after the attack.

Even with buffs giving it a little more utility, it's still one of the most hated kirby abilities, and various games have tried to improve it in various ways.

And Box Fox is an objective downgrade to Stone, removing the player agency and being prone to long slides. Like... why couldn't it work like the ground pounding pig? Aside from the fact that 80 costumes with no redundancies is completely absurd.

If those enemies didn't exist, there would be literally no reason to use Box Fox. And making a powerup who's only purpose is to solve a very specific problem is bad powerup design, especially when powerup space is limited.

This game would have been great if 1 button was jump and the other three were costume abilities that you could activate on the fly. It would have felt soooo smooth.


Great effort definitely went in to it, but how effort was allocated is clearly mismanaged. So many things feel lopsided - just look at the boss intro cutscenes. Putting aside that they should have been at the start of each world, to explain what the fuck was up with them and why giant farmers hover all around the place, they flit completely randomly between 3d dioramas, semi-animated, and fully-animated, in a way that really doesn't make sense. Not to mention, nearly all of the ones after the bosses are fully animated regardless of the style of the intro, which seems to sabotage the differences being a stylistic choice.

And that's also not mentioning the gulf between the cutscenes and the presentation of the main game.


I mean, putting aside Pokemon evolve and Pidgeot is fine for the story line, Pidgey has great utility in early routes, being good against the early bugs, and most of the games expect you to have a pokemon that can use fly in them. It's also thematically appropriate to start with small, weak but largely neutral animals like baby birds at the start of an adventure and in a relatively 'neutral' location. Dragons are not typically farmstead animals or underwhelming intro monsters, unlike the Pig or Plant costumes.


One thing a lot of people have said is that all the plot explaining what happens in the game is in the book. I can't help but feel that's kinda a big mistake, as Balan definitely needs that context.

>he’s never used Stone in The Arena

 

[Disc]

>he’s never used Stone in The Arena

Stone Kirby only really started getting useful upgrades in Return to Dream Land. I'm more talking about Pre-that Stone.

The problem with this though is Most of kirby's games are in a 2D medium, so you have, in a sense, more say for what happens when you use stone power
unlike in balan, where you irregularly use box over time and can very easily kill yourself with it

That makes it an even worse stone knockoff than I thought...

 

[Massively Strong Greed]

Stone Kirby only really started getting useful upgrades in Return to Dream Land. I'm more talking about Pre-that Stone.

That makes it an even worse stone knockoff than I thought...

>he didn’t try Stone in The True Arena in Super Star Ultra

 

[Disc]

>he didn’t try Stone in The True Arena in Super Star Ultra

i tried Rocky in Helper to Hero. I hated every second of it.

 

[Gravityqueen4life]

View attachment 2103231
The almighty sneed

the battle of century.