Normally I would not be logging DLC expansions on this site. Unless it's something like Torna ~ The Golden Country, which has enough content to stand on it's own (which it does, you can literally buy it standalone), i would just add the DLC to the game itself.

Donkey Kong Adventure, despite not being standalone, feels like it meets those requirements. It's pretty damn meaty for an expansion and it's genuinely such an improvement over the main game that i feel it deserves it's own log. The roster in this game is limited to DK, Rabbid Cranky and Rabbid Peach but it makes up for that limitation with a lot of variety and a shorter campaign that makes me realize "wait Mario+Rabbids was kinda too long".

The lack of varied victory conditions from the main game is fixed here, as you have several maps with different conditions. Like i was genuinely surprised when i encountered a "defend location" map. Even when a map is "defeat all enemies", there's usually a gimmick in place that prevents it from feeling stale like in the main game. The limited roster allowed the developers to really craft each of the character's niches in combat. Donkey Kong himself is easily the best character in the game, including the base, due to his insane mobility options and unique pick-up gimmick that allows for strategies you would not be able to do anywhere else.

The campaign's shorter length does wonders for it. Each world is about half the length of a world in the main game and this prevents everything from feeling repetitious. There's still Challenge Battles if you want more as well. Honestly, this expansion reminds me of Spider-Man: Miles Morales where it's better than the original game because it focused on quality over quantity, removing the little bits that added up to repetition. I honestly don't have anything really negative to say about this game and here's hoping Sparks of Hope takes the lessons learned from Donkey Kong.

Dang, I forgot to talk about this a while ago.

I like this DLC! It is a bit annoying that none of the other characters are here, but I guess restricting the team to the same 3 characters everytime makes it easier for my dumbass brain to think of a battle strategy and beat the campaign faster.

Yeah, it's cool. DK looks a bit weird tho.

Surpasses the original Kingdom Battle by the tacit assertion that this scale and these mechanics make better bedfellows. It’s such a nice pairing, having learnt from the original and pared the components down, Donkey Kong Adventure meanwhile opens up the strategy and movement around fields, albeit overpowering its central characters, proving out through a new campaign and even harder challenges that less is most certainly more. There are more of the iffy puzzles, like the original, but the non skippable ones are joyous and painless, and the kind that always seemed to halt progress in the original, now feel like extra work for extra rewards, a suitable compromise. The game also just looks great — the Mario + Rabbids style even more at home in the Donkey Kong world than in the Mushroom Kingdom. Perhaps one of the finest DLCs for a Non-Nintendo developed game on a Nintendo system, this is an essential have on the Switch, ironically even more so than the original game. It ought to be sold separately.

Solid standalone campaign that offers the main game's quality in a tighter package.
+ well-designed trio of main characters who play well together with their mostly new abilities
+ fun map design that makes great use of different mechanics
+ more optional puzzles
+ beautiful tropical setting
+ very smooth albeit low difficulty curve
- rigid party composition without any unit additions whatsoever