I Beat Balan Wonderworld 100% and Read the Novel so you don't have to

Balan Wonderworld for the PS5, Nintendo Switch and whatever is a game that I just sank way too much time into. I've done it. I might enter the Wonderworld myself sometime soon.

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#Balan
#BalanWonderworld
#Review

[austineruption]

Big ups to my buddy Balrog for the amazing back and forth theorycrafting over the last month. It helped a lot. <3

Why this became my second longest video, i'm not sure. I don't even like it that much.
But for more stuff like this, peep my patreon considering supporting.

[DolusVulpes]

It's weird that the creator's keep saying that they wanted to convey the story without words and yet also wrote a novel made entirely of words for the sole purpose of conveying the story. Its almost like the game wasn't intended to be wordless.

[Ikcatcher]

Like a true 90’s game, all of the important lore is stuck to a novelisation no one has heard of

[yalikejazz]

At this point, the game is an accessory to the book.

[Grace-irer]

So what I'm getting is that Balan Wonderworld was supposed to be an Infinity Train-esque story about moving on from trauma...and we got _Box Fox_ instead???

[shawnheatherly]

It's really sad when even the most positive video I've seen on Balan Wonderworld still says it's not worth buying.

[wilmayes]

Wow, I knew this game had some wasted potential, BUT holy crap this game WASTED any chance it had to really become something. The fact Austin had to dig this deep to find all this is WILD.

[rept]

This was definitely the most in-depth video I've seen about this game. Shame it went from a "What a weird game" to a "We're actually missing out on cool ideas?!" game now.

[mothmansboyfriend]

I cannot wrap my head around why they didn’t include the lore in the game. I feel like a lot more people would give it the time of day if anything in the gameplay itself made a lick of sense.

[Scrofar]

feels like I just learned the tragic backstory of the kid I bullied in 5th grade and now I feel bad

[idkjordash]

It’s alarming that my first reaction to the novel wasn’t “There’s a novel?” but instead was “Why is there a novel”

[shinji]

I honestly am baffled at how so much of the story is...supplementary material. That's basically required to understand it.

[eternalsong]

if this game had come out ten years ago, Balan and Lance would absolutely be crushing it as Tumblr Sexymen

[Solavation]

Everybody gangsta till Balan gets in smash and his ultimate is the balan bout

[ArcaneEther]

That "Balan" + "Lance" = "Balance" bit really is a "Why isn't that IN the game?!".

[BrazillianCara]

And I thought this whole thing wouldn't get more tragic. This project deserved better, especially the full plot.

[citruslllad]

someone on another video pointed out that a really sick twist ending would've been that after you defeat lance, the wonderworld doesn't go back to being all good and stuff despite seemingly everything being fixed, only to reveal that the last person you need to save is _balan_ . adding my own personal touch to this, maybe the balan bouts are you playing as balan while he fights lance as you're saving everyone else, keeping lance at bay so that he doesn't try to stop you himself. maybe if you combined these two ideas, it'd have balan's whole thing being that he feels responsible for all these people, fighting for them for so long, and feeling like he's let them down, and so he becomes the _true_ final boss of the game, with lance realizing what he's done wrong and helping the player in balan's place

[_Snowflame]

"We'd like everyone to share the same story, so we won't be using any dialog.

But anyway, buy my book."

[Ketirz]

It's a shame Yuji Naka thinks he'd be mad at making RPGs, because based on the art direction and the story details laid out in the book Balan probably would've made for a pretty distinct and rad one.

[iwannaseehowlongyoucanmakethis]

Nothing is ever more frustrating than the knowledge of wasted potential. When you see what something could have been and then saw what it ended up being.