Ball x Pit was one of last year’s most divisive games. On one hand, it combined some of my favorite puzzle games into a single delicious and highly addictive mix, while on the other, it brought some frustrations with it, its tendency to turn otherwise potentially good runs absolute failures at the drop of a hat being chief among them. So when the chance came to try out its newest DLC, titled Risen Ballbylon, aside from the pun-rrific name, a sense of apprehension took over nonetheless.
Truth be told, this new content is basically more Ball x Pit, unsurprisingly. If you loved what it had going for it, you’ll get loads and loads to enjoy here, pretty much. From new characters like the Conduit and Scandalmonger, whose powers are even more insane than the base cast, where even your cursor comes into play directly in the battlefield, to the sheer amount of new types of ball to juggle – my favorite being water, which combined with earthquake becomes an all-powerful tsunami – as well as bonus passives, buildings to raise in your base, such as the Floating Fortress and Armory, that add to your base damage, being busier with the game is a guarantee here.
Risen Ballbylon doesn’t really change Ball x Pit’s core gameplay loop in any way, only adding to it to make it even more complex when it comes to managing resources. The crystal, the new currency coming in, becomes a requirement for later game structures and can be farmed at a special title that is slower to grow and can only take one harvest before it’s gone, making it considerably rarer to come by, requiring you to make more runs in between upgrades. While I wasn’t particularly a fan of the base management last time, I can appreciate that the developer took the time to boost it up for those that did enjoy fiddling with their HQs.
My deal was the raw pinball-y insanity that takes over the action stages, which are even more chaotic this time around, obviously, since Ballbylon can only be climbed once you’ve cleared the main content with all the characters AND have reached Ball x Pit’s true ending. So it’s an endgame amount of challenge right from the very get-go, no punches pulled, making character combinations in particular a strategic requirement if you hope not to get stuck wasting precious time on a bad run. Then again, the fun with Ball x Pit has always been experimenting, and it’s even more of a thing now, with new ingredients thrown into the pot with this DLC.
While yes, my main gripes with the game still exist and aren’t likely to go away because they’re inherent to its run-based structure of gameplay, I can’t help but come away from Risen Ballbylon with a more positive than negative take on it. It’s still very much annoying at times with its constant interruptions when it’s time to level up or fuse powers and can be quite tough for those who haven’t kept up with the game, but remains an undeniably clever combo of genres that in the day and age of A.I clones on Steam is shocking how it hasn’t been ripped off yet. A thumb up and the other kinda sideways for this one.
