The one regret I have in my short time as a video game reviewer is not playing BALL x PIT before we recorded the GOTY podcasts last year. I’d tinkered with it, but not enough to really weigh in on (or help steer) the conversation or to fully appreciate Lyle’s glowing 10/10 review for it. Since then though I’ve put dozens of hours into the Switch 2 version, becoming mildly addicted at one point thanks to its mix of hypnotic on-screen action and the compulsion to try and find every single combination of balls and passives. It’s been a difficult game to keep up with, as they’ve already made several substantial free updates, but I’m pleased to see that BALL x PIT: Risen Ballbylon goes one step further and ensures this new paid expansion is worth investing in.
The set up for Risen Ballbylon is simple enough. Instead of using the lift to go down into the earth, Ballbylon itself has ascended into the sky and you need to go up there and plunder it for riches to bring back to your growing settlement. I’ll be honest, despite playing a load of BALL x PIT, I never paid much attention to why anything was happening, I was just there to bounce balls around and that’s the same attitude I took with Risen Ballbylon. What I do know though, is that the floating city comes with four new levels to explore, each based on an area of the city that has, along with the citizens, been corrupted. It’s a nice distinction from the base game and I really liked the themes they used.
There are 8 new characters to get to grips with in Risen Ballbylon, introducing some new ways to play the game and synergise them with existing characters. One of the starting characters, The Sentinel, lets you shoot in any direction which might not seem particularly groundbreaking but I found he opened up new, more aggressive playstyles I’d not considered before. The same can be said about The Conduit, who focuses all AOE effects on himself, and I found he paired nicely with The Carouser as both benefit from being surrounded by enemies at all times. Characters don’t unlock quickly, but the game delivers them at a pace that feels appropriate and it never feels like a slog to get to the next one.
As always, there’s a whole bunch of balls to play with too. If you played the base game at launch then the amount on offer here is almost unrecognisable, and while you might be used to launching earthquakes or freezing enemies in ice, Risen Ballbylon lets you command waterfalls and tidal waves, bring misfortune on enemies or unleash beasts and kaiju. It’s honestly ridiculous, and there’s enough here that I’ll probably be playing it well into 2027. Finding the evolutions is only half the fun though, and I like seeing how much I can “break” the game by fusing evolved balls together. Mix water and earth together to make a tsunami that ploughs across the screen, but then fuse it with a cell ball and you’ve got four of them ping-ponging around the screen obliterating your enemies. At one point I did this with waterfalls and struggled to complete the level as I simply couldn’t see half of the action on screen through all the water. It’s all part of the fun though, and whether you like doing AOE damage, hitting enemies with beams, building up debuffs or just overwhelming through sheer number of balls, there are more ways than ever to build out each run.
One of the first things I noticed about the new levels was increased variety in enemy shape. There’s still plenty of enemies featuring multiple straight edges, but now they also feature diagonals, which give you more control and allow for more creativity when trying to find the optimal path for bouncing balls between them. It’s a seemingly small touch but makes a huge difference to the game. Enemy variety is greater too and I really liked how they felt more thematically connected to the environment this time around, such as the roguish fiends lurking in the city’s shadowy alleys. My only minor gripe with the levels is how much the game relies on replaying them. Each of the four levels need to be completed by eight characters, so at minimum you need to finish each one four times. Yes, the variety comes from the characters and builds you use but I’d have appreciated it if maybe they didn’t require quite so many replays.
Each excursion into the city will see you finding crystals too. This new currency is used for building the new structures, including homes for the new characters. To be honest, I never quite gelled with the townbuilding in BALL x PIT. There’s nothing wrong with it, I just do it because I have to rather than because I want to. The same can be said here in Risen Ballbylon, but for those that do like tinkering with their towns, you’ll find the additional variety in structures most welcome. To be fair, there is definitely stuff here worth doing too, as you’ll be able to build crystal deposits, mines and even structures to let you increase ball levels higher than the current cap of 3.
BALL x PIT: Risen Ballbylon is an excellent piece of DLC; the jewel atop a crown of already impressive post-release support for the game. It’s honestly a no-brainer for fans of the game – it introduces more levels, more characters and, most importantly, more balls. What more could you possibly want?
