Y'know a few hours in I was thinking that the game wasn't that bad and that I'd shoot for the platinum but the more you play it the more the horseshit just permeates the entire experience and by the last two levels I was completely spent of caring about any of it.
The implementation of the costume feature is fucked the whole way through. To get a costume in a level, you need a key to 'unlock' it, even if you've already done so. Keys are always like 3 seconds away from the costume so it's completely superfluous and completely useless design. Because the game is a literal one button videogame and they needed to make a shitload of costumes to give the game some sort of selling point, costumes do one thing and there's plenty of overlap. Also while the game allows you to switch costumes at checkpoints, costumes are finite and can be lost. This can lead to grinding out an inventory of the good costumes if you're so inclined because yes, the game is a lot better when you can air cat or frost fairy around and over shit vs having a land locked costume (yes, you can't jump with some costumes) with a shitty projectile. Also all costumes are based on like in game creatures but when you wear the costumes the shitty face of your character ruins the design and it's crap amigo it's CRAP.
What else is there to say about the rest of game? It looks nice enough, obviously the CG cutscenes are the big stand out here and they're good. The stuff with the tims are alright because I just think of Tim Hortons jokes and the little TIMBITS and I could see myself engaging with the shit if the game wasn't trash. Speaking of trash, the fuckin music barely exists and the only combat music in the game has the fuckin chanting samples from the small airfield stage in street fighter 4 and it's fuckin dumb and I hate it.
But the real shit, the real shit that made me quit caring about the game, is Balan's Motherfucking Bout. Balan's Whole Ass Bout is a 'special' thing that appears in every level. You'll find a golden hat and when you jump into it the Balan's Bunghole Bout can begin. Balan's Big Booty Blowout Bout is a 1-2 minute QTE segment where Balan cycles through the same 10 animations and you have to time a button press or maybe mash at certain points to earn statues. You only earn the statue if you get an Excellent rating on all the QTEs which is far more annoying than you think because you're lining up Balan's butthole with a moving silhouette which can be visually confusing and there's variable timing between bouts so it's incredibly easy to fuck up. But hey, you can easily retry them right? FUCK. NO. To retry a Balan's Fuckhead Bout, you have to exit the level, complete the final boss of the area, re-enter the area AND THEN make your way back to the hat to try again. It's incredibly blatant padding especially when the back half of the game has multiple hats per area AND they have more animations between them, going from 4 QTEs early to 6 QTEs in later levels. It's complete horseshit and a complete waste of fucking time and life.
Balan's ultimate problem is that with it's one button gameplay you'd think it'd be on some rated EC for early childhood bullshit where it's just kind of easy and breezy and it ends and if you want to put in the extra smidge of effort you can get the platinum with little issue. This is not the case for Balan goes out of its to be an annoying piece of shit at every fucking turn to the player and the game's detriment. Unless Yuji Naka was gonna solve all the annoying bullshit with the time he wasn't on the project (and remember, he lost his job because he pissed everyone off, by his own admission) this game was always gonna be fucked, and no amount of Evil Dolphins could save it.
The implementation of the costume feature is fucked the whole way through. To get a costume in a level, you need a key to 'unlock' it, even if you've already done so. Keys are always like 3 seconds away from the costume so it's completely superfluous and completely useless design. Because the game is a literal one button videogame and they needed to make a shitload of costumes to give the game some sort of selling point, costumes do one thing and there's plenty of overlap. Also while the game allows you to switch costumes at checkpoints, costumes are finite and can be lost. This can lead to grinding out an inventory of the good costumes if you're so inclined because yes, the game is a lot better when you can air cat or frost fairy around and over shit vs having a land locked costume (yes, you can't jump with some costumes) with a shitty projectile. Also all costumes are based on like in game creatures but when you wear the costumes the shitty face of your character ruins the design and it's crap amigo it's CRAP.
What else is there to say about the rest of game? It looks nice enough, obviously the CG cutscenes are the big stand out here and they're good. The stuff with the tims are alright because I just think of Tim Hortons jokes and the little TIMBITS and I could see myself engaging with the shit if the game wasn't trash. Speaking of trash, the fuckin music barely exists and the only combat music in the game has the fuckin chanting samples from the small airfield stage in street fighter 4 and it's fuckin dumb and I hate it.
But the real shit, the real shit that made me quit caring about the game, is Balan's Motherfucking Bout. Balan's Whole Ass Bout is a 'special' thing that appears in every level. You'll find a golden hat and when you jump into it the Balan's Bunghole Bout can begin. Balan's Big Booty Blowout Bout is a 1-2 minute QTE segment where Balan cycles through the same 10 animations and you have to time a button press or maybe mash at certain points to earn statues. You only earn the statue if you get an Excellent rating on all the QTEs which is far more annoying than you think because you're lining up Balan's butthole with a moving silhouette which can be visually confusing and there's variable timing between bouts so it's incredibly easy to fuck up. But hey, you can easily retry them right? FUCK. NO. To retry a Balan's Fuckhead Bout, you have to exit the level, complete the final boss of the area, re-enter the area AND THEN make your way back to the hat to try again. It's incredibly blatant padding especially when the back half of the game has multiple hats per area AND they have more animations between them, going from 4 QTEs early to 6 QTEs in later levels. It's complete horseshit and a complete waste of fucking time and life.
Balan's ultimate problem is that with it's one button gameplay you'd think it'd be on some rated EC for early childhood bullshit where it's just kind of easy and breezy and it ends and if you want to put in the extra smidge of effort you can get the platinum with little issue. This is not the case for Balan goes out of its to be an annoying piece of shit at every fucking turn to the player and the game's detriment. Unless Yuji Naka was gonna solve all the annoying bullshit with the time he wasn't on the project (and remember, he lost his job because he pissed everyone off, by his own admission) this game was always gonna be fucked, and no amount of Evil Dolphins could save it.