I was having a lovely time with Donkey Kong Bananza, smashing everything in sight and chowing down on enough bananas to get a lethal dose of potassium, until I reached the Forest Layer – a dreaded poison swamp level. While Nintendo is no stranger to the allure of malignant muck, I found Donkey Kong Bananza's Forest Layer so aggravatingly toxic that I truly think I had a better time navigating the bowels of Blighttown and the rotted landscape of Caelid in Dark Souls and Elden Ring respectively.
At least I expect FromSoftware's games to be difficult. Donkey Kong Bananza's active encouragement of all-out destruction gets radically flipped on its head when you arrive at this sublayer. Punch downward too much or take an accidental dip and DK's health is shredded by the purple goop, hurting more than anything else that early in the game.
