Summary
- Challenge levels in Donkey Kong Bananza are like Zelda shrines, involving fights and platforming.
- Destruction is a highlight, with levels like City Smash requiring players to destroy buildings.
- The game features tough levels like Bramble Country and a post-game challenge, Bunch of Boss Battles.
Donkey Kong Bananza is built on a system of Sublayers, with each one featuring a few levels each. Overall, these Sublayers feel like mini open-world adventures, from tropical beaches to freezing plains. The coolest part is being able to destroy these areas like many other open-world games, and by doing so, players can find treasures and hidden nodes leading to Challenge levels.
7 Beginner Tips For Donkey Kong Bananza
Start your time in Donkey Kong Bananza’s underground world the right way with these helpful pointers for the early game.
Challenges are reminiscent of the Shrines in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Donkey Kong Bananza’s Challenges aren’t all physics-based, as many of them involve combat as well as puzzle-solving. For players looking to literally challenge themselves, these are the hardest Challenge levels in Donkey Kong Bananza. They will be ranked based on their overall difficulty.
8 Freestyle Bananzas: City Smash
Smash Something!
- Location: Feast Layer
The best gameplay feature of Donkey Kong Bananza is being able to smash through nearly anything like the best destruction-based games out there, and with that in mind, several Challenge stages are just about destroying buildings. Freestyle Bananzas: City Smash, located in the Feast Layer, is the best example of this.
This Challenge level gives players a time limit to destroy an entire building. They will have to swap through Bananza Powers to get this job done, and even the slightest snag during the run will ruin it. Freestyle Bananzas: City Smash is not the hardest Challenge level in the game, but mastering it is tricky.
7 Surfing In Shadow
Hang Ten DK
- Location: Radiance Layer
One of the coolest gameplay features in Donkey Kong Bananza allows DK to rip up terrain and use it as a surfboard. There are a few Challenges that put the skills of players to the test when it comes to this ability, including Surfing in Shadow.
In the Radiance Layer, certain enemies can only be defeated in light or shadow, and when exposed to their weak element, they will turn into a fine piece of sand-like terrain. In this Challenge, players have to break off a chunk of this weak material and stay in the shadows, or else their makeshift surfboard will crumble, exposing DK to brambles.
6 Quick-Service Ice Treats
Order Up!
- Location: Landfill Layer
Playing with physics can be fun in a game, and Donkey Kong Bananza is no different with its destructible open-world areas. However, there are a few shaved ice-related Challenges wherein physics threaten a good time.
The problem with Quick-Service Ice Treats, found inside the Landfill Layer, is that players are on a time limit and have to guide shaved ice pellets to a designated spot deep underground. There’s no good way to understand where to go, forcing players to go through too many rounds of trial and error before they succeed.
5 Ostrich Bananza: Free Climbing
Set Up To Fail
- Location: Forbidden Layer
There are quite a few Challenges in Donkey Kong Bananza that force players into using a certain Bananza Power. Ostrich Bananza: Free Climbing turns players into their ostrich-like form, for example, but it’s not helpful.
The Snake Bananza would have been a better choice here, as this is a vertical climbing Challenge, and the Ostrich Bananza’s specialty is all about flying horizontally. That seems to be the point of the Challenge, as it forces players into a form that is hard to win with.
4 Bunch Of Boss Battles
A Redo On Some Of The Game’s Toughest Bosses
- Location: Ingot Isle Cave-In (Post-Game)
In the post-game, players will unlock quite a few things in each world. The biggest Sublayer upgrade will happen in the Ingot Isle Cave-In, with Banandium Gems aplenty and Grumpy Kong willing to help the player with new building projects. Donkey Kong Bananza players can pay him in Gold to unlock two tough Challenge courses: Bunch of Battles and Bunch of Boss Battles.
Bunch of Boss Battles, by comparison, is a cakewalk, but it is still challenging, as players have to face five of the game’s toughest bosses. There will be breaks in-between rounds with checkpoints and no time limit, so it could be worse.
3 Bramble Country
A Callback To A Brutal Classic
- Location: Forest Layer
There are four stages in the game that call back to classic levels in the Donkey Kong Country games, which range from cool to brutal. Bramble Country is without a doubt the hardest nostalgia-based level in Donkey Kong Bananza.
Donkey Kong Bananza: Every Kong In The Game, Ranked
From new characters to old ones, these Kongs help brighten up the Switch 2’s library in Donkey Kong Bananza.
Located in the Forest Layer, players will have to blast through bramble patches in barrels, and timing the jumps is not easy. It isn’t as hard as what inspired it from Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest, but fans will assuredly die more than a few times if they try to get every Banandium Gem.
2 Crossing Through Crosshairs
Mission Impossible
- Location: The Junction
Crossing Through Crosshairs is a true test of patience as players are stuck at the mercy of the game’s AI. They need to ride a slow-moving horizontal elevator and avoid a barrage of laser cannons. If they destroy the elevator, players have to start back at the last ground they touched.
There’s no good way of avoiding the lasers or destroying them, and the elevator's surface area is minuscule, which is the real threat. This level is located in The Junction, which doesn’t have that many Challenges or extras overall for a Sublayer within Donkey Kong Bananza.
1 Bunch Of Battles
Good. Luck.
- Location: Ingot Isle Cave-In (Post-Game)
Bunch of Battles is a ruthless enemy-based challenge wherein players have to fight a series of enemies in a row and on a time limit. It’s wild that this unlocks before Bunch of Boss Battles, despite being the harder of the two challenges.
The enemies are no problem, but the time limit is brutal on top of having to start all over if players mess up even once. If players want to have an immaculate record in the game to prove how good they are, then that’s one thing, but there are simply better ways than this to get Banandium Gems to level up and get Skill Points in Donkey Kong Bananza.
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OpenCritic Reviews
- Top Critic Avg: 91 /100 Critics Rec: 99%
- Released
- July 17, 2025
- ESRB
- Everyone 10+ / Fantasy Violence, In-Game Purchases
- Developer(s)
- Nintendo EPD
- Publisher(s)
- Nintendo
WHERE TO PLAY
