- Publisher: Square Enix
- Release Date: Mar 26, 2021
- Also On: PC, PlayStation 4, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X
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- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
- Unscored
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Apr 9, 2021Balan 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.
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Apr 4, 2021Balan Wonderworld is a disappointing platformer that feels like a wasted opportunity. There are some bright spots in its visuals, music, and boss fights, but the bulk of the game is characterized by stale level design, overly simplistic gameplay, useless power-ups, and annoying mini-games. It throws a lot of ideas at the wall, but lacks the polish to do any of it well. And with a price tag of $60, it's a hard sell.
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Mar 31, 2021Frustrating in its playability, abstruse in most of its rules, the soft falls without a net. No drama to report: like a drunken cannon-man, Balan Wonderworld misses his target. Too imprecise for the youngest, too basic for fans of the genre, he cannot count on any of his costumes to hide his shortcomings.
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Mar 30, 2021While 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.
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Mar 29, 2021There'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.
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Apr 11, 2021Balan Wonderworld is a very ambitious looking game, and yet it manages to accomplish very little. I was very much expecting a new IP I would enjoy and ended up sorely disappointed by it. I don’t know what Square Enix's higher ups are thinking right now, but I'm guessing that it's not “This is the next big thing".
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Apr 4, 2021Balan Wonderworld stands out as easily one of the worst 3D platformers in the past decade. There was no good reason for Square Enix and Yuji Naka to salvage this train wreck and it's an embarrassment that this game was allowed to be released at all in its current state. When the game’s only redeeming qualities are some good music and neat DualSense features, something clearly went wrong here. There is no doubt that Balan Wonderworld should've remained locked up in the game design vault it was conceived in twenty years ago.
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Apr 6, 2021Balan Wonderworld is a lesson in how a video game can go completely wrong, missing every target it attempts to hit.
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Apr 5, 2021If only Naka, staying true to form, had given the whole thing a dose of high speed; his work only holds together when it hurtles past our eyes, growing vivid with velocity.
| This publication does not provide a score for their reviews. | |
| This publication has not posted a final review score yet. | |
| These unscored reviews do not factor into the Metascore calculation. | |
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Apr 1, 2021And yet for all that, I kind of adore Balan Wonderworld, to a degree that's surprised me. Maybe it's just come along at the right time, when I needed a colourful comfort blanket of a thing, a nostalgia strip as strange and insubstantial as watching a YouTube compilation of 90s TV adverts. Maybe it's because my expectations were low - Sonic Adventure has always been the game where the scales fell away from my eyes when it comes to Sega's mascot, and to Sonic Team, and I can't say I've ever enjoyed too much of the series since...Or maybe it's just because this is how games used to be, and sometimes it's comforting to slip into a 90s netherworld, and back into the old ways. When games were often clunky, unexplained, awkward and often downright frustrating. Balan Wonderworld is all those things, an almost too exacting facsimile of a type of second tier 90s platformer that never quite achieved greatness, even if it's fascinating all the same.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 121 out of 253
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Mixed: 10 out of 253
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Negative: 122 out of 253
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Mar 27, 2021
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Mar 27, 2021
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Mar 27, 2021