A.J. Maciejewski (crazyaejay): Thanks for reading my review of Balan Wonderworld. Feel free to ask any questions about the game or provide feedback and I'll gladly reply.
Adam: Folks, this game is god awful. Not sure what the reviewer was playing or was he dreaming. This is easily one of the worst platformers in the history of gaming. Do not buy this game.
A.J. Maciejewski (crazyaejay): At the risk of sounding condescending, have you actually played it? And I'm not talking about just the demo. I understand that there's a big hate bandwagon for Balan Wonderworld but find that it's completely unwarranted and I truly don't understand how any 3D platformer fan could not enjoy it. I've been gaming since the '80s and still love classic 3D platformers. Balan Wonderworld really scratched an itch and it features a captivating sense of wonder and spectacle with absolutely lovely stories to boot. Are gamers really so jaded nowadays that such a heartwarming, magical, and enjoyable experience is considered "god awful"? If so, that's a genuine shame.
El Nino: It's not that people are "jaded", it's more that people expect better. Cool, the game plays like an older 3D platformer, but it plays like trash. Someone nowadays can still go back to Super Mario 64 and get basically the same experience because the controls are tight and responsive, but the player is invested enough because there's some complexity to the controls. With this, you have a buggy and far-too-simple platformer that really has no place in the current game landscape. Why not just play A Hat in Time or even Super Lucky's Tale, both which do 3D Platforming in a way that still feels nostalgic without relying on nostalgia for its entire appeal. Or for modern platforming, Super Mario Odyssey gives that same feeling of easier exploration but without shockingly dated visuals and a really janky control scheme. There's nothing special about this game. Most of the costumes are repeats of other costume powers or are completely useless. You don't care to replay it because it gets boring with no real opposition. Maybe instead of reductively assuming gamers are too "jaded", maybe check how much your nostalgia for the genre is really blinding you.
A.J. Maciejewski (crazyaejay): I have yet to see 1 legitimate argument as to why Balan is a bad game. So far, most folks fail to mention the heartwarming stories, lovely dance numbers, and adorable graphics; all of which are positive points. Hence, my conclusion that these folks are jaded. People have simply been regurgitating the same talking points that have no basis in reality. Buggy? Not at all; at least, not on PS5. Simple? Yes, but in a unique and clever way. Most of the costumes are repeats? This is not true; only a few of them are similar and that's okay - I rarely see people complain when a few measly weapons are too similar in an RPG. You have to go back to get costumes that you need? No, you don't and I find this point to be particularly hilarious because there's a costume inventory system that most players overlook. It's too similar to a PS2-era game? What's wrong with that? There are loads of wonderful PS2 platformers that are still great fun to play. My point is; was I supposed to give Balan a low score even though I absolutely loved every minute of playing it just to appeal to some arbitrary and frankly ridiculous hate bandwagon? And people wonder why gaming culture is an echo chamber; it's apparently unacceptable to have a differing opinion. And that brings me to another point; someone being distraught that a fellow gamer enjoyed a game which they didn't happen to enjoy (or possibly didn't even play) is a truly troubling thing to behold. Whenever I see someone enjoying a game that I don't like; I'm actually happy for them. It's good to enjoy things. I can't fathom why many gamers are compelled to chastise others for enjoying things.
Caco: Hey dude, i've too got my hands on a review copy of Ballan Wonderworld. And i can say that to me, that game is one of the worst in the genre. I was really hyped when the game got announced, loved Balan and Lance, the boss designs. But the game design wise is just rubbish. The heart warming story? We almost got no story to plaY, Balan cast the kids in the hub where we choose the world in wich we desire to play, we got the cutscenes explaning what's going on and that's it. Beat the game twice, got all the statues off Balan and yet the game is pure waste of time and money. I never wanted to be so wrong, but that's Balan Wonderworld, a big dissapointment, just like Left Alive.
A.J. Maciejewski (crazyaejay): You hated Balan Wonderworld but finished it twice and got all of the statues... why? I never played Left Alive but it looks interesting.
Caco: Because everytime i got assigned a review, i have to be 100% sure of the score. Also the game is really short.
A.J. Maciejewski (crazyaejay): Oh, I see. We don't assign reviews here. That way, reviewers only review games that they're interested in which prevents bias.
Caco: But in that case how do you get out off your confort zone? I get that some reviews are by choice, but you need some diversity in your plate.
A.J. Maciejewski (crazyaejay): Most reviewers enjoy playing a variety of games. However, if someone doesn't enjoy RPGs at all and they're assigned to review the latest Final Fantasy then that would be silly, right? If a reviewer enjoys Final Fantasy games then they'll be able to review it better because they're coming from a knowledgeable perspective. In other words, I don't see how stepping outside your comfort zone would be beneficial in this regard.
Caco: On big tittles i can agree, i was saying more in the indie category of the matter at hand.
A.J. Maciejewski (crazyaejay): Well, that would explain the oodles of unfair indie game reviews that I constantly see, haha!
Caco: Well that's depende wich site are you going then. We from gamerview are proud to be always true to the score of a game. Even if doesn't appeal to our personal tastes.
A.J. Maciejewski (crazyaejay): Yeah, I was just joking. I'm sure your reviews are fine and it's okay to not enjoy Balan. I just wish people can let me enjoy it without getting mad at me.
Mark Jonas: How does that "prevent bias"? Sounds like you have no idea what bias is.
A.J. Maciejewski (crazyaejay): Hello, Mark. Thank you for your question. You can see my reply to Caco below where I explain this concept in a little more depth. It's also outlined on our About page. Please let me know if you require any more clarification and I'll be happy to help.
A.J. Maciejewski (crazyaejay): Just wanted to post something that I wrote on a forum which I put a lot of thought into after reading many people's opinions of Balan Wonderworld: The main thing that I think makes Balan exceptionally underrated is that nearly everyone seems to be expecting it to play like a traditional 3D platformer in the same vein as Mario 64 or something like that. However, the reason why I enjoyed its gameplay as much as I did is because I played it more like a puzzle game where you're restricted in your move set and have to manage your costumes and utilize them cleverly in order to progress and doing so methodically was very satisfying to me. There are many acclaimed games which restrict you in clever ways that could easily be chalked up to as poor game design if you go in with misaligned expectations and I honestly think that if everyone who played Balan expected it to be a puzzle-like game instead of a collect-a-thon 3D platformer, opinions of it would be much more positive.
Mark Jonas: It seems you're getting mad at people who don't enjoy it, as you're deleting their own impressions.
A.J. Maciejewski (crazyaejay): Sorry, it looks like our auto-mod filter is kicking in which happens when certain flags are raised. I'll look into it later today. Thank you for your patience!
madmonkey mcknight: I don't want to discredit your review, and I'm glad that someone has actually been able to enjoy this game, as yours is the only published review with a positive score on Metacritic, but I feel like you're not talking enough about the game itself. Most of the review is mentioning the colourful visuals, the appealing character designs and the stories about each of the NPCs but not much on the gameplay itself. The reason why most people dislike this game is because of the gameplay itself, not because of the visual aspect of it, which is the biggest highlight of the game. Yes, the character designs are interesting, the different themes for each world are also welcome, and imo the best part of the game are the CG cutscenes that are very beautiful. I don't want to talk much about the plot, because imo it doesn't even make much sense. The NPCs all have their own little story, but for the majority of the game events we aren't even provided with a basic explanation, like why are the MCs sad at the beggining of the game or why they decide to enter a random house in a back alley and how are they helping these people in the first place. But that's not the point. The game itself plays horribly. The switch version, which is the one I tried, runs very poorly. Rarely the game scratches the 30 fps mark, most of the time floating between 15 and 25 fps and sometimes the frames drop heavily when enemies spawn or simply when the camera moves in certain locations. The graphics are also very pixilized on the Switch version for some reason. But this is the PS5 version, which doesn't really suffer from those problems. Even still, the game is just bad. First of all, there are 80 costumes. I don't understand why there are so many costumes because several of them are complete repeats of others, like there are multiple costumes that can fly over small gaps but one uses a bubble, another one flutters in the air and another one just floats. There is no reason to have 3 costumes that do the same thing. There are literally two costumes that have the same functionality of crossing water portions. One of them allows for the player to jump out of the water, which completely invalidates the prior because it can't jump out of the water. There are a total of 6 buttons that all have the same purpose, which means that every costume has only a single use. Multiple costumes like the dragon and the pumpkin one cannot jump, and in a 3D platformer that's just bad game design. Why can't the dragon jump AND throw fireballs? It doesn't even need to throw them in the air, just be able to jump and throw fireballs while in the ground. In order to jump you need to change suits, and you can only have 3 suits at the same time. For some reason you can actually have multiple of the same suits, which means that you're needlessly using up suit slots and there's a chance you can't jump at all and end up soft-locking, also because there is no way of removing the suit and returning to the basic human form (which can jump). Changing between suits takes like 2 seconds, which is stupidly long and breaks the rythm of a platformer. Also why are the suits locked behind keys? It makes no sense. Most of the time the keys are right next to the suit. If it was a puzzle itslef to get the key it would be fine, but no, it's just an added chore. The level design is as simple as it gets, most of the time consisting of simple obstacles and, from time to time, enemies that offer no challenge at all, even the bosses. The game is needlessly slow. I believe they slightly upped the running speed in the main game from the demo, but it's still super slow, and because there is no run button you really feel the sluggish pace. Then there is the hub world and the Tower of Tims. Why does that exist at all? Why are there collectible gems? The only reason you collect them is to feed them to the tims. But the tims offer nothing. There is a sub-goal of rasing the tower but that does absolutely nothing, it's pointless. This game has so many problems and I feel bad that it's such a wasted game, it could have been a decent platformer but imo it's horrible. Hopefully this sheds a light on why the vast majority of the people that played this game hate it, and that it's not just a hate bandwagon. Then again, obviously, you are entitled to enjoy this game, and if you're able to do that I think that's amazing.
A.J. Maciejewski (crazyaejay): Hi, madmonkey. Thank you for your thoughtful insights - I really appreciate it. I think the open-ended story premise actually makes it more magical. Yes, it really doesn't make sense on paper and there's a lot of room for interpretation but I actually like that aspect. It kind of just throws you into this weird world and I like that. I saw the keys as a sort of health mechanic where you can stockpile them and unlock nearby costumes whenever you happen to get hit. It does seem silly on the surface but that's how I interpreted them. And, yes, I agree that changing costumes takes too long. It should be immediate, of course. To discuss a larger gameplay issue regarding the simplistic 1-button controls; I understand where you and many others are coming from. However, I believe that if you approach playing this as a puzzle game more than a traditional platformer, it ends up being quite a fulfilling adventure. In other words, I feel that many players had misaligned expectations when playing it which could easily lead you to believe that it's designed poorly. As a traditional collect-a-thon platformer, I agree that it's not good but as a 3D puzzle-like adventure platformer, I really don't think there's anything quite like it and I thoroughly appreciated its unique approach to gameplay. In fact, nearly every negative review, comment, and such that I've seen for Balan simply states that it's a bad 3D platformer and I actually agree with that sentiment in the traditional sense but I played it as if it was a puzzle platformer and had a great time doing so. Also, when it comes to repeat costumes; there are some, I admit, but not as many similar ones as people think. I don't personally see this as an issue anyway because I rarely see people complain about weapons being too similar in an RPG, etc. Plus, the costumes are very visually unique and silly-looking even if they have similar abilities and I enjoyed dressing up my character in a bunch of different outfits. Yeah, the bosses and battles are generally unchallenging and that's my main negative point with Balan. The stage designs definitely get much more intricate and involving halfway through, though. The Tims world is goofy for sure so if you want to just hang out and watch a bunch of cute critters munch on crystals as a strange tower grows, it's a pretty fun place to be but if you don't appreciate silly moments like this then I can certainly see it feeling a bit redundant.
madmonkey mcknight: I'm glad that you can enjoy this game in a puzzle platformer type of way. I think that if they smoothed out most of the game, making the whole experience faster and change some core concepts, like adding more than one functionality to each suit this could have been an enjoyable game for me.
MrSirBossMan: That is the exact opposite of preventing bias. People playing only games that they are interested in is like people only taking surveys they are interested AKA literal selective bias.
A.J. Maciejewski (crazyaejay): I don't see how you could possibly equate the 2. Taking a random survey is literally the exact opposite of providing an expert review of a video game based on extensive knowledge from years of experience with the series or genre. As someone who usually can't stand first-person shooters, should I review the latest Call of Duty and possibly give it 2 out of 10 or should I ask someone on our staff who enjoys the genre if they'd like to review it? Obviously, the latter. People are much better judges of things when they have experience with the kind of thing it is. For example, when I read a review of a shoot 'em up from someone who's never played a shmup before and they give it 10 out of 10 and say something like "this is like the good old arcade days" even though it's a crappy game and they only started playing games in 2015 and never been in an arcade in their life, it makes me shake my head. Also, selection bias does not apply to game reviews because the intended audience is almost always gamers who are already interested in the genre or series. Why on earth would someone read a review for something that they're not interested in at all? That makes absolutely no sense. In other words, if you're writing reviews while targeting the general population then you're doing it wrong and your lack of expertise will surely show.
rubinjenssen: The Review is fantastic. One time ahead. This game divides minds and critics immensely. Before it was released, only negative things hit Balan Wonderworld. I don't know what today's players want? the worst game test only awards 20%. The best rated reviews are 80, 82 and 84 points out of 100. Even if these are clearly (unfortunately) in the minority. you should make your own picture and not take the flood of media nonsense for everything. I'm glad you didn't cancel this game either. It would have been my biggest mistake in my 30+ year video game life. The biggest! with almost 700 games played. Balan W. is an excellent game, with a lot of heart, fantastic picturesque backdrops, masterful soundtrack and "good gameplay"! the gameplay sometimes jerks when the opponents appear, yes. Maybe 60 or 70 costumes would be enough, yes. But that never affected me while playing. all costumes have their justification and "must" be used. In addition, Balan gives you a great feeling of traveling through beautiful stories and helping people in all situations. Clear purchase recommendation! therefore I fully agree with your review. It's a shame about the designer Juyi Naka, who must now feel very sad and lost...
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