The demo for Balan Wonderworld is being removed from all digital stores.
Big OOF
Wow, I am late for this but I wasn't expecting that. Since they make a big deal that if you had the demo save file you would get some sort of "Launcher" costume or something.
Balan Wonderworld itself is a big oof
Yes, it definitely is.
Yeah literally just look up the cutscenes for Balan. They’re infinitely more enjoyable than the game itself... which is like... how?
That's what most people point towards, that the cutscenes look gorgeous and that cannot be denied, but...after seeing them one after the other, it's confusing...specially the end.
It’s fundamentally broken at its core. Every button does the same thing and that button all depends on what costume you’re wearing. If you’re wearing a costume that can’t jump you have to swap to one that can. Say you get all the way to one of the collectibles of the game, the trophy, only to find out that you don’t have the right costume. Well you have to backtrack to get the costume from either somewhere in level that you hopefully stored it from an earlier level. Or leave the level go to the other level get the costume you need and then go back to the other. But let’s say on your way back to that trophy that you need the costume for you accidentally forget that you don’t have a jump button so you walk off the ledge. You’ve now lost that costume so you have to do it all over again.
That’s Balan Wonderworld’s entire gameplay loop. It’s awful. Oh and Balan? Literally just a QTE... the same QTE... over and over and over.
Edit: if you’re an absolute masochist who just has to play the game though please just wait for it to end up in the bargain bin next month. Or rent it from a Red Box. The game is highway robbery otherwise. It’s actually that bad.
Edit 2: and trust me Balan didn’t set it back years, I promise. The game literally never left the era of early PS1 Gameplay. It’s easy to see why it failed so miserably.
I felt invested for a time mainly because of the character design and what SEEMED to be a story but....in the end it just let me down in many ways so, I am glad I don't care to spoil myself to know if it's even worth spending money on it.
And the so called "Showtime set", I find it quite lackluster, specially when it was quite vague when it came to the " FULL COLOR Theatre Program", and many people including myself thinking that it would be an Artbook like other collector's edition of games have (I wish I had Rogue's.... T W T)...BUT NOPE, it's like a bunch of information and art that they have already showcased from the most part, with some developer commentary and only one unseen artwork at the end.
Oh, and the freaking Novel. I read a summarized version and it gave me a headache and with a lot more questions than answers. A friend read the full novel and felt the same, that there was a lot of confusing crap. And the answers you get didn't really help at all, since some were contradictions to what happened in the game itself or just downright weird.
