At times you might wonder just what kind of kompromat Yuji Naka has on the higher-ups at Square Enix. If Balan Wonderworld has truly been greenlit, cleared for release and launched at a triple-A price point on merit alone then, well, excuse us while we tart up our CV; we honestly think we might have a shot at CEO. This is a messy, bizarre thing; a game out of time, summoned across an arcane parallel-dimensional path from the cutting-room floor of some GameCubeera publisher that went bust, deservedly, in about 2005. It is a game of limited ambition that fails even to clear its own low bar, technically roughshod, tamely designed and weirdly off-balance throughout. It has no business being released on bleeding-edge console hardware in 2021. And yet? And yet. We don’t entirely hate it.

That is the faintest of praise, admittedly, and there is certainly plenty here to dislike. Dim the lights and squint and you can almost see the waterfall of decisions and disasters that have led Balan Wonderworld to this point. It begins, seemingly, by seeking to replicate the freewheeling creative spirit of Super Mario Odyssey (with 80 equippable costumes taking the place of transformations) and to adopt an aesthetic just redolent enough of Naka’s classic Nights Into Dreams to win nostalgist hearts without summoning any lawyers.