The road to Balan Wonderworld's release has been a rocky one, to say the least. The involvement of Sonic the Hedgehog creator Yuji Naka piqued the interest of fans, but the recent critically panned demo release has slowed the hype train to a crawl. With the title releasing just next week, the Square Enix Presents livestream has given players one last look to potentially win back some fans.
The trailer gives an extended look at the game's co-op mode, showing the male and female player characters platforming through the dreamlike locales of Balan Wonderworld. Co-op play had already been confirmed several months ago, but this trailer gave it a bit more focus than before.
Additionally, some new costumes are shown for the characters, including a butterfly suit, roller-skating suit, a chess piece suit, and several more odd-looking power-ups. The butterfly suit allows the player to glide, the roller-skating suit obviously allows one to skate, and the chess piece suit seemingly sends out projectiles in multiple directions. While nothing shown was exactly new or mind-blowing, those that are still looking forward to the game do have some new footage to enjoy.
The Square Enix Presents event revealed many huge titles from Square Enix's western divisions, including the first look at the next Life is Strange game, among others. This new Balan Wonderworld trailer was one of the few looks at one of Square's Japanese titles, but unfortunately, it didn't do much to impress.
After the extremely half-baked demo released several months ago, the demo did nothing to sway opinion in a more positive direction. Square Enix has promised a day one patch to address many of the criticisms from the demo, but it is unlikely that the fundamental flaws in its level design or art direction will be fixed. There is hopefully some fun to be had in Balan, but it has a lot to prove after its poorly-handled pre-release coverage.
Balan Wonderworld is releasing on March 26th for Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.