Let’s punch our way into Donkey Kong Bananza
Donkey Kong Bananza on the Switch 2 ends DK's 11-year hiatus — and it's a big one. You'll punch your way through literally everything — basically the entire environment is destructible — as you battle VoidCo. There's a ton going on in Bananza's open-world-lite levels, and we're here to help.
Donkey Kong Bananza on the Switch 2 ends DK's 11-year hiatus. And it's a big one.
You'll punch your way through literally everything — basically the entire environment is destructible — as you battle VoidCo (and definitely not K. Rool). There's a ton going on in Bananza's open-world-lite levels, and we're here to help.
Punch everything
Look. DK isn't a complicated monkey, so our advice in Donkey Kong Bananza is the same as our standing advice regarding Nazis: when in doubt, punch. It’s how you save, it’s how you dig, and it’s how you deal with enemies.
If you ever have to interact with something, punch it.
You can always reset the terrain
It’s easy to get carried away with your punching and smash your way through a stone pillar you needed to climb. Luckily, there’s a way to entirely reset the train from the map menu.
Once you reach Ape Cape, you can open the map with -. From there, hitting + will reset all of the terrain you’ve destroyed (and revert to your most recent save).
Spend less time digging for gold
All of that punch-digging you’re doing will uncover a lot of gold and you’ll end up with thousands of … pounds? kilograms? ounces? … units of gold before you know it. Here’s the thing, though: you don’t use gold for much in Donkey Kong Bananza.
Early on, the only time it comes up is when you die (it’s more important later) and you lose 10% of the gold you’ve collected. Even if you will eventually need gold, it’s everywhere in Bananza, and you’ll never get anything done if you stop to get it all.
There are fewer randomly hidden bananas than you think
Speaking of digging (by punching), you’ll occasionally find Banandium Gems buried behind walls or underground. But it’s extremely occasional and usually telegraphed pretty obviously.
The trailers and gameplay promos made it seem like they’d be buried all over the place. They’re straight up not. So you’re better off not spending a bunch of time punching your way through every piece of dirt looking for a rogue banana.
Resist the urge to upgrade your health
Every time you collect five bananas, you’ll get a skill point to spend on things like extra health and stronger punches (punching is kind of a big part of this game if you haven’t caught on yet).
For your first several skill points, don’t spend them on health (unless you have to like with the first point) -- even though it’s the upgrade the game recommends you pick first. There’s lots of healing fruit around and, frankly, you’re not going to take much (if any) damage in the initial levels.
The caveat here is that you should do this if you’re dying all the time, but if Bananza isn’t your first 3D platformer — and if it is, welcome!, you picked a great one to start with — you likely won’t struggle too much with the baddies until later in the game. We recommend focusing skill points on your hand slaps so you pull in items from further, your punch’s destructive power, and your Bananza forms.
Bonus tip: D-pad up opens the skill menu
If you, like us, struggle constantly with the A and B buttons on Nintendo controllers being in the objectively wrong positions, it’s easy to cancel out of spending your skill points before you’re ready. Hitting up on the D-pad opens the menu again.
You can get a lot further by rolling
Much like Mario in Odyssey, DK has some sweet movement mechanics that take a little bit to master. But even easier than Mario hat jump and dash is DK’s roll jump.
Rolling by pulling the left trigger helps you move around the world much faster, but did you know that you can jump out of that roll and then roll again? This is OK on the ground, but you can cover a lot of distance in the air if you roll off of a platform, jump, and then roll again mid-air.
Use rocks for throwing and smashing (and riding)
Holding down the right trigger will make DK grab a chunk of whatever he’s standing on or near. (Once you grab it, you can let go of the trigger.) These chunks are projectiles, weapons, and, somehow, a ride — called Turf Surfing.
Gold is also explosive
Most gold you find in Bananza is in a nugget form, and you can’t pick it up in the traditional “monkey pick up rock” kinda way. Instead, it’ll just absorb into you like any other currency. But you’ll occasionally find gold embedded in the world in a brick form, or as a statue. If you pick this gold up and throw it, it’ll explode just like the exploding rocks.
This is great in a pinch, but it also helps you collect gold very, very quickly. If you’ve purchased the double jump from the skill tree (which should probably be your first upgrade), you can even grab some gold, double jump with it, and send the explosive piece in your hands hurtling to the ground, causing it to instantly blow up and collect the rest of the gold below you.
Don’t be stingy with your Bananza forms
If you’re like us, you have a habit of not using Super or Ultimate abilities and holding onto them for that super special, perfect moment. Resist that urge in Donkey Kong Bananza. The Kong Bananza — the first one you get — is just a super powered DK, and you’re able to absolutely devastate terrain and enemies with it. But you don’t just need to save it for concrete or bosses. You should use it all the time: challenge rooms, random enemy encounters, just because you want to dig a hole faster.
The thing about the Bananergy meter is that you can charge it extremely quickly by picking up a little bit of gold. And, even better, you can charge it while you’re transformed. That means, if you’re efficient and digging (where you’ll find a lot of gold), you can fully recharge your meter so that by the time you finish, you’re immediately able to jump back in.
But there is actually another reason why you don’t need to be so stingy with your Bananergy ...
You can cancel your Bananza Forms to retain energy
Your Banaza forms are extremely powerful, and you’ll need to use them to solve all sorts of minor puzzles, some of which may only take seconds. The good news is that you can actually cancel your forms early to retain a large percentage of the energy — if you’re fast enough, you can pop in for a second and almost keep it at 100%.
A good example of how to use this is dealing with concrete, which DK can’t bash through without an explosive or the Kong Bananza form. But if you pop in for a second, do a single charge punch, and then pop out, you’ll need a tiny bit of gold to get back to 100%.
You can cancel your Banaza forms early by holding the shoulder buttons, exactly like how you summon them.
This post originally appeared on BigFriendly.Guide
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