Welcome to Balan. Where you had to buy a separate book to read what the heck is going on and even when that made sense: any moment in the game was weird.
@@SkyFIoatOfTheFloatingSkiesyeah I think they might have fired the test players before they started developing this. No gametester should ever let something like this through. Who played this in development and thought this is fun to play.
Fun fact: according to the official novel (which is canon, and contains the rest of the story), the princess that the clown boy fell in love with is actually the girl whose cat died, at a later point in time. Balan’s Theater exists outside of Real Time, which is how the clown boy and his crush’s past self were able to exist in the theater at the same time.
I really like the concept and idea of Balan Wonderworld (especially because it could have been the spiritual successor to "NiGHTS into Dreams" that we have been waiting for)... but they somehow managed to make the worst possible decisions at every point when it came to actually making the game.
At least in the NiGHTS games, you can actually play as NiGHTS thanks to Dualization. Here, you only "play" as Balan in Balan's Bouts! What a cocktease...
It was Naka that caused this game's problems. Everything bad about this game is clearly from Naka, given his "one button does everything" fetish was also present in Sonic Adventure. The man is allergic to letting the player control what they do.
@peair2000 actually they officially let him go 6 months before the game came out, because the staff and everyone involved follow the complaint against him with Square Enix. He was terribly incompetent and a horrible director who treated people like trash. And 6 months was not enough time to fix whatever mess he was doing. Which is why when he later release the statement and blaming for the state of the game, multiple years of development and only 6 months left, after they already extended it, yeah I know that's not a square thing that's a you thing. Some of the staff later came out and stated that they even showed that they were trying to warn him that basically the game was unplayable, but he just said oh let's put more costumes in it with more powers.
Ah yes, discount Nights: Into Dreams. Fun fact by the way, the game's director (as well as lead programer of the original Sonic the Hedgehog) Yuji Naka was recently arrested for insider trading... TWICE.
It was a Spiritual Successor to Nights or was gonna be, that's the same thing with Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, they take a few ideas from a certain game and do something new with it, Balan for one is not made exactly like Nights, he can hover yes and has some hints of a Nights character (including Lance as well) but that's the only similarities. Edit:Okay and a Bringer of Positivity but not for the reason Nights is.
"What's the selling point?" It was produced by the Final Fantasy company and made by the same guy that created Sonic the Hedgehog. The name was supposed to sell it.
please watch "I Beat Balan Wonderworld 100% and Read the Novel so you don't have to" by Austin eruption. it really goes into why the game was so hard to understand and why it was one of the biggest missed opportunities in gaming.
With regards to the question of "Why [could it have been worse with the dolphin]?", basically dolphins have previously been known to make advances on humans, and the dolphins version of courtship usually revolves around beating and abducting their "intended", then depriving them of food or sleep until they capitulate. I bet you wish you didn't know that.
Yes, it makes it worse when you consider the fact that unlike most other semi-intelligent animals, Dolphins act with a willful intent. They're not just sentient, they are Sapient to an extent.
These comments make me remember Dolphins have some of the highest intelligence of any animal… kinda like humans. And dolphins act like assholes too… Huh
They sold a book separately and you have to read it to know what’s happening. It’s actually pretty good and a massive improvement over the actual game in just about every way.
But that's the problem. I've heard so many people defend this game because of the book but if it's so good: why wasn't it just in the game? All the weaving narratives and interesting dream world build is no where in this game and confused so many people. Hell! I didn't even know there was a book till i heard there was one. It would be like if Kingdom Hearts had the main game just having you fight in Disney Worlds and fighting Origination 13 but every story beat was in a separate book! That would be dumb!
@@crcoghill Oh no. I am not defending the game. I am just saying the book is better. You did remind me to add the Kingdom Hearts books into my Christmas list though.
So fun fact, the song and dance number they do has 2 version one with the scrambled language and one in English, triggering the true song is kinda hard cuz of rng with enemys spawning and its rare to see it happen
This game had an obscene budget. Square Enix put a ton of money into this game because they genuinely thought it would be something that could compete with Mario Odyssey when it came out. Then the game's director delivered this, lost his job, and then eventually ended up in prison (not specifically because of the game though it'd be kind of fitting). The same company that is responsible for Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts, and Nier Automata produced that and they were NOT happy to have a blemish next to all of those other series that people consider to be masterpieces. Especially after putting so much money into it. Also, the idea of the game and it's story aren't bad, contrary to what you seem to think. It's 100% just the way it's executed and the lack of effort put into it that ruined the game. There was a ton of hype behind this game until it finally launched.
Yeah the video as a whole is fucking hilarious but that part always bugged me. I’d get it if they did it for a bit, but I think they were genuinely unaware of what the game wanted to tell them. If it were told better it wouldn’t be a bad story. He starts off overly invested in his games and full of confidence, but that breaks down after he finally loses, but he learns to accept that his loss could bring that joy of winning to someone else.
This is honestly one of my biggest problems with the game, it has absolutely no clue how to do visual storytelling. I get not wanting dialogue, that's fine, but it means you need to have something to make clear what's going on. In this case there is practically nothing there to indicate that he lost to the kid, we barely see the board, we practically don't even see a single move that the kid makes (we briefly see the kid take his hand off a piece at the very edge of frame, but that's it). All they needed to do was have a single shot of the black king being knocked over and that would immediately tell anyone watching, regardless of their chess knowledge, who exactly had won the game. This kind of visual storytelling isn't always easy, but the game just doesn't even try.
The idea, is that Yuji Naka was working on an outdated concept. A game where the story doesn't matter and you can play the game with only one button. Like the 1st Sonic the Hedgehog. The problem is that this is not 1991.
NO WAY YOU DID THIS. This is honestly some of the funniest Alpha content out there Also the refrence of throwing the Tim off the cliff was a refrence to the Super Mario 64 penguin people also threw of a cliff
Going on a tangent, but wouldn't trees on top of buildings be a terrible idea? Not sure how it is in the US but here in the UK you can often see tree roots tearing up the pavement (sidewalk to the americans) because they'll just grow in whatever direction they can. I can't help but think if you tried to put them on a rooftop and don't know how to properly contain them the roots will just break the entire roof.
Balan Wonderworld is such an interesting game; it does a lot of things I really like both in general and just oddly specific to me. It also has huge amounts of problems and some just plain baffling design decisions. Also the demo on Switch felt simply unplayable. I got the PC version after that and it was fine, I'm not sure if it was the switch version as a whole or just a buggy demo, but it was seriously bad. Wow, I did not expect the Tims sound to be so nostalgic, it's sad that things turned out the way they did and the series definitely won't be getting a more solid sequel (especially with Yuji Naka's... current situation). As I didn't quite realize how much it stuck with me until watching this. Though I do listen to "Together" (the dance song with the diver) a lot. Also I've only read up to the start of the game's events in the book (might have to FINALLY get around to finishing it tonight) but Lance is definitely better handled there and it's really dumb that they basically did nothing with him in the game. The basic TLDR of the plot, as I remember, is basically that Balan's theater is a place of healing where people that have been cut off from others for one reason or another can have the time to heal and form new connections and such. (It's mentioned that everyone has been there at least once, but you only remember it while inside the building. I just found that a cute little detail, the fact that we all know Balan personally, we just don't remember.) But Lance basically took over and instead pushed the residents to go the other direction and cut themselves off more and more, until they eventually became trapped in their own little worlds, with the boss fights being their defense mechanisms to keep from engaging with the outside world. Oh, and since you asked "Why does it sound french", all the songs are in an imaginary language dubbed "Balanese". Basically since the theater exists in the collective unconscious of humanity, it has it's own language that everyone on Earth instinctively understands, at least while inside the theater, so guests from all over the world can interact without any language issues. Oh yeah, I forgot. There was a day one patch because the final boss had a glitchy attack that could cause actual seizures. So yeah, for anyone that does plan to play it, be sure it's patched! There are 3-5 dances, I forget how many as "Together" is the only one that really stuck with me. There are also english and balanese versions of each, but I've only seen the latter. Honestly, the game's big problem is it's control scheme. Basically, as I heard the story, a big part of the pitch for the game was that they wanted basically single button gameplay, hence why every costume has one ability and MAYBE a jump, but often the jump and ability are combined. That was a very not good idea and made the costumes overly specialized and the controls way more annoying than they needed to be (like having to stand still to shoot instead of using a button). It would be super easy to fix, but they can't, because it was a core part of the concept they were going for... it just wasn't a good concept, at least not for this game. I really do think their insistence on keeping to that idea was a huge part of why it ended up going so badly. Cutting 90% of the story out of the actual game was certainly a choice as well... Oh hey, I forgot that they played a bit of Together during the ending, yeah, the devs realized it was the best one.
42:25 oh Dunkey is a youtube who likes to antagonise people and uses selective editing to make games look terrible for clicks, he hates JRPGs but keeps playing them for youtube cause they get views, like I remember he's one of the people who poisoned the discourse on Xenoblade 2 because it dared to have a few comedy moments, and posted major endgame spoilers for Xenoblade 3 in his thumbnails and on twitter, his fans also tried review bombing Sonic Frontiers on Metacritic cause he didn't like the game, and he blamed Sonic fans for the negative reviews saying they posted them to make him look bad.
I remember him claiming that Final Fantasy 7 was a silly game with serious moments. Uh...has he SEEN the majority of that game, or did he assume the main tone from the character graphics alone? A better example of a silly game with serious moments would be Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga.
You know what's really funny about this game: most of the talking with voice overs, including the song when you dance with the other people, is literally just gibberish. It's not Japanese or some known language. It's just made up for this game But (and i could be wrong and someone might correct me) but if you beat the game and get all the statues in all the levels and beat that levels boss: the song is now in English. WHY THOUGH!?
And trust me: it's not easy! The Balan Bout mini game is hard. You have to get all Excellent every time. You get even one Great and you don't get the statue. And the more levels you do, the longer the bouts go.
Well, apparently, that is a game about you helping kids and adults to deal with a trauma of sorts. Altho this game makes you have your own trauma for playing it at all lmao-
- Honestly, I feel like Balan should've been playable the whole time, since it's HIS job to heal all these people's inner demons. But I guess since this was a spiritual successor to NiGHTS, they had to put a boy and a girl in the protagonist role...and do Balan's job for him. Scummy. - Like I said, Balan Theater's role is healing people who got emotional scars - traumas, fears, that kinda stuff. But you don't get to see what these woes are until you reach the third part of each stage. And unfortunately, at least half of each cutscene is completely metaphorical, so it's hard to tell what's real and what's not. But...hey, be thankful we get any sort of explanation at all, even if it is spotty! Apparently, Yuji Naka's original plan was to not have any cutscenes at all. But I guess I'll have to clarify a little more. (Diver: She overcomes the trauma from the dolphin's accidental tackle, and makes amends with it.) (Bug girl: She decides to share her interest, and the other kids are amazed to see a butterfly emerge from its cocoon.) (Machine maker: He's trying to find a way to convert his bicycle into a flying machine.) (Little girl: She gets the courage to go back and find her cat - and sure enough, the cat is still okay.) (Chess player: He decides to pass on his chess knowledge to kids.) (Hoodie woman: She was afraid to marry after her parents suddenly died in a car accident, but our protags give her the courage to continue.) (Firefighter: He thought he was ready to be a hero, but his first building fire left him terrified. Our protags give him the courage to save the day.) - Oh yeah, did you know that Balan is Lance's successor? You'd only know that for sure if you read the novel version. - ...And now Yuji keeps leaking details on upcoming Square-Enix games and getting arrested for it. It's, uh...not a great way to go.
37:18 the songs and the dialogue are actually in a made up language. And yes, the actors had to actually learn this made up language to get the dialogue that no one could understand correctly. This game is a fucking fever dream
4:55 I assume Super Mario 64 where you can throw a baby penguin off a cliff 7:22 I enjoy your mind 10:53 I know what that laugh means 13:29 It was just a prank, Han What a strange fever dream
Ah yes, my favourite game: Jump Simulator, featuring the big bro of that guy from.Mario Party 8 I also wanna see how many "Loses once" jokes people make
It _is_ a story-based game, but most of the story isn’t in the game itself. It’s all in the novel. I know this because I watched a different review video from someone who had both 100%ed the game and read the entire book. Apparently, there’s stuff in the third act that makes the game better.
Funny thing is, the story is actually pretty decent from what I remember of the novel, it's just a shame the game doesn't actually communicate it, not in a meaningful way, atleast Also, obligatory asking for you to watch Jelloapocalypse's Pokemon Colloseum and Miles is on Fire/Miles is a Robot series
So for the chess one, what I gathered is when he got back he played against his love interest (as alpahrad put it) and as he was winning, he saw his past self before he lost. So he purposely loses, so the kid doesn’t become like he did.
I would suggest to watch on your own time "What Happen? Balan Wonderworld." Video by Matt McMuscles, seriously the TH-camr's name. But it goes into some behind the scenes and some info on the game's development.
13:23 i can guarantee that most disney movies are not this awfull, a lot of them don't even have dancing on them. 14:48 it says on steam that is for ages above 7 years old, i feel like a seven years olf is already too old for this game. 40:05 It's a decent idea extremly bad executed.
I tried the demo on switch when it first came out, found it difficult but intriguing. Flawed gameplay, but fun, and the demo was very limited and random on what it showed. I thought I'd enjoy it well enough when the game came out, looked forward to it, but it came out on a week I didn't have spare money. Boy did I ever bless THAT when the reviews came in. Seeing this video made me even gladder. Sad, really. It had a lot of potential.
Duck, I think in some instances it's better to stop the video and talk, because it's better than talking over the video and missing some important parts.
This game was a hot mess, especially after the demo came out to show loads of issues. The stages were, in fact, made by AI algorithms. The controls are exactly as stated sometimes. The face buttons and triggers are jump OR costume action. Meaning that some of the costumes don't have the ability to jump. So, if you lose a costume from taking damage and switch to one that doesn't jump...good luck. My guess is that loads of ideas were thrown around and used, but not entirely thought through.
20:38 there’s a thing in the background that looks like a guy from Among Us Side note Alpha’s Among Us videos are fucking amazing, even if the game is at least half dead now
I actually really liked this game when I played it. It does get kinda annoying that you can only jump without a costume. But still I enjoyed myself. Aircat was my favourite costume, It was kinda broken with the things it lets you do. The whole game is basically a musical about getting over grief or showing that your not the only one who has problems. Mainly about teaching compassion. I will admit I didn't finish the last world because of life stuff but I kinda want to go back and finish it. Which means I had to skip the ending of the Alphrad part of this video but when I beat the game I'll come back and watch the video again. I think I like this game cause I like musicals. The whole this is very theatre like. Fun Fact: When you use Aircat In the cat level. You can jump off the edge of the map, float behind a building and see a theatre style dressing room with the main girl who lost her cat dressed as aircat when she sees you she disappears leaving behind the Aircat costume, when you touch it it becomes one of your wearble costumes. When I saw this I realised that this whole game was like a play. I'm pretty sure both the amusement park princess and Cat girl are the same person.
Finally a comment that is actually positive, I dove into the comments in hopes that somebody would have something nicer to say other than "The concept was good"
@@arthurwatson2555 Yeah I was surprised by the amount of negative comments. I really enjoyed it. I actually pre-ordered the game and got a plushy Tim. I'll admit I was calling it Balan Wonderland for awhile. I guess the term "Wonderland" must be copyrighted or they just really liked the word "Wonderworld".
To explain Balan Wonderworld: Imagine a bad concept for a game, then extend it way further than it should ever get, and have it written by a writing team that seem entirely dependent on psychedelics and don't tell them it's a game for children until the last week.
The actual concept is fine, its just another twist on the NiGHTS series which is great, they just somehow managed to fail at every single step during the execution..
@@Mrkarton Honestly I'm not sure how good the concept of "Let's make a platformer with minimal controls" really is. Seems to me like the game could have been more interesting if there were fewer suits but more depth to each one.
Also, Yuji Naka originally didn't plan to have ANY cutscenes in this game. So if you thought everything was hard to understand in the final release, imagine how much more lost we'd have been if Naka had his way here!
This game is trying to be Psychonauts mashed with Odyssey, I get it. Gah, there is a lot of potential that got wasted here. They were aiming for accessible for anyone, and overshot into oversimplified. I wish I could reforge this game myself. Make the actually cool character the playable one, tone down the outfits, make them mobility upgrades, make the gameplay about being a zippy showy acrobatic entertainer, weave the story in more places besides before and after the boss, and scrap the 'no words' idea.
And they said that other games such as Battlefield 2042, Paper Mario: Sticker Star (and Color Splash), Dissidia NT, Sonic '06, Pokemon Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl, The Last of Us: Part 2, and Mario Golf: Super Rush were awful.
Wise of you to stop with the ambitious video upload goal. I’m surprised you didn’t burn out sooner. As for the game, it seems to have a decent concept with the powers but failed on every level … including the leveled. Hopefully you and Kirby will watch Dragonball. Remember when Mr. Perfect Cell talked about Gokus past? The parts that you heard actually happened.
@@theduckgoesmoo well you did say that you’re done after doing 100 videos in a month right? That’s what I was referring to. If you do another to many videos in to little a timeframe than I’d be surprised. But 100 videos in a month? Sounds very stressful to keep up with once let alone multiple times.
what i don't understand is why you didn't continue the amiibo series? There is a whole playlist of it and you started to watch from the ending then just didn't do any other ones. unless you are planning to watch more then nvm.
I get the story directions they wanted to go and that can work. But the execution failed miserably. There are games that deal with trauma, loss and anxiety but this isn't one of them. First of just 2 cut scenes are not enough to get me to actually care about them. Then we disparity in the individual stories was just jarring. We go from losing your parents to losing a chess game to being sad about birds. Then the levels being connected to the story of the character is only in aestethic and very basic. The bosses don't even really relate at all.
Kyle, that's not English. That's a fictional language completely made up and untranslatable. Something that used to be very common in games from the ps1 era and only works if everything is subtitled, which Wonderworld almost never does.
Welcome to Balan.
Where you had to buy a separate book to read what the heck is going on and even when that made sense: any moment in the game was weird.
Fun fact: sometimes you just cant jump because the costume powers override every. Single. Button.
10/10 game mechanics
Totally not very fucking annoying
@@SkyFIoatOfTheFloatingSkiesyeah I think they might have fired the test players before they started developing this. No gametester should ever let something like this through. Who played this in development and thought this is fun to play.
So true
@@LukasJampen
How can you fire test players, did they not agree with the game and got thrown into the lake of fire?
Oh God, I just realised something.
Evil Balan is called Lance, right.
Balan Lance
Balance.
I hate that even more
I can't figure out if I hate this or love this as someone who appreciates puns
Who was the 50k giga genius behind that naming scheme
@@yaminokaiju7864 Yuji Naka
One of the final trophies after the two get fused is called 'Balance Restored'. so...
Fun fact: according to the official novel (which is canon, and contains the rest of the story), the princess that the clown boy fell in love with is actually the girl whose cat died, at a later point in time. Balan’s Theater exists outside of Real Time, which is how the clown boy and his crush’s past self were able to exist in the theater at the same time.
I really like the concept and idea of Balan Wonderworld (especially because it could have been the spiritual successor to "NiGHTS into Dreams" that we have been waiting for)... but they somehow managed to make the worst possible decisions at every point when it came to actually making the game.
I mean it looked good at least
@@theduckgoesmoo Yeah, sadly just a lot of wasted potential unfortunately.
At least in the NiGHTS games, you can actually play as NiGHTS thanks to Dualization. Here, you only "play" as Balan in Balan's Bouts! What a cocktease...
"Fuck it up farmer ted."
"NononONONONO-(wheeze)"
God I love Penny, she’s so funny
Yeah, Square Enix (the makers of Final Fantasy) had no clue what they’re doing with Balan Wonderworld.
The book they released was pretty good though.
It was Naka that caused this game's problems. Everything bad about this game is clearly from Naka, given his "one button does everything" fetish was also present in Sonic Adventure. The man is allergic to letting the player control what they do.
@peair2000 actually they officially let him go 6 months before the game came out, because the staff and everyone involved follow the complaint against him with Square Enix. He was terribly incompetent and a horrible director who treated people like trash. And 6 months was not enough time to fix whatever mess he was doing. Which is why when he later release the statement and blaming for the state of the game, multiple years of development and only 6 months left, after they already extended it, yeah I know that's not a square thing that's a you thing. Some of the staff later came out and stated that they even showed that they were trying to warn him that basically the game was unplayable, but he just said oh let's put more costumes in it with more powers.
Ah yes, discount Nights: Into Dreams. Fun fact by the way, the game's director (as well as lead programer of the original Sonic the Hedgehog) Yuji Naka was recently arrested for insider trading... TWICE.
It was a Spiritual Successor to Nights or was gonna be, that's the same thing with Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, they take a few ideas from a certain game and do something new with it, Balan for one is not made exactly like Nights, he can hover yes and has some hints of a Nights character (including Lance as well) but that's the only similarities.
Edit:Okay and a Bringer of Positivity but not for the reason Nights is.
What was he trading?
@@theduckgoesmoo He was trading stocks using knowledge the public didn't know, making it illegal.
"What's the selling point?" It was produced by the Final Fantasy company and made by the same guy that created Sonic the Hedgehog. The name was supposed to sell it.
please watch "I Beat Balan Wonderworld 100% and Read the Novel so you don't have to" by Austin eruption. it really goes into why the game was so hard to understand and why it was one of the biggest missed opportunities in gaming.
With regards to the question of "Why [could it have been worse with the dolphin]?", basically dolphins have previously been known to make advances on humans, and the dolphins version of courtship usually revolves around beating and abducting their "intended", then depriving them of food or sleep until they capitulate.
I bet you wish you didn't know that.
They also like to torture baby sharks for fun.
@@thechatteringclown Yeah when it comes to sea life, they really don't fear gods or devils so they just do whatever.
Yes, it makes it worse when you consider the fact that unlike most other semi-intelligent animals, Dolphins act with a willful intent. They're not just sentient, they are Sapient to an extent.
These comments make me remember Dolphins have some of the highest intelligence of any animal… kinda like humans. And dolphins act like assholes too…
Huh
@@mr.stuffdoer8483 If it's any consolation, orcas are bigger assholes.
They sold a book separately and you have to read it to know what’s happening. It’s actually pretty good and a massive improvement over the actual game in just about every way.
But that's the problem. I've heard so many people defend this game because of the book but if it's so good: why wasn't it just in the game? All the weaving narratives and interesting dream world build is no where in this game and confused so many people. Hell! I didn't even know there was a book till i heard there was one.
It would be like if Kingdom Hearts had the main game just having you fight in Disney Worlds and fighting Origination 13 but every story beat was in a separate book! That would be dumb!
@@crcoghill Oh no. I am not defending the game. I am just saying the book is better. You did remind me to add the Kingdom Hearts books into my Christmas list though.
@@crcoghill But the books are better
So fun fact, the song and dance number they do has 2 version one with the scrambled language and one in English, triggering the true song is kinda hard cuz of rng with enemys spawning and its rare to see it happen
This game had an obscene budget. Square Enix put a ton of money into this game because they genuinely thought it would be something that could compete with Mario Odyssey when it came out. Then the game's director delivered this, lost his job, and then eventually ended up in prison (not specifically because of the game though it'd be kind of fitting).
The same company that is responsible for Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts, and Nier Automata produced that and they were NOT happy to have a blemish next to all of those other series that people consider to be masterpieces. Especially after putting so much money into it.
Also, the idea of the game and it's story aren't bad, contrary to what you seem to think. It's 100% just the way it's executed and the lack of effort put into it that ruined the game. There was a ton of hype behind this game until it finally launched.
To go further, apparently Yuji didn't intend to have any of the cutscenes in the game. So imagine how much more clueless we'd have been without those.
“4:59” it’s a reference to every person ever growing the baby penguin off the ledge in SM64
Common misconception, he actually loses chess to the kid on purpose to make him feel better.
Yeah the video as a whole is fucking hilarious but that part always bugged me. I’d get it if they did it for a bit, but I think they were genuinely unaware of what the game wanted to tell them.
If it were told better it wouldn’t be a bad story. He starts off overly invested in his games and full of confidence, but that breaks down after he finally loses, but he learns to accept that his loss could bring that joy of winning to someone else.
This is honestly one of my biggest problems with the game, it has absolutely no clue how to do visual storytelling. I get not wanting dialogue, that's fine, but it means you need to have something to make clear what's going on. In this case there is practically nothing there to indicate that he lost to the kid, we barely see the board, we practically don't even see a single move that the kid makes (we briefly see the kid take his hand off a piece at the very edge of frame, but that's it). All they needed to do was have a single shot of the black king being knocked over and that would immediately tell anyone watching, regardless of their chess knowledge, who exactly had won the game. This kind of visual storytelling isn't always easy, but the game just doesn't even try.
The idea, is that Yuji Naka was working on an outdated concept. A game where the story doesn't matter and you can play the game with only one button. Like the 1st Sonic the Hedgehog. The problem is that this is not 1991.
NO WAY YOU DID THIS. This is honestly some of the funniest Alpha content out there
Also the refrence of throwing the Tim off the cliff was a refrence to the Super Mario 64 penguin people also threw of a cliff
Going on a tangent, but wouldn't trees on top of buildings be a terrible idea? Not sure how it is in the US but here in the UK you can often see tree roots tearing up the pavement (sidewalk to the americans) because they'll just grow in whatever direction they can. I can't help but think if you tried to put them on a rooftop and don't know how to properly contain them the roots will just break the entire roof.
Balan Wonderworld is such an interesting game; it does a lot of things I really like both in general and just oddly specific to me. It also has huge amounts of problems and some just plain baffling design decisions. Also the demo on Switch felt simply unplayable. I got the PC version after that and it was fine, I'm not sure if it was the switch version as a whole or just a buggy demo, but it was seriously bad.
Wow, I did not expect the Tims sound to be so nostalgic, it's sad that things turned out the way they did and the series definitely won't be getting a more solid sequel (especially with Yuji Naka's... current situation). As I didn't quite realize how much it stuck with me until watching this. Though I do listen to "Together" (the dance song with the diver) a lot.
Also I've only read up to the start of the game's events in the book (might have to FINALLY get around to finishing it tonight) but Lance is definitely better handled there and it's really dumb that they basically did nothing with him in the game.
The basic TLDR of the plot, as I remember, is basically that Balan's theater is a place of healing where people that have been cut off from others for one reason or another can have the time to heal and form new connections and such. (It's mentioned that everyone has been there at least once, but you only remember it while inside the building. I just found that a cute little detail, the fact that we all know Balan personally, we just don't remember.) But Lance basically took over and instead pushed the residents to go the other direction and cut themselves off more and more, until they eventually became trapped in their own little worlds, with the boss fights being their defense mechanisms to keep from engaging with the outside world.
Oh, and since you asked "Why does it sound french", all the songs are in an imaginary language dubbed "Balanese". Basically since the theater exists in the collective unconscious of humanity, it has it's own language that everyone on Earth instinctively understands, at least while inside the theater, so guests from all over the world can interact without any language issues.
Oh yeah, I forgot. There was a day one patch because the final boss had a glitchy attack that could cause actual seizures. So yeah, for anyone that does plan to play it, be sure it's patched!
There are 3-5 dances, I forget how many as "Together" is the only one that really stuck with me. There are also english and balanese versions of each, but I've only seen the latter.
Honestly, the game's big problem is it's control scheme. Basically, as I heard the story, a big part of the pitch for the game was that they wanted basically single button gameplay, hence why every costume has one ability and MAYBE a jump, but often the jump and ability are combined. That was a very not good idea and made the costumes overly specialized and the controls way more annoying than they needed to be (like having to stand still to shoot instead of using a button). It would be super easy to fix, but they can't, because it was a core part of the concept they were going for... it just wasn't a good concept, at least not for this game. I really do think their insistence on keeping to that idea was a huge part of why it ended up going so badly. Cutting 90% of the story out of the actual game was certainly a choice as well...
Oh hey, I forgot that they played a bit of Together during the ending, yeah, the devs realized it was the best one.
42:25 oh Dunkey is a youtube who likes to antagonise people and uses selective editing to make games look terrible for clicks, he hates JRPGs but keeps playing them for youtube cause they get views, like I remember he's one of the people who poisoned the discourse on Xenoblade 2 because it dared to have a few comedy moments, and posted major endgame spoilers for Xenoblade 3 in his thumbnails and on twitter, his fans also tried review bombing Sonic Frontiers on Metacritic cause he didn't like the game, and he blamed Sonic fans for the negative reviews saying they posted them to make him look bad.
I remember him claiming that Final Fantasy 7 was a silly game with serious moments. Uh...has he SEEN the majority of that game, or did he assume the main tone from the character graphics alone?
A better example of a silly game with serious moments would be Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga.
You know what's really funny about this game: most of the talking with voice overs, including the song when you dance with the other people, is literally just gibberish. It's not Japanese or some known language. It's just made up for this game But (and i could be wrong and someone might correct me) but if you beat the game and get all the statues in all the levels and beat that levels boss: the song is now in English.
WHY THOUGH!?
And trust me: it's not easy! The Balan Bout mini game is hard. You have to get all Excellent every time. You get even one Great and you don't get the statue. And the more levels you do, the longer the bouts go.
Well, apparently, that is a game about you helping kids and adults to deal with a trauma of sorts.
Altho this game makes you have your own trauma for playing it at all lmao-
- Honestly, I feel like Balan should've been playable the whole time, since it's HIS job to heal all these people's inner demons. But I guess since this was a spiritual successor to NiGHTS, they had to put a boy and a girl in the protagonist role...and do Balan's job for him. Scummy.
- Like I said, Balan Theater's role is healing people who got emotional scars - traumas, fears, that kinda stuff. But you don't get to see what these woes are until you reach the third part of each stage. And unfortunately, at least half of each cutscene is completely metaphorical, so it's hard to tell what's real and what's not. But...hey, be thankful we get any sort of explanation at all, even if it is spotty! Apparently, Yuji Naka's original plan was to not have any cutscenes at all. But I guess I'll have to clarify a little more.
(Diver: She overcomes the trauma from the dolphin's accidental tackle, and makes amends with it.)
(Bug girl: She decides to share her interest, and the other kids are amazed to see a butterfly emerge from its cocoon.)
(Machine maker: He's trying to find a way to convert his bicycle into a flying machine.)
(Little girl: She gets the courage to go back and find her cat - and sure enough, the cat is still okay.)
(Chess player: He decides to pass on his chess knowledge to kids.)
(Hoodie woman: She was afraid to marry after her parents suddenly died in a car accident, but our protags give her the courage to continue.)
(Firefighter: He thought he was ready to be a hero, but his first building fire left him terrified. Our protags give him the courage to save the day.)
- Oh yeah, did you know that Balan is Lance's successor? You'd only know that for sure if you read the novel version.
- ...And now Yuji keeps leaking details on upcoming Square-Enix games and getting arrested for it. It's, uh...not a great way to go.
To clarify, the chess resolution was that the ex-champion is teaching kids how to play chess, passing off the game to the next generation.
It seems like that’s just obvious, but what they thought it was is funnier.
37:18 the songs and the dialogue are actually in a made up language. And yes, the actors had to actually learn this made up language to get the dialogue that no one could understand correctly.
This game is a fucking fever dream
4:55 I assume Super Mario 64 where you can throw a baby penguin off a cliff
7:22 I enjoy your mind
10:53 I know what that laugh means
13:29 It was just a prank, Han
What a strange fever dream
This game makes me sad over its lost potential.
Ah yes, my favourite game:
Jump Simulator, featuring the big bro of that guy from.Mario Party 8
I also wanna see how many "Loses once" jokes people make
MP8's host was named MC Ballyhoo, I really liked him.
@@PaulW_ftPAULK I loved that game but forgot his name, im a failure😪
@@legendofliamd No prob, I love that game so much, he was a great host.
Chapter 10 is a nightmare when it comes to us artists .
I'm trying to get back into drawing and it's A headache to do when you're burnt out of ideas .
It _is_ a story-based game, but most of the story isn’t in the game itself. It’s all in the novel. I know this because I watched a different review video from someone who had both 100%ed the game and read the entire book. Apparently, there’s stuff in the third act that makes the game better.
I was hyped and optimistic to a level I've never been, thinking it would actually turn out amazing and a 10/10 but....heh we knew how that turned out.
20:17 Among us, that’s what’s happening. Your welcome.
The answer to "Who is this game made for" is, I'm pretty sure, "no."
As yes that demographic
Funny thing is, the story is actually pretty decent from what I remember of the novel, it's just a shame the game doesn't actually communicate it, not in a meaningful way, atleast
Also, obligatory asking for you to watch Jelloapocalypse's Pokemon Colloseum and Miles is on Fire/Miles is a Robot series
YES
So for the chess one, what I gathered is when he got back he played against his love interest (as alpahrad put it) and as he was winning, he saw his past self before he lost. So he purposely loses, so the kid doesn’t become like he did.
I played the demo because of the hype. Now that I've seen the full game being played, i ask myself....why?
This is like Nights into Dreams if the enemies weren't a literal nightmare and if there wasn't a really funny scene of a girl screaming for her life
This was the last game I was hyped about in high school, I have never been hyped for anything since
Wait it's wonderworld? i guess my brain just autocorrected it to wonderland lol
It’s so much better!!
32:21 Oddly enough, one of the new maps actually has a working ladder. No joke
SHOW ME
@@theduckgoesmoo th-cam.com/video/UWeDJ3fjgAs/w-d-xo.html&ab_channel=rotatcepSSpectator
I would suggest to watch on your own time "What Happen? Balan Wonderworld." Video by Matt McMuscles, seriously the TH-camr's name. But it goes into some behind the scenes and some info on the game's development.
It's like a crossover of a therapeutic, collouring Book and High School Musical 😨
The youtuber Austin Eruption 100% Balan Wolderworld, he also talked more about what the story actually is of this, game, he has gone through a lot
7:24 have you not seen an ear of corn before? I know that sounds judgmental, but it's a legitimate question.
Great reaction my guy!
You will love the nostalgia critic review of
Deadpool 2
This is literally just Psychonauts, but if Psychonauts is bad-
Kyle, there were no subtitles in the ending cutscene
13:23 i can guarantee that most disney movies are not this awfull, a lot of them don't even have dancing on them.
14:48 it says on steam that is for ages above 7 years old, i feel like a seven years olf is already too old for this game.
40:05 It's a decent idea extremly bad executed.
4:52 super Mario 64 when you drop the baby penguin off the cliff
I have this game .
I enjoyed playing it .
Really there's a book ?
Ok, what if you reacted to Alpharad’s ‘The weirdest mario game you’ve never played’ It’s pretty funny.
This game is a masterpiece
You should totally watch Dunkey’s video on this game! It was the first video of his I ever watched and it’s absolutely hilarious!
"This game cost 60 dollars."
I tried the demo on switch when it first came out, found it difficult but intriguing. Flawed gameplay, but fun, and the demo was very limited and random on what it showed. I thought I'd enjoy it well enough when the game came out, looked forward to it, but it came out on a week I didn't have spare money. Boy did I ever bless THAT when the reviews came in. Seeing this video made me even gladder.
Sad, really. It had a lot of potential.
Duck, I think in some instances it's better to stop the video and talk, because it's better than talking over the video and missing some important parts.
It’s my genuine reaction
@@theduckgoesmoo ok that makes sense, but sometimes you missed a part of the video and then question it later on which is really funny.
This game was a hot mess, especially after the demo came out to show loads of issues. The stages were, in fact, made by AI algorithms. The controls are exactly as stated sometimes. The face buttons and triggers are jump OR costume action. Meaning that some of the costumes don't have the ability to jump. So, if you lose a costume from taking damage and switch to one that doesn't jump...good luck. My guess is that loads of ideas were thrown around and used, but not entirely thought through.
20:38 there’s a thing in the background that looks like a guy from Among Us
Side note Alpha’s Among Us videos are fucking amazing, even if the game is at least half dead now
Here's the explanation:
Balan Wonderworld is the game of all time 🎩
Yep just a game
You should watch Rerezz of you like these "I played (blank) so you don't have to." videos.
I actually really liked this game when I played it. It does get kinda annoying that you can only jump without a costume. But still I enjoyed myself. Aircat was my favourite costume, It was kinda broken with the things it lets you do. The whole game is basically a musical about getting over grief or showing that your not the only one who has problems. Mainly about teaching compassion. I will admit I didn't finish the last world because of life stuff but I kinda want to go back and finish it. Which means I had to skip the ending of the Alphrad part of this video but when I beat the game I'll come back and watch the video again.
I think I like this game cause I like musicals. The whole this is very theatre like.
Fun Fact: When you use Aircat In the cat level. You can jump off the edge of the map, float behind a building and see a theatre style dressing room with the main girl who lost her cat dressed as aircat when she sees you she disappears leaving behind the Aircat costume, when you touch it it becomes one of your wearble costumes. When I saw this I realised that this whole game was like a play. I'm pretty sure both the amusement park princess and Cat girl are the same person.
Finally a comment that is actually positive, I dove into the comments in hopes that somebody would have something nicer to say other than "The concept was good"
@@arthurwatson2555 Yeah I was surprised by the amount of negative comments. I really enjoyed it. I actually pre-ordered the game and got a plushy Tim. I'll admit I was calling it Balan Wonderland for awhile. I guess the term "Wonderland" must be copyrighted or they just really liked the word "Wonderworld".
You should show Kirby the SLVR trailers by mark. They kill time and are super fun to watch!
I would like to suggest a video for you to react to.
Clock Tower 2 Expleened by Storymode. It is only 20 minutes long and random as all get out.
To explain Balan Wonderworld: Imagine a bad concept for a game, then extend it way further than it should ever get, and have it written by a writing team that seem entirely dependent on psychedelics and don't tell them it's a game for children until the last week.
It's not a bad concept, it's just a bad execution.
The actual concept is fine, its just another twist on the NiGHTS series which is great, they just somehow managed to fail at every single step during the execution..
@@Mrkarton Honestly I'm not sure how good the concept of "Let's make a platformer with minimal controls" really is. Seems to me like the game could have been more interesting if there were fewer suits but more depth to each one.
Also, Yuji Naka originally didn't plan to have ANY cutscenes in this game.
So if you thought everything was hard to understand in the final release, imagine how much more lost we'd have been if Naka had his way here!
20:30 amognus
Hay I get artist block sometimes it sucks .
I feel bad for the painter .
Please oh please react to all of Alpharad’s Among Us videos! Starting with “the game that turned my friends against me.”
we couldn't have gotten half life 3, that would require valve to learn how to count that high
This game is trying to be Psychonauts mashed with Odyssey, I get it. Gah, there is a lot of potential that got wasted here. They were aiming for accessible for anyone, and overshot into oversimplified.
I wish I could reforge this game myself. Make the actually cool character the playable one, tone down the outfits, make them mobility upgrades, make the gameplay about being a zippy showy acrobatic entertainer, weave the story in more places besides before and after the boss, and scrap the 'no words' idea.
And they said that other games such as Battlefield 2042, Paper Mario: Sticker Star (and Color Splash), Dissidia NT, Sonic '06, Pokemon Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl, The Last of Us: Part 2, and Mario Golf: Super Rush were awful.
Oh god I don’t want to watch this strange cringy Mario rip off again but I’m going to to support your channel
Why is no one acknowledging the fact that you said you’re an ordained minister
...Actually, funny you should call this an AI-generated game, because that's actually how the staff put its levels together!
Day 101 of asking if you can please react to "PROP HUNT IN REAL LIFE" by Couch Cast?
to me, the only redeemings quality this game has.
1:cutscenes are nice to look at
2:music this good has no business being on a game this braindead.
Wise of you to stop with the ambitious video upload goal. I’m surprised you didn’t burn out sooner.
As for the game, it seems to have a decent concept with the powers but failed on every level … including the leveled.
Hopefully you and Kirby will watch Dragonball. Remember when Mr. Perfect Cell talked about Gokus past? The parts that you heard actually happened.
Who said I’m stopping?? I’m recording extra videos right now haha
@@theduckgoesmoo well you did say that you’re done after doing 100 videos in a month right? That’s what I was referring to. If you do another to many videos in to little a timeframe than I’d be surprised. But 100 videos in a month? Sounds very stressful to keep up with once let alone multiple times.
@@channingpappe2876 oh no I’m only doing this for one month ever. I’m halfway there and I already know I can’t do this any other month
20:08 Among Us
Could you please react to beating Pokémon without taking damage
what i don't understand is why you didn't continue the amiibo series? There is a whole playlist of it and you started to watch from the ending then just didn't do any other ones. unless you are planning to watch more then nvm.
you shoud react to alice: Madness Returns story explan by superhorrorbro
I get the story directions they wanted to go and that can work. But the execution failed miserably. There are games that deal with trauma, loss and anxiety but this isn't one of them. First of just 2 cut scenes are not enough to get me to actually care about them. Then we disparity in the individual stories was just jarring. We go from losing your parents to losing a chess game to being sad about birds. Then the levels being connected to the story of the character is only in aestethic and very basic. The bosses don't even really relate at all.
Kyle, that's not English. That's a fictional language completely made up and untranslatable. Something that used to be very common in games from the ps1 era and only works if everything is subtitled, which Wonderworld almost never does.
Not going to lie, the game is bad, but the boss designs are definitely an aesthetic
You say dolphins are cute and that you love them I say dolphins are bullies and I hate them
This is a problem the only game ever that I'm happy it was a huge flog and was so bad.
Balan looks fantastic till he takes off the hat
The tailer was so cute but the game is just lame
insert comment here
Video 040/100
2:00 another person that doesn’t know what art mean smh.
Yeah.
Its not a good game.
Its even worse than a bad one.
If im not wrong there was a scam on it.
Maybe you should watch a video so you can understand why this game is so bad
Dunkey is hilarious. If you ever have a gap in your 32909032432 weekly releases, I highly recommend reacting to him.
I mean 90 percent of Disney movies are pretty great, aka the opposite of this game
Ah yes SEGA's worst game
2:00 another person that doesn’t know what art mean smh.