I Beat Balan Wonderworld 100% and Read the Novel so you don't have to

[Music] ballon wonder world it's not great it's become the punching bag video game of 2021 everyone's playing the first three levels and declaring things like it's the worst thing ever since the last worst thing ever review scores so low you'd think it's shovelware in a year with brand new consoles with brand new video game releases spread out this silly little thing stands out extra hard is this the true power of the ps5 but what really lies in the depths of what's allegedly lead director and father sonic the hedgehog yuji naka's one chance to make a 3d platformer what happens if you go all the way well i 100 of the game that's right i got the plot i read the novel yes there's a novel all 280 pages i've spent weeks scouring the internet for anything ballon related i've found tons of exploits i've pieced together bits of lore and been baffled by certain decisions so hard i had to sleep it off this stupid 3d platformer has captivated me i've been pulled in so deep that all my friends hate me but i have seen yujinaka's true unyielding vision i've literally played this game for over 60 hours and recovery seems unlikely but i'm here to say you know nothing about ballen wonder world oh hi it's me dedicated cat father austin eruption and when i'm not doing a ridiculous amount of research on a game that ostensibly nobody cares about i'm learning new stuff which is why freya and i want to talk to you about today's sponsor skillshare skillshare is an online learning community for all you creative types out there where millions have come together to teach and learn it's a great place to learn some new skills dive further into your passions and get lost in creativity for those of you aspiring to make youtube videos and maybe just start a channel there's a ton of amazing classes you can take such as marquis brownlee's youtube success script shoot and edit as someone who was also completely self-taught on editing and filming watching this one's a no-brainer really there's tons of different classes you can take such as a bunch on game development be it for sprite art music programming or just general game art skillshare is curated for learning meaning that if you have a subscription you'll have unlimited access to the entire catalog of classes to learn from at your pace and at less than ten dollars a month for an annual subscription you can't go wrong so just for you guys the first 1000 subscribers that click the link in the description will get a free trial of skillshare's premium membership so you can go off and explore your creativity give it a shot thanks to skillshare for sponsoring the video and now off to video game singular game the end on paper square enix and lead director yujinaka creating something is a no-brainer it's an old-school 3d platformer and an era sorely lacking them it's also the japanese cytosquare which for the most part has been doing good stuff lately the first cutscene reveal of this game was really interesting you take the recognizable art of naoto oshima and toss them directly into square quality cgs with an exciting big band soundtrack surrounded by knights in the dream vibes and i mean who wouldn't be interested knights into dreams was a fun if extremely weird saturn game that was 100 a product of its time the early 3d days were bright colorful nonsensical and filled with weird mascots sure there were big ones like mario 64 and banjo-kazooie but the saturn and playstation had a different breed the jumping flashes crocs not to mention obscure stuff like fix the adventure or clinoa knights had you flying all over the screen through rings as fast as you could collecting well i'm not really sure but it was memorable ever since the industry jumped into 3d yuji naka has had a very mixed success rate with high highs and a lot of middling forgettable games i never played it but the wii u version of rodea the sky soldier is supposed to be a time forever respect for fantasy star online and choo choo rocket though those are good games so jump ahead to 2018 and yuji naka's joined square enix he's putting together a group called ballen company with the goal of creating action games instead of rpgs which the company is normally known for to say the least naka even stated himself that he doesn't quote think he would be good at making rpgs which is a hell of a thing to say to a pr interview when these guys are hiring you bell and company would then team up with another japanese developer our zest and are given two and a half ish years to create something that would launch around the same time as the new consoles and that game of course is ballon wonder world a quote one button platformer with 80 different power ups one that mimics the super mario 64 level design philosophy with worlds being hubs for collectibles one with an extremely memorable aesthetic and great music it's a rare beat of originality with an injection of retro positivity hearkening back to an era of games long gone it's also a game with abysmal sales and reviews one that uses a one button gameplay style that really dumbs everything down one that feels like it should be something that was released in 1997. a game who's pr person i legit feel bad for it's not their fault guys come on there is a lot to talk about like a lot i spent many hours discussing this with my friends which is very unfortunate for them but let's go ahead and just talk about the game itself let's keep this short and sweet pal and wonder world is a 3d platformer with 36 levels divided across 12 stages with a total of 13 bosses to fight each stage is themed after a resident of the wonder world which gives us the variety theme park of levels some of which are an actual theme park it starts by allowing you to choose a character to play as leo craig or emma cole each customizable you watch a cut scene where you watch your character of choice who seems sad af stumble into the balin theater where an insane barrage of colors and instruments barrage the player before you're told let's go find your heart little ones and sucked into some portal then immediately into the isle of tim's and that's going to be the very last bit of dialogue in this game until the very end by the way apparently yujinaka wanted players all over the world to quote experience the same story by expressing it without words we'll get back into that later but just keep it in mind so you're on this island there's like creature on the ground and some counter and a giant number one you head into it and start platforming the main catch in balan is that there's 80 different costumes you can find by collecting a key and running into a crystal these costumes all have different abilities some more useful than others your starter costume is the tornado wolf who has a spinning jump that can break objects and do damage there's three slots on the top for costumes meaning you can hold three at a time each also constituting a pip of damage that you can take you'll play through two levels without any explanation as to what's going on collecting statues and new costumes to give you new abilities there's also the mini mini mini ballon belts which are accessible by finding a flying top hat these mini games are quick time events where you play as balon fighting rocks i guess you have to time button presses where an overlay of what the image is going to be lines up in order to progress it's also very specific and you get a gold statue for getting all excellence which if you're going for 100 you'll need and nobody cares about that also in later stages there's up to three bell ballon bouts per act bringing the total to 48 48 of these things and the last few have like seven qtes per in this mode you also get to fight the main antagonist lance whose purpose or appearance is not explained at all in fact absolutely nothing is explained because as i said yujinak wanted the entire game's narrative to be experienced without words so he just kind of appears at the end of each stage is a boss fight that's actually typically well designed and interesting to fight this is easily the best part of ballon and i found them to be fun generally but don't tell anyone i said that they're all very well visually designed and the music is amazing the first few can go down in as quick as 40 to 50 seconds but later fights are a bit more challenging and sometimes demand you bring in other costumes all of the designs would fit in perfectly with a modern 3d platformer or sonic game and it's just proof that the lead artist now to oshima is still killing it also the music is very good here it just sounds like an ear hey before each boss by the way is an amazingly animated and beautiful full-ass cg cutscene that describes the plight of each of wonder world's residents the first stage being a farmer who turns into a giant tornado slinging wolf similar to the costume you get once you reach a certain amount of statues collected ballon appears with a train to take you in a circle and unlock new stages with new residents to save kill having a sick dance off with it's kind of just happening like the weird old japanese 3d platformers of yonder except those didn't have sick choreographed dance sequences with a full original song singing what sounds like complete gibberish there's something about the way he's walking towards me i can't i can't deal with it this cycle repeats until you reach the end of the game where you fight lance reclaim the wonder world and peace out it is indeed a video game and now our next section bell in wonderworld has some of the most absurd design decisions i've seen in a video game in the last decade probably for example the costumes now in most video games you would play you'd find a power up that would be used in a specific area in a specific level and that's where it stays now balan is like that for the most part each level has its own set of costumes that you find and unlock in order to get through those levels and unlock those statues since it banks on the one button gameplay each of those 80 costumes exists solely to have one function tornado wolf does a jump in spin hardy hammer does a big melee swing but cannot jump water blaster blasts water there's like 77 more of these i'm not gonna get into it now there's two major problems with this number one you lose the costume if you get hit that's not awful conceptually but i mean you like lose it lose it there's a costume select that appears in everyone's stage checkpoints that allow you to trade out what you're wearing however if you lost it due to damage it won't appear in the select that means it's grind time that's right grinding in a 3d platformer you can have a maximum of 18 costumes of each type which means you can't even go that buck wild the annoying part is that you have to use the key to unlock each one of the costume gyms but 9 out of 10 times the key is right next to the costume you're trying to unlock also if you have more than one on your health bar it won't spawn anymore meaning if you want to like properly grind out those costumes you gotta grab the key make sure you got the outfit you're grabbing on the far right side of your selection then grab a new one rinse and repeat now why would you want to grind out costumes in the first place well a ton of the game's content requires that cross-stage exploration there's a handful of costumes the ballen community has dubbed as parkour costumes that allow you to do some shenanigans with the game's engine like frost fairy and magic cat so of course you'll want a bunch of these more on hardcore ballon parkour in a bit and what is also another example of the developers being out of their minds ballon bouts have to be one of the weirdest gameplay additions i've seen in a game these qtes not only take forever but failing to get a full excellent score means you don't get a statue now in most games you'd be able to just retry or hell even back out of the stage and grab it again this game for some reason will not reset any elements of any of the stages until you beat the boss of the world each time so by design if you get to one of the stages that has three ballon bouts and you miss one you have to go and beat the boss retrace through that level and try again or you know fail and immediately close out the application reboot it and then try again thank you autosave this applies for all gems mini bosses and minigames as well that means yes you get one chance to play soccer that's fine though bouts are irritatingly long ridiculously hard to read for some of the presses and easily the least enjoyable part of the entire game like what am i looking at why are they even fighting i guess we're just supposed to infer everyone's actions and motives without the exchange of any words a true visionary let's not forget about the stuff the day one patch fixed like the epileptic seizure inducing flashing in the final boss somehow got past qa yeah then we come to tim's we haven't covered tim's much but that's because i have no idea what tems are there's a lore reason we'll get to but i think this was a balance attempt at doing something like ciao from sonic adventure 2. admittedly these little babies are very cute and actually remind me of rabbits from the mana games but the raising mini game is very unclear so you have a giant tower in the middle of your world hub and a giant clicker that counts the number every time a tim hits one as you build this thing up it becomes a multi-tiered tower that continues to count numbers faster and faster supposedly in the six digits you collect gems in each level that are used to feed the tims which will then encourage them to work on the tower causing number go up when you feed one a bunch it'll get all thick and if you throw a small one into it it'll lay an egg for some reason yeah this is how it works kids just give them a flying crossbody across the top row get egg anyways i finished this thing yeah i told you 100 eventually you have more than 100 of these things running around and you can easily count up the clock while you afk and discover the sopranos 20 years later i'm in the middle of a game you'll be in the middle of the ball in wonder world you don't wise the tower continues to escalate in size with more and more roots and clickers for you to unlock until we reach the goal of finish the tower at a much slower number than i expected and well what do we get nothing you get nothing good day sir when you finish the last goal the entire counter goes away and that means those seven digits exist for no reason very cool you do have one specific major unlock with rainbow gems and breeding that's a really neat post-game thing but i can't spoil that yet so next section [Music] i did not think that i was going to be aiming for the platinum trophy in this game at first i was like making a joke like hey let's get the ball on wonder world platinum won't that be funny and then four days later i had it ballon wonder world might be one of the only games i've ever played that gets better the further you get in the first few levels of this game are frankly the worst it has to offer your movement speed although beefed up a tiny bit from the demo they released feels so sluggish which by the way that demo has now been removed whoops the costumes you get have such limited functionality the second level is one of the three in this game that has this awful sprawling out camera angle going on it's supposed to look like a storybook visual i think but actually it just makes me feel sick like drive club vr sick the music in this game is generally very very good ryo yamazaki is one hell of a composer with a killer resume but the first level song in this game is very lukewarm [Music] yesterday you said you'd call sears i'll call now if you were to judge the entire video game based off the awful ballon bouts and these extremely generic and boring first levels i think i would agree with the review score however for some really stupid reason the best parts of this video game the parts with some genuine high highs are all locked behind the credits i mentioned that there's 36 levels there's an act 3 that unlocks when you beat lance and leave the wonder world an act that is completely devoid of terrible qtes and is instead a set of challenging platforming sequences where you have to bring in any costumes of your choice and all of the sudden their strategy since each costume is a piece of life you have to make sure you have the right loadout in order to get to the end each of these has a new set of rainbow statues and one hidden typically overpowered costume that you can obtain now a lot of costumes in this game are just powered up versions of old ones this sounds lazy but it makes sense when you read about yuji naka's struggle to make it to 80 initially thus the explanation for box fox the fox who turns into a box whenever it feels like it oh okay this is fine with how many video games are regularly coming out and vying for your attention who is going to have the patience to sit past the first three worlds which have to be one of if not the worst first impressions i've seen a video game do just me probably so you don't have to so your reward for getting everything to doozy oh okay what about the rainbow statues [Music] you're kidding me i mean with the way everything else is played out it's not like i'm really that surprised although i will say i'm glad i at least got trophies out of it i feel bad for anyone who played the switch version not just because you don't get trophies but also because the game runs like crap apparently if you gotta do it don't do it on the switch don't do it so if you do decide to go for 100 just beating the game's not going to be the thing that nabs you all of the trophies you do have to sit through a decent amount of post game stuff and that means you also have to sit through every balanced bout which for most people is a deal breaker and probably actually no if you're playing this far you probably already you're in so while doing all the trophies as a joke for just me i guess something suddenly hit this game has a lot more to offer than anyone knows i'm not sure if a single other video game has done this before but wonder world has a hidden difficulty setting that is not selectable there's a few trophies for defeating lance versions of specific enemies and the only way to do that is to fight specific mini bosses while in hard mode in order to get to hard mode you have to defeat a certain number of enemies without taking any damage i was able to do this in 15 minutes by going to stage 6-2 running around the map in a circle and punching a bunch of dudes suddenly the enemies turn red some take twice as much damage and they spawn in greater numbers and that's cool this is also reflected on the bosses and mini bosses as well now whenever you beat a level you'll get a red thumbs up instead of a yellow one you did it hard wait however there are two variants of the mini bosses red ones and lanced lanced have a 25 ish chance of spawning and are much harder than the normal versions especially the dude on ice what the heck so there's a hidden difficulty setting and even further difficult enemies that have a chance of spawning also if the wrong one spawns and you kill it you'll have to beat the main boss of the chapter in order to respawn the guy and keep in mind you will fall out of hard mode if you get hit one time just once and you're out or you know close the application baby i did this quite a bit i think it's super awesome to see this old school cryptic stuff it's totally nostalgic for me to have to search up info on forums this sense of discovery was and is a fun experience but also why did they do this they could have easily just included a difficulty option to allow the player to have this experience the entire time something that would have probably made the game better for those who were just bored and breezing through it all seven of you besides the enemies hard mode has no unlocks trophies or anything for it it's just kind of there not explained to the player or even mentioned anywhere the same goes for tim breeding which is necessary for 100 and unlocks a costume that not only completely breaks the game but shows us a brief glimpse of yuji naka's true vision you need two tims three big gems of each color that will give them a badge for a total of three each tim has three badges one gets thick do a crossbody and pray to the rng gods that it births the tim of a legend no not that one then breed the tem up to a middle size and toss them into the father tim statue which you'll need rainbow gems for you can get these by re-clearing stages or finding mini statues that'll drop a few or exploiting a glitch in stage 6 2 that'll cause them to respawn like 10 seconds from the checkpoint anytime you go into costume select save yourself the trouble cheat or just don't play this game then you hatch a massive thick tim of tim's fly up to some rainbow island and pick up a costume for balance just don't get hit and i lost it time to grind more rainbow gems yeah you need like 10 or 20 of these things i don't know the full amount in order to get the costume again i should have just reset the game but i didn't know that was a thing yet and i feel really stupid but it's totally worth saving up to get it again because the ballon costume totally breaks the game prior to this you're stuck to the ground for the most part but the ballon costume gives you like 10 jumps and the ability to float for an infinite amount of time every level in the game is suddenly a joke but at the same time way more enjoyable to explore i got this outfit i slipped into stage one three and within seconds i was seeing yujinaka's true vision i was seeing what the balant bouts potentially could have been the ballon outfit well not invincible completely shatters most of this game's challenge and it's really weird that you can unlock this thing really early into the game but again i'm not surprised it's a pretty obvious that balan wonder world is a huge mess but it's the thing that i kept thinking about and trying to dissect what happened when i was done playing it so much effort was thrown into the aesthetic and the world and all the little character designs and i'm sitting there like why is there no dialogue what is going on turns out that the lore and story and characters were located outside of this game [Music] and what has to be a first bell in wonderworld's entire narrative was located in a book they didn't advertise yeah y'all know i'm not one to half-ass stuff so i bought and read the entire thing ballon wonder world maestro of mystery theater of wonders why wasn't this in the game i have never read a book that reads closer to a script for a video game than this written by soshi kawasaki the guy who wrote the story for vampire reign oh my god maestro of mystery not only provides context for the game it is also the entirety of the characterization personalities motives likes wants dislikes for every single one of these dancing personality-less husks that wonder world throws at you yes the book is separated into five sections each of which represents a different part of the story there's the beginning unexpected company transformation battle and after the opening cut scene of this game is the beginning the entirety of the video game is battle everything else is absent that's right the 100 pages of plot setup character moments endless dialogue of relationship building not there so the reason your character is running around with balan and fighting things is non-existent that is until now the first few pages have this amazing art you don't see anywhere in game by the way we learned that leo and emma are actually street beat and fighter sick names it goes to each of the wonder world residents and shows us this great art that doesn't feel fully manifested in our zest's video game then we see the following the ballon theater appears out of nowhere everyone visits the strange playhouse once or twice over the course of their life and everyone meets with balon the mysterious maestro with a smile like a shared secret even you though you wouldn't remember no one does you see this is how you set up a narrative you infer something that the reader might have also experienced it's relatable it's writing 101 i'm going to skip all of the fluff and just lay out a simple question what is wonderworld while playing the game i was kind of thinking it was purgatory especially when that dolphin basically murdered that one chick however wonder world is a metaphor for mental health it pops up and lets you in when you're consumed with negativity and bad thoughts it's the age-old tale of hope versus despair seen in countless pieces of media especially danganronpa each of the residents is there for a specific reason and a lot of them have been there for a very long time street beat in particular and this makes me laugh he's there because he's a sick dancer and he's too good for anyone else because he has trouble making friends when you get to wonder world everyone's greeted by lance who looks like this and not this and he provides a safe space for the residents to live known as their stage a place that they have the ability to manipulate as they see fit but who cares about that when you have cool dialogue like he planted one hand atop the brand new hydrant and swung himself up into a handstand i don't need anything else to be happy just this just dancing long story short you meet all the residents who are all repressing something traumatic that happened to them lance has decided to keep everyone in wonder world as he enjoys being their friend when the original purpose of this place was to mend a broken heart there's a lot of interesting character moments and unique world buildings such as everyone knowing each other's fake names without meeting but this all builds up into a turning point where emma known as fighter in this world has essentially seen through the code turns out that lance hijacked the place for himself ballen wants to help these people move on and lance is going to make him fight he like okay this is kind of dumb lance convinces the residents that actually ballon is the bad guy in order to save wonder world you have to embrace your negativity and become the monster the ones that you see in the game which are bosses physical manifestations of ptsd and other trauma all the while street beats like i just like dancing yo so from here street beats like i'm gonna turn into a monster and protect my stage but he can't and balan's like yo dog you can't because you just needed to make some friends and you're not negative anymore it's all good now go save them you did it good job then the game starts to take place the entire plot setup character building rising action part of the story is where the game begins so without all this setup it doesn't really seem to i don't know make sense the book has some conversations take place after fights where characters will reveal their traumas sometimes much darker than you'd expect from this little game we even get a few neato twists such as wonderworld existing as some kind of matrix-like entity that all of its citizens entered at different points in time after lance is defeated and everyone leaves wonder world some characters emerge like 15 years before the others and they spend the entire end of the novel trying to reconnect into a happy ending that's genuinely kind of touching there's also some twist about ballen being a creation of lance who only became bad in quotations because he grew too attached to the people that he brought in not wanting them to leave and that makes the ending twist where ballen cries turning it into a gym even more heartfelt it's also only revealed in the book that clock tower kid the girl with green hair is also the girl in the princess parade that pencif perot wanted to ask out which is his whole reason for going into the wonder world and due to their experiences in wonder world that means she had to wait for years they even went and animated the same character in both cut scenes but without the knowledge from the book it's just like oh they have the same eyelashes i guess it's almost like this should have been in the game it even explains why the character models appear in levels and just disappear when you walk up to him there are illusions trying to attract the player this book is like a bible for this game it should be required even if it ruined my life when it explained the plot saying that the wonder world is supposed to restore balance ballon lance balon lance balance yay you did it this little book laid out a better description of the entire world than 60 hours of me playing the video game did it even made some of the characters interesting and likable even if it kind of just read like an automated google translate at times which it definitely did i mean it's also pretty funny at times like when street beats trying to help the invisible custodian want to live i guess and he's like i need somebody's help to clean up the wonder world and he's like i'm losing the battle against litter it's 11 out of 10 writing and if you just play the game you kind of miss out that balance kind of a sassy with a sonic like attitude and street beat just wants to dance he won't stop talking about it but hey if you don't want to read the book or spend money on it which i understand you could just look at the website [Music] i was trying to figure out what exactly ballon company was when i stumbled upon the official website which just has so much not only do we get a ridiculous amount of art to look at we get a very stylistically designed website that have full explanations for everything going on character names boss names cute descriptions of things happening in every level in the game little tidbits on every costume advice on how to play the game which is nice considering someone data mined that the tutorial was removed before release like there's so much effort on this website that i'm inclined to believe that something went horribly wrong in the game development process if you ask me or most people balan wonder world should not have been given to arzis looking through the credits it seems that ballon company was designed to be a smaller team that worked with outside developers to create bigger projects meaning that ballon company was mostly all of the stuff not pertaining to the gameplay itself the direction the aesthetics the music concepts and art all of which are pretty fantastic but when you look at the developer rzist and their history of games you'll see a lower standard of quality in fact this was the very first hd video game that ours has even worked on as they've been mostly making stuff on the 3ds for nintendo such as hey pikmin why square enix and balon company decided that this developer would be the one to work on what i assume to be a decently sized budget game from a aaa publisher is completely baffling to me and on top of that was the covid era pandemic development cycles where most studios were all working from home and even though this started in 2018 you can really see the toll 2020 took on it there's a lot of cut content and even though it's polished in a lot of the areas that matters it's not a very glitchy game it's just extremely bland and has a lot of gameplay directions that hold it way way back that in the whole no dialogue thing but i'm no expert i i don't know what i'm talking about i don't even think that the one button gameplay was that big of a deal because the later levels in the game give you so much more freedom and the costumes are a bit more intricate than you can jump in water and you can jump into water with electricity it's kind of pointless to critique without offering some kind of fix or alternative though so let's do it pal in wonderworld is at its very best when you're breaking the crap out of it once you get the ability to take frost fairy or magic cat into other worlds the possibility of how to platform opens up big time suddenly just like your 3d marios you embark on a journey to see how you can collect all of the statues in the most unintended in dumb manners possible both of those costumes allow you to airwalk a good distance with frost giving you a little incline however if you mash the button instead of holding onto it you can drag out the distance that you go allowing you to get some pretty bad air there's also close to no invisible walls in this game so you can like really go the distance it's with this i was able to collect a lot of hidden costumes find several hidden mini games and even spot a few backstage locations where you can see the wonder world residents sitting down and chilling it's a pretty neat fourth wall moment since this game has a theater motif everything happening being a stage play makes a lot more sense in fact when you pair that up with street beat being a dancer even the dancing segments at the end of every boss fight make a lot of sense if you combine the knowledge of the novel with the game itself those absurd over-the-top musical numbers suddenly become street beat allowing himself to dance with others mending his own broken heart simultaneously if you collect all of the balance statues in a world and beat the boss again the song sung in gibberish is suddenly in english with lyrics that are essentially yay we are friends being friends is cool i love you and stuff which could also be seen as the mending of emma's heart for her trust in others to fully express herself they were doing something here they just really messed it up and here's how to fix it step one change the way the game progresses and add cut scenes there was clearly a lot of story that they could have told here especially since they made a nearly 300 page book out of it the first half of that book is the gang all meeting each other and starting to see cracks and the illusions that lance put forth to their worlds so take all of the act 1 levels add a few mini bosses here and there and have you go through all of those first you can collect costumes as you explore your new friend's stages meanwhile adding character moments and you know cut scenes so you can actually know what the heck you're doing and with who like there's no reason for me to go through two levels watching a random character disappear before then being introduced to them with a cut scene before i smash them up i only got like 40 seconds of empathy that's just not enough next have a cut scene where there's a big reveal where lance is like ballon's the bad guy making everyone's stages transformed to defend themselves then when you meet up with ballon and realize that oh like yeah this is what we gotta do you then go stage to stage defeating all of the characters monster forms and you get to feel somewhat attached while saving lives go ahead and add act 3 in there as well because it's the best this game has to offer then you beat the game and that's it easy i fixed it step two get rid of ballon bouts it's a no-brainer here i think that ballon bouts were supposed to be something different when you play in the ballon costume you can see that they maybe had an idea of something you could have done like perhaps separate the axe by playing as ballon where you then have to fly around and do some crazy stuff in order to get to spice up the gameplay i don't think there's anyone out there that was watching ballon punch a rock for the 100th time in a row and was like that was sick step three costumes you don't need 80 costumes that's ridiculous even though each one has a decent well maybe creepy designed and a silly mo-capped dance they're just not necessary do we really need 10 different outfits that shoot out projectiles so we stopped moving you could easily narrow this down to like 30 or 40 which was what they are originally projecting and still be good also making them consumable was a bad idea just make it so that you can take three hits of damage and then you'd die step four more tim integration i'm still not really sure what the temps are according to the book they're the opposite of the nagati the evil creatures of the world they feed on tears in order to bring happiness while nagati do the opposite it goes with the balance motif and stuff but besides attempting to have a cute mascot character to sell i really don't understand what it is they were going for i guess they follow you around in stages and attack enemies sometimes but it's barely noticeable there's a decent amount of content regarding tim's including potentially taking them into levels with you but alas cut content hashtag free attempts let them race or perhaps participate in a karate tournament final step let me mess around fallon is at its best when you're just messing around with the physics and jumping like there's no tomorrow for a game that allows you to take any costume into any level limiting costume spawn points to axe was a weird decision i think it would have been best to just pull from an inventory or even just force me to pick stuff from a checkpoint without losing it having to grind costumes from orbs right next to keys is just a time waster and if you weren't aware this game actually has a two-player co-op mode which is pretty much just little sibling mode allowing you to easily kill someone by just changing the camera angle however it also allows you to link up characters where one person moves but both can do their action in this mode you can really hardcore parkour all over maps and earn balanced statues way before you should be able to do so these are the kind of moments where ballen wonder world is fun did i just say that ah sh it's just unfortunate that any costumes player two collects or has will just be discarded like they don't save they're just gone again it's random baffling decisions like this [Music] i don't think ballon wonder world's a very good game but i also don't think it's a very bad game i think it's something that's misunderstood not only by the people who are playing it but also the developers it's a game of genuine high highs and also very very low lows bad enough to where i was audibly groaning but damn if i am not fascinated by this game despite being a brand new game i think that ballon wonder world has given me a total sense of nostalgia i do feel like i'm playing a weird imported japanese playstation 1 or saturn game and it does legit feel like it could be it's got that mystique and intrigue that only something like knights into dreams can have but also the weird jank where you're having to scour forearms to understand what's going on it also has a wonderful presentation and a vision that while hard to see with the full picture a squint head tilted corrected frames on is pretty cool it's easily one of the most unique video games released in the last year and something that will be remembered for better or worse definitely worse i of course cannot recommend bell in wonder world that would be totally irresponsible but i do know that there's a handful of you guys out there who love the curiosity the weird thing that pops up every now and then for you i say go nuts then you too can look at the unused ballon costume color for a second flair that literally exists without being data mined but cannot be selected because why would anything good happen ballon feels like an incomplete package but one that did get a little bit better after i read the novel the question is should you spend all of that time and effort that i did in order to feel that this game is maybe a 6.5 at its peak maybe a seven i'm gonna say no no one should ever but i did it so you don't have to and hey that was balan wonder world a game that i got really passionate about that nobody cares about but regardless i hope you enjoyed watching the video join me next time when we talk about a entire series of titillating action games just remember whenever you're feeling kind of down about yourself and need a little pick me up remember one thing for me don't get consumed by negativity and go to sleep every single night knowing that ign thinks that this game is better than godhan i'll never forget thanks for watching make sure to click the link down in the description to get your free trot for skillshare today special patreon shout out to brandon howell chris shelton christopher olivia d.a stevens darren newton donan dx buster david molnar eli shane stealthenecker gm pinks jay russe jacoby fitzpatrick jordy mccaffrey kevin zanowski karen arder legend gary nick irving p funk ryan talbert and zack porter thank you all so much for your generous support i hope everybody liked the video it was a very very several nights of editing but i think it was worth it i only hate myself a little bit there's gonna be more content coming soon i might need a couple days because i'm getting the second part of my covet vaccine tomorrow which means i'm going to be infused with the 5g but everything should be good streams coming soon and i hope you guys have a great day

Channel: Austin Eruption

Views: 250,974

Rating: 4.9475279 out of 5

Keywords: Austin Eruption, Boku No Eruption, comedy, funny, balan, balan wonderworld, ps5, review, ps4, switch, bad game, good game, sonic, yuji naka, platformer, 3d platformer, 3d sonic, nights into dreams, balanwonderworld, balan novel, so you don't have to, 100%, platinum trophy, complete, finished, flying, video game, gaming

Id: XhulaUqpWPQ

Length: 38min 17sec (2297 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 26 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/gammongaming11]

man he looks dead inside.

[u/midnight_riddle]

I've been craving a new 3D platformer for while. I think the last one I played was A Hat in Time, which was good. But Balan Wonderworld's art style gripped me. It looked interesting.

So I was especially disappointed when I tried the demo out and it was bad. Not just "oh middling mediocre game" but bad. And not bad in a Sonic 06 way, but the focus on quality over quantity with the costumes really hurt the game.

This was probably the kindest review of Balan Wonderworld I've seen, probably because he went and read the book and got to glimpse what the real vision was supposed to be. I really enjoy dream world/inner psyche settings so this game's poor execution is really sad.

[u/Kregano_XCOMmodder]

I'd be surprised by this, but when Pitch Black and Event Horizon somehow got novelizations, I really can't be surprised by this.

[u/Onlyhereforstuff]

Wasn't the novel actually seen better than the game by miles?

[u/maxbyer]

I was waiting for a good deep dive on the game and Austin unsurprisingly delivered. I'm just bummed the more I know the more I wonder what could've been if this game launched in a better state.

[u/ThatGuy5880]

Wow. Now that someone's gone through the novel and explained the good parts to me, I gotta say... Wonderworld is a pretty brilliant setting. It being a universal time-crossing place of healing that basically everyone has gone to (seeping into the real world just like NiGHTS, I love it) that was corrupted due to the owner growing too attached to the people there and not letting them move on is so good (and it also works like a strange positive version of Silent Hill the more I think about it).

It just makes me sad when I see how basically all of it gets squandered by the fact that the game had the goal of being as simple as possible. They just created such a beautifully crafted world that went to waste because it was too complicated to be conveyed without words. Like, NiGHTS could get away with it cause the world was simple enough that you didn't need the finer details, the basic jist and you're fine. Here, you get the jist of it and seriously wtf is happening.

It also really, really stings knowing a lot of the gameplay stuff might've happened cause they happened to pick the wrong developer for the job. It makes a me really sad to think that the brilliant world and art the other members of the dev team made won't get expanded on from this point, cause I doubt Balan will ever get a second chance, which is a real shame.

[u/RealCaptJABRONIE]

This has to put poor Austin on SOME type of watchlist right?

[u/markedmarkymark]

Not even Mark went as far as to read the novel, Austin truly is the giga nerd.

[u/otakuloid01]

so the creative team really looked at the developers of fucking Yoshi’s New Island and Let’s Go Pikmin and said “aw yea. these are the guys we need for our debut 3d platformer”