| Donkey Kong Bananza | |||
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| Gameplay & Story | Release Date | Pre-Order & DLC | Review |
Donkey Kong Bananza is to Super Mario Odyssey what Tears of the Kingdom is to Breath of the Wild. Read our review to see what it did well, what it didn't do well, and if it's worth buying.
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Donkey Kong Bananza Review Overview
What is Donkey Kong Bananza?
Donkey Kong Bananza is a platform-adventure game released on July 17, 2025, exclusively for Nintendo Switch 2. It marks the return of Donkey Kong in a fully realized 3D adventure, his first since Donkey Kong 64 (1999) and the first original entry since Tropical Freeze (2014). It was developed internally by Nintendo EPD, the same team behind Super Mario Odyssey.
Here, players guide Donkey Kong and Pauline into the depths of Hollow Earth on Ingot Isle. Their mission is to recladim the stolen Banandium (Banana-shaped diamond) from VoidCo, an ape-like criminal syndicate intent on reaching the planet’s core. Along the way, Donkey Kong must battle bosses that block each underground layer and explore diverse biomes.
Donkey Kong Bananza features:
⚫︎ Destructible Environments
⚫︎ Bananza Transformations
⚫︎ Two-Player Co-Op with Pauline
⚫︎ Skill Trees Through Banandium Gems
⚫︎ Sandbox-Like Levels
⚫︎ Numerous Collectibles to Collect
For more gameplay details, read everything we know about Donkey Kong Bananza’s gameplay and story.
| Digital Storefronts | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Switch 2 |
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| Price | $69.99 | ||||
Donkey Kong Bananza Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
 Destroying Almost Everything is so Satisfying Replayable Level Design Top-Tier Soundtrack Visually Distinct Biomes |
Occasional Frame Rate Dips Story Structure is a bit too Linear |
Donkey Kong Bananza Overall Score - 94/100
Donkey Kong Bananza is Nintendo at its most playful, as it’s perhaps the only game that lets the titular ape be the force of nature he was always meant to be. The core gameplay loop here is rock solid (literally), and the layered level design makes every return trip feel like you’re unearthing new secrets. The frame rate may stutter when things get wild, but the sheer joy of smashing and experimenting more than makes up for it. It’s simply a platformer that invites speedrunners to break it, much like they did Tears of the Kingdom and Mario Odyssey before it.
Donkey Kong Bananza Story - 9/10
Donkey Kong’s quest to reclaim his Banandium Gems is as straightforward as it gets, but it’s carried by a sense of momentum and a heartfelt pairing with Pauline. The linear structure gives the story a fairly decent throughline, even if it means there’s less room for deeper character moments. Still, between big set pieces, the layered gags, and a finale that swings for the fences, there’s plenty to love here. A little more depth in its supporting cast wouldn’t have hurt, but what’s here lands with enough punch.
Donkey Kong Bananza Gameplay - 10/10
Few games hand you a toolkit this wild and then trust you to go nuts with it, but Donkey Kong Bananza does just that. Everything you do as DK feels weighty and just a little bit unhinged. The game’s levels are built to be broken, rebroken, and revisited with new abilities that reframes how you approach each space. Even if you’re just improvising your way through terrain, it never stops rewarding your curiosity. It’s a platformer that understands the joy of a sandbox game, and it’s hard to put down once every puzzle piece falls into place.
Donkey Kong Bananza Visuals - 9/10
Bananza’s art direction swings hard and lands clean. Each layer bursts with personality and detail, which makes the act of smashing through it all feel even better. The game knows how to stage a spectacle, especially during its big boss fights, which often explode into a frenzy of particle effects. This, though, can occasionally trip up the frame rate, and some blocky textures are noticeable up close, but the visual identity is strong enough that you’ll rarely mind the hiccups.
Donkey Kong Bananza Audio - 10/10
The soundtrack in Bananza goes harder than it has any right to. It mixes funky riffs, tribal beats, and synthy grooves that make every layer feel musically distinct. Pauline’s vocal tracks during Bananza transformations are instant earworms, and they never fail to slap no matter how many times you hear them. Even the smaller cues, like the crunch of rubble underfoot or the thwack of a slab smacking an enemy in the face, are tuned with just enough punch and personality to feel like they’re part of the rhythm.
Donkey Kong Bananza Value for Money - 9/10
Donkey Kong Bananza’s $70 price tag is not cheap, no doubt, but what you get in return is an adventure with a ton of replay potential. The main story might not stretch as long as some might hope, especially if you’re charging straight through, but the real fun lies in returning with a full toolkit and tearing through layers you barely scratched the first time. There’s an entire second (and maybe third) playthrough baked into the game’s design for those curious enough to explore its crevices.
Donkey Kong Bananza Review: Tiers of the Kongdom
⚫︎ Note: Donkey Kong Bananza (1st image) and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (2nd image)
Donkey Kong has been eating bananas and throwing hands since the early ‘80s, but it’s taken him until Donkey Kong Bananza to finally get his Odyssey. And by that I don’t just mean a pretty adventure with big islands and collectibles; no, I mean the kind of systems-rich, open-ended design Nintendo typically reserves for the mustachioed golden boy. Much like how Tears of the Kingdom built on the foundation of Breath of the Wild, Bananza feels like a game aware of its lineage, where suddenly, some of the features Odyssey established is just a foundation for a hundred weirder, more creative things you can try.
It helps that DK’s recent history has primed him for this kind of reinvention. After Donkey Kong Country Returns in 2010 and its 2014 follow-up, Tropical Freeze, the ape found itself in a bit of a slump. Funky rereleases aside, the barrel-blasting brute sat in limbo, occasionally appearing in Smash Bros. and the Mario movie, sure, but mostly stuck in the past while most of Nintendo’s icons were moving forward. Bananza finally wets that dry spell. It’s still recognizably Donkey Kong, but the difference now is how you’re encouraged to break and bash and bounce your way through stages however you see fit, often with surprising results.
This didn’t feel like a reinvention for reinvention’s sake, either. Like how Tears of the Kingdom’s new systems turned Hyrule into a creative sandbox without losing that sense of adventure, Bananza gives DK a similarly expressive toolkit. Only here it’s less about building things up and more about tearing things down. It can feel a bit too easy at times, but Donkey Kong Bananza does so many creative things with its systems that I never found myself tired of smashing my way to the end goal.
It also helps that Pauline is just gosh darn adorable on DK’s shoulders.
Ape-solutely Bananas!
Donkey Kong Bananza kicks off with DK doing what he does best: smashing stuff and eating questionable things. In this case, he’s mining with other apes deep underground and munching on an energy source called Banandium. Yes, he eats the gems everyone else wants to harvest for power. Things escalate quickly when a purple rock crashes into the mines and, upon seeing DK, immediately bolts in terror. That rock turns out to be Oddrock, who, surprise surprise, isn’t really a rock at all. Turns out she’s Pauline, transformed against her will by the mining conglomerate VoidCo, who wants to suck up every last ounce of Banandium by drilling a hole to the planet’s core and recruit (by force or not) Pauline to their cause. DK, though, just wants to get his gems back.
The story unfolds in a fairly linear fashion; unlike Super Mario Odyssey, where you have to collect Power Moons to go to the next level, Bananza keeps things focused. You go from point A to point B, tackle a specific objective or region, and once you clear it, the next layer of the world opens up. Each new level is a different biome or layer of civilization disrupted by VoidCo’s greed, and while the narrative doesn’t always pause to dwell on it (unless, of course, you want to), there’s a consistent sense of DK and Pauline righting wrongs as they descend. The setup may be over-the-top, but it’s never needlessly complicated. DK is a loveable mess of an ape with one thing on his mind (Banandium), and that laser-focused motivation makes him fun to follow.
Still, it’s Pauline who gives the story its heart. Although DK’s after his stolen gems, she just wants to get home. And the contrast between their goals creates this dynamic that pays off well over the game’s roughly 20-hour runtime. That shared journey, and their gradually strengthening bond, gives the campaign some emotional weight, even when the plot is mostly delivered straight at your face.
The whole thing crescendos in a finale that, much like Odyssey’s own unforgettable climax, ties everything together in a grand spectacle. And for longtime fans of the big ape, there’s a rich vein of Rare-era nostalgia running through it all. From cheeky references to old Donkey Kong Country levels to visual cues and tunes straight out of the SNES and N64 days that will have fans giggling with excitement. I won’t spoil any of them here, but let’s just say some of those surprises had me audibly hooting at the screen.
“I’m Gonna Wreck It!”
I mentioned above that my 20-ish hour run through Donkey Kong Bananza felt brisk, and to be fair, it was. I mostly bee-lined my way through the main story, detouring only when a Challenge Stage looked especially inviting or was directly in my way. But despite my relatively fast finish, there’s no question in my mind that a more thorough run could easily double or even triple that time. The game is massive, not in a map-size-for-size’s-sake way, but in how much it hides within its levels. More often than not, you’ll find yourself distracted by a glint in the corner or a suspiciously dented cliffside that just begs to be punched.
Much like the Mario games before it, Bananza gives DK a mechanical identity: the ability to wreck-it! Almost everything in the environment can be grabbed, hurled, or climbed, and the game is designed to let you use that destruction rather than just watch it happen. If you ever need a platform, you can rip a chunk out of the ground and throw it under your feet. If there are enemies flying above you, you can smack them out of the sky with a slab of rock. If you feel that there’s a hidden room behind a brittle wall, you know what to do.
DK’s toolkit is immediately fun to mess around with. He’s got platforming combos reminiscent of Mario and Cappy from Odyssey and the ability to climb almost everything that isn’t outright hostile to simian fingers. His movement is weighty but responsive, and every new ability you unlock over the course of the campaign folds into the game’s core design. And similar to Odyssey and many Zelda games, you can complete an objective however you want, which has me eager to see how speedrunners will eventually break this game.
The rest of the game doubles down on the destruction that you can cause as DK with a growing toolbox that constantly remixes themselves. There’s a whole second layer (pun very much intended) of depth buried beneath the surface. The deeper you go, the more you'll need to think about how everything interacts. Soon, puzzles will feel like second nature; once you spot a piece or two you need, you'll practically be on autopilot.
Much of the best of this puzzle design lives in the aforementioned Challenge Stages, which are scattered across the layers and vary between combat, logic-based puzzles, and platforming. They’re short sequences that push your understanding of a single idea introduced earlier in the level to its absolute limits.
Each layer is a vertical playground built with exploration in mind. Sure, you can try to brute-force your way through a chunk of rock hoping to find secrets, but Bananza more so relies on visual language to signal places worth investigating. There’s a rhythm to its exploration that feels more like Zelda than Donkey Kong Country. You learn to trust your instincts, and the game usually rewards you for it.
Curiosity is handsomely rewarded with fossils you can trade for outfits, music records, or upgrades. There’s a whole slew of unlockables you can purchase with gold. Even DK and Pauline have unlockable costumes that affect how they move or interact with enemies.
Unleash the Bananza!
And all of that feeds into the game’s primary collectible: the Banandium Gems. These are Bananza’s equivalent of Odyssey’s Power Moons, and while you don’t need a set number to progress through the story, they’re everywhere. Five gems equal one skill point, and those can be spent on upgrades on a skill tree, like extra health or a stronger move for your regular form and your transformations.
Which brings us to the namesake of the game, the Bananza forms. These are powerful transformations that DK unlocks as he encounters the Elders of different underground civilizations. Kong Bananza is brute strength incarnate. Zebra Bananza gives DK the speed to zip across the map. Ostrich Bananza offers limited flight. Each form is tied to a meter that uses Bananergy, a resource that’s generously scattered throughout the layers. The best part about these transformations is that each one comes with its own theme song, courtesy of Pauline, who essentially turns into your personal hype artist.
The boss fights are where the true magic happens, each one a spectacle in its own right. During these, the game throws particle effects around with reckless abandon, and the sheer volume of them is astounding to the eyes.
These boss fight are, however, a touch too easy, though; you mostly just have to perform a specific action a bunch of times, then wail on them until they're down for the count. This is especially true since many bosses crumble after just a couple of hits. They are nonetheless inventive and make good use of the mechanics you picked up in the level leading up to them.
Beauty Comes at a Cost
Donkey Kong Bananza is a great-looking game—no surprise there. Nintendo has long since mastered the art of stylized visuals that pop regardless of horsepower. Each layer has its own visual identity, and there’s a clear sense that the developers wanted you to feel as though you’re journeying through a Jules Verne novel.
But even the best-looking art comes with trade-offs. When you’ve got spectacular bosses chucking debris or who-knows-what in your direction—all while DK is flinging half a boulder back at them—the screen can get busy. Really busy. And with that busyness comes stuttering. Frame rate dips show up most during these larger-than-life moments, and while they’re usually brief, they’re definitely noticeable. Most of my run was stable enough, especially in docked mode, but when the action really started popping off—particle effects, lighting flares, screen-shakes—the game’s performance sometimes wheezed.
This isn’t exactly new territory for Nintendo fans. If you survived the Wii era like I did, you’re probably conditioned to overlook the occasional dip in favor of a good game. Mario Odyssey had its own share of hiccups, and Bananza falls into the same category. And Nintendo’s been pretty upfront about this, as they basically admitted that "fun and gameplay" took priority over keeping everything locked at a stable frame rate.
To be fair, it’s not game-breaking. It’s the kind of thing you notice in the moment and move on from. But it’s worth acknowledging that, as gorgeous as Bananza often looks, that beauty sometimes comes at a cost. Still, when you’re in the flow of smashing through crumbling layers or outrunning a boss whose attack is making the whole screen erupt in particles, a dropped frame or two feels like a small price to pay.
Is Donkey Kong Bananza Worth It?
Oh, Banana!
Nintendo games are expensive. Yes, everybody and their mother knows it by now. The days of $60 triple-A releases already feel like ancient history, and as inflation chips away at wallets on every front, the gaming industry’s slow but steady climb to $70 has made buying a new game feel like a major financial decision. It stings a little more when the company that once prided itself on being the affordable alternative is now charging top dollar for a monkey with a banana addiction.
Donkey Kong Bananza is part of that price tier, and I understand that it’s a steep buy. For a lot of folks, that sticker shock is enough to make you hesitate, especially when the main story clocks in at only around 20 hours if you’re playing like I did, mostly sticking to the critical path with a few detours here and there. But while Bananza can be a relatively short ride if you just want to see the credits, it’s not the kind of game that expects you to be done at the finish line. It opens up even more after that, and in the best ways. The structure is practically begging you to loop back through earlier layers now with a full set of skills and transformations, to uncover all the secrets you missed the first time.
And if that doesn’t justify the $70 price tag for everyone, fair enough. But for me, it’s reassuring knowing that, even after I’ve rolled through the story, Bananza still has reasons to pull me back in. That, at the very least, makes the price of admission feel a little less bananas.
| Digital Storefronts | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Switch 2 |
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| Price | $69.99 | ||||
Donkey Kong Bananza FAQ
What is Donkey Kong Bananza’s Release Date and Time?
Donkey Kong Bananza was released on the Nintendo eShop at midnight local time, similar to previous Nintendo titles on the Switch.
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Donkey Kong Bananza Product Information
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| Title | DONKEY KONG BANANZA |
|---|---|
| Release Date | July 17, 2025 |
| Developer | Nintendo EPD |
| Publisher | Nintendo |
| Supported Platforms | Nintendo Switch 2 |
| Genre | Platformer, Adventure |
| Number of Players | Single-Player (1) 2-Player Co-Op (2nd Player as Pauline) |
| ESRB Rating | ESRB E 10+ |
| Official Website | Donkey Kong Bananza Official Website |
