Best skills in Donkey Kong Bananza
Which skills should you unlock first in Bananza?
Knowing the best Donkey Kong Bananza skills is a must if you want to both smash and survive everything in DK's new adventure!
Every five Banandium Gems you collect equals one Skill Point. You'll want to spend these wisely too since you need to balance upgrading skills with unlocking new ones. Luckily, we've got a Lagoon Layer Banandium Gems locations guide for Donkey Kong Bananza to help you get started.
With that in mind, let's take a look at the best skills in Donkey Kong Bananza!
Best skills in Donkey Kong Bananza
Below you'll find the best skills in Donkey Kong Bananza, which recommend targeting first when upgrading your skills:
Health and Apple Juice
These two upgrades are easy to ignore early on, because DK Bananza's difficulty curve is quite gentle for the first two thirds or so of the game. As you get to later challenges and harder bosses, however, you'll probably need a little more protection to get through them.
There's seven levels of the health upgrade, each more progressively expensive and each offering an additional heart. The Apple Juice upgrade is more useful still - each of its four levels lets you carry one more carton of Apple Juice, which restores your health in full whenever you take a hit that would otherwise be lethal. Save these for later, but be ready to spend on them eventually.
Punch Power
The four levels of Punch Power upgrade aren't exactly a must-have, but if you're impatient they become so. These upgrades essentially make it faster for base DK (without transformation) to smash through various types of terrain. For harder terrain on later layers, this can be a huge time saver.
Better Collecting and Better Sonar
Keep an eye on those Joy-Con 2 R buttons, because you'll be absolutely spamming that right shoulder button throughout playing. The Hand Slap DK does have a few useful aspects to it - any loose nearby items are collected when the shockwave it causes hits it, and the shockwave also acts as sonar, highlighting collectibles underground and behind walls.
If you buy all levels of these upgrades you'll double the radius at which items can be collected and hugely increase the range of the sonar utility. More collectibles means you can buy more stuff in the underground's shops, which is helpful in other ways.
Jump Shot
While you won't use this all the time, for just a handful of skill points giving DK an effective double jump is well worth the cost. In order to do the double jump you'll need terrain held overhead - but this can be used to get a bit of extra height when climbing isn't an option. It's also compatible with some of DK's Bananza transformations.
Surf Surf
While Donkey Kong is great at smashing everything in his path, he's not so great at swimming. In fact, you'll find that his movement speed is greatly decreased whenever he's going for a quick dip. Thankfully, Surf Surf changes this by letting Kong run across water! You might not need to use it all the time, but it will come in handy whenever you simply want to quickly cross a body of water.
Better Turf Surfing
Staying on the theme of making the world easier for Donkey Kong to navigate, getting Better Turf Surfing makes it easier to surf that turf. (Would you believe it…) With this skill, Donkey Kong can surf on a chunk of terrain for longer. This, in turn, makes it easier to navigate obstacles like lava and thorns.
Bananagery
Bananagery increases the amount of time Bananzas will last! Due to the power of Bananaza itself, this is definitely something you want to invest those Skill Points in. Especially when you consider that Bananagery covers all of Donkey Kong's transformations! Thanks to this, Bananagery is a skill you'll want to fully max out.
Hope this helps you pick the right skills in Donkey Kong Bananaza!