What does Assist Mode do in Donkey Kong Bananza?

Donkey Kong Bananza assist mode objective marker and guiding music on screen — (Image credit: Nintendo)

Donkey Kong Bananza's Assist Mode option can be switched on when you start a new game to make things a little easier, particularly in terms of navigation and fighting. It's essentially an easy difficulty option that makes the game a fair bit more forgiving – ideal for younger players and those who just want a relaxing time breezing through the main objectives of Donkey Kong Bananza.

Annoyingly, the benefits of Assist Mode aren't made especially clear, so I've tested it out myself to see how assistive it really is. Here's everything you need to know about Assist Mode in DK Bananza so you can decide whether you need it or not.

How Donkey Kong Bananza Assist Mode works

Donkey Kong Bananza assist mode and normal mode options when starting a new game — (Image credit: Nintendo)

Assist Mode is a slightly easier version of Donkey Kong Bananza's Normal Mode, providing constant navigation pointers and making DK much more robust. While you must choose between Normal or Assist Mode when starting a new game, you are not locked into your choice and can turn it on and off whenever you want by pausing the game and opening the Options menu (the gear icon) to find the toggle.

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Here are all the benefits Assist Mode provides over Normal Mode:

Yellow objective markers and guiding music are constantly on: In Normal Mode, these navigation markers tend to be visible only when you hold L to get DK and Pauline to hum a guiding tune to your objective. In Assist Mode, you don't have to worry and can always see where you're meant to be going.
DK takes half as much damage: This obviously makes DK far more durable when fighting enemies and bosses.
DK's health regenerates: After not taking damage for a while Donkey Kong's health will automatically start to repair, which doesn't happen at all in Normal Mode.
Healing apples seem much more common: Purely anecdotally, apples seem to be much more generously provided, so with the reduced damage and health regeneration, DK will die very rarely.

Overall, Assist Mode doesn't make a huge difference as the game is quite forgiving and not too challenging anyway, particularly if you're buying things like Apple Juice and Red Balloons.

However, if you're getting lost a lot and just want to focus on the critical path to reach the end (I've explained how long it takes to beat Donkey Kong Bananza here), turning on Assist Mode might be preferable.

There are also some sublayers, particularly SL 600 and SL 900, where their hazards can be a pain to deal with and Assist Mode will make those areas less annoying to clear.

Regardless of if you're playing on Assist or Normal Mode, these Donkey Kong Bananza tips will help you get off to a solid start in DK's latest adventure. You'll want to know what the best Donkey Kong Bananza skills are and how to unlock all Donkey Kong Bananza Bananzas.

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Will Sawyer is a Guides Editor at GamesRadar+ with over five years of experience in writing online guides, news, and features, and has a BA (Hons) in Journalism. Starting as a freelancer, Will contributed to startmenu and Game Rant before joining the GamesRadar+ team in August 2021. Since then, he has written hundreds of guides about a huge range of games, with shooters and action games being his areas of expertise. Outside of writing about games, Will hops between multiplayer shooters with friends, such as Darktide and Helldivers 2, and delves into whatever has been on his backlog for far too long. He also tries to get through his never-ending Warhammer pile of shame of grey Tyranids, Aeldari, and Chaos Space Marines.