I’ve mentioned a few times recently that I previously gave a very negative review for the last Kirby game, Kirby Star Allies. It was pretty pathetic how bad it was in every gameplay aspect (a game that actively hated the fact that someone was playing it, so it beat bosses for you and solved puzzles for you and had no actual… design). Star Allies is the only bad mainline Kirby, as Kirby was previously a solid series with only good games. So when this was announced, I was definitely liking what I was seeing, but I was a bit wary of it. You know, just in case.

But I still got it at launch after avoiding the demos and every trailer other than the announcement one. So let’s go and see if Kirby is back to his usual quality!

Developer: HAL Labs
Publisher: Nintendo
Release date: March 25th, 2022
Platforms: Switch
Genre: 3D Platformer

Review

Something bad happens on Pop Star. Kirby must save the world again. This time it’s a portal opening over Pop Star, sucking in a ton of Waddle Dee (and I guess a few other regular Kirby enemies), alongside Kirby and Dedede. This brings them to the Forgotten Land, a world that SEEMS to be a post-apocalyptic version of our world, with humans gone but animals remaining. The animals are kidnapping Waddle Dees (nuts) for some reason. Kirby joins with little flying duder Elfilin and saves the world. Between the intro level and the very final level of the game, there’s one instance of plot, otherwise nothing actually happens beyond “Kirby advances towards the final boss”. And then Kirby fights some world-ending god-like eldritch horror because that’s just what Kirby does. You definitely don’t get a Kirby game for the plot.

Graphically I don’t really have much to comment on. I will note on a performance side it maintains a stable 30fps pretty much all the way, and it does that by making parts further away run at a lower framerate. You’ll definitely notice, specifically, enemies moving around like a slideshow if they’re not in your immediate vicinity. Otherwise… game is fucking pretty. That is all.

Forgotten Land is definitely an interesting experiment for Kirby. Kirby is one of those old series that never actually did a proper transition to 3D back in the N64/Gamecube days, instead deciding to keep doing the side-scrolling thing up until now. And the solution… very simple but very solid: just keep doing the side-scrolling thing but in 3D. This is what Mario 3D Land and Mario 3D World did, taking fairly standard 2D level design and adding a movement dimension, keeping it level-based and linear. This is a solid idea. Kirby had some unique issues with going 3D, such as his usual ability to infinitely fly. This is also something they had to limit here, as I’ll talk about later. So here you get a game that looks like Kirby and plays like Kirby, but the 3D difference is enough to add a lot of variety compared to previous games.

The base gameplay is pretty much what you’d expect from a regular Kirby game. Kirby can jump, fly, suck, absorb enemy powers, guard and slide. His movement is in 3D now, which doesn’t really change that much. One new action is the dodge move, which I’m mostly sure the game told me about because… I knew about it… but some people think the game doesn’t tell you. Maybe they missed the tutorial pop-up, I dunno. That said, it works kinda like the dodge in Bayonetta, where it slows down the enemies when you time it correctly. An enemy sucked in by Kirby either instantly gets his power absorbed (unlike previous games where you’d have to crouch while the enemy was in your mouth), or become a projectile you can shoot in front of Kirby. I’d say it’s pretty easy to hit stuff despite the 3D aspect, partly because they did do some wacky things for aim. Namely, enemy hitboxes are based partly on camera perspective (tough of course actual position of hurtboxes in a 3D space will also be valid). So if an attack “looks” like it would hit an enemy in certain viewing angles, it will count as a hit even if you’re not actually hitting the enemy. This is something I saw in a tweet and was able to confirm as I played. It ends up feeling pretty natural, you’ll rarely feel like a hit wasn’t deserved. Flying is limited here, understandably. It’s a BIT awkward, but it makes sense. Basically, you can fly up to a certain height, based on where you jumped from in the first place (fly height is just a bit higher than jump height), and there’s a hidden stamina meter so you can’t do it forever. So this all makes sense, and levels are designed around that limitation.

While Kirby has a lot of copy abilities in previous games (somewhere around 60 total), only 12 made their way into this game, 2 of which are new (the Ranger power which is a gun that I’d compare to the Beam power a bit, and the Drill power). There are some unique aspects to how these work though, as each power has up to 4 different versions. You can find blueprints in levels, which, at the cost of coins and rare stones, can be used to evolve powers. For each power, you can decide which version is the one you’ll get from absorbing it in a level (so, say you unlocked the Gigant Sword, if you set it in the store, every sword you absorb will be a Gigant Sword). Even single-use powers get upgrades, those being Crash and Sleep (the sleep evolution, Deep Sleep, is legitimately very solid… borderline broken in colosseum runs). 8 of the powers have 3 versions, 2 have just 2 versions (sleep and crash) and 2 have 4 versions (the fourth of which you get post-game). As for the selection of abilities, I think it’s fine. The only one I’m having less fun with than usual is the bomb, but all the other powers are fine. The drill is a bit eh, but it serves for some fun puzzles so I’m fine with it. They definitely could have adapted more powers to this new gameplay style, but I assume they wanted to keep it simple for the first 3D Kirby. TBH I would’ve removed Crash to add one more active power. One thing that might need actual fixing is adding a moveset for the abilities. Sometimes the blacksmith will tell you about moves for some of the abilities, but some don’t. Specifically, one of the swords has a bunch of abilities the game doesn’t tell you about (not even the blacksmith).

But these 12 powers aren’t the only powers you get. This game introduces Mouthful Modes, which are basically copy abilities but not quite. We saw that in the original trailer (and I assume more in other trailers I dunno) where Kirby sucks in a car and takes the shape of the car to use it for himself. This allows Kirby to reshape his body in many different ways. Mouthful Modes are always specific, they can’t be used anywhere like regular copy abilities, so you’ll always get to a point where you give up on the Mouthful effect. There are 14 of these. A few are kinda useless (Dome, Storage, which basically exist to waste your time), a few are more set pieces (Arch for flying stages, Pipe for automatic movement jumping sections, Coaster for tilting rollercoaster sections), a few work like kinda normal powers (car/big-rig, vending machine, light bulb, ring, and a few others) and some have very specific puzzle uses (like stairs and scissor-lift). A fun thing is that getting a Mouthful doesn’t remove your copy ability, so once you abandon your vending machine, you’ll still have your gun.

Levels in this game are quite fun. Namely, they have a bunch of hidden shit. So despite having these more open levels because it’s 3D, enemy placement and such tends to mean you won’t generally be able to just ignore the enemies. Early levels do this a bit sure, but the latter ones are a bit more clever about it. Each level will have 4 optional objectives. The main objective is to save the 3 Waddle Dee that are caged at the end, but there’s gonna be 3 to 5 hidden Waddle Dees in the level, mostly that you have to find, or solve puzzles, to be able to save. Some levels have hidden paths or hidden platforms you can fly to and such. The other 3 objectives are going to be different for each level. Some may be finding specific food items (something like “eat 3 donuts”), interacting with specific things (like birds, which you’d assume would just be background elements), beating minibosses with certain weapons (or without getting hit), removing posters from walls, finding secret passages and areas… and so on. Bosses also have these optional things. They all have one for time to beat them, one for beating it without getting hit, and one for beating it with a specific copy ability. Waddle Dees serve to unlock the boss gate (usually a pretty small amount is needed so you’ll never fail to do it if you try to get a few), but also they’ll unlock stuff in the Waddle Dee Village, such as new minigames, and the Colosseum. These are the “main” 100% factor of the game.

There is a good amount of content here. Alongside like 5-6 levels per world and a boss, each level having a bunch of stuff to do as I noted. Beating each level also tends to unlock Treasure Roads, which are side-levels and where you mainly (at first) get Rare Stones for weapon upgrades. These are pretty fun, as they serve as challenges for different copy abilities and Mouthfuls, sometimes being sort of tutorials for certain aspects of the abilities. There are a ton of these. Then, when you beat the game, there’s a new world that opens up too, as well as extra colosseum levels. This game legitimately has a ton of content, compared to Star Allies.

Overall

I really enjoyed this. The fact that I didn’t finish it in a single evening of playing it kinda casually already gives it many points above Star Allies. But that’s not all, considering the gameplay is just so much better.

It is Kirby’s first real transition to 3D gameplay, doing it the way it did is great, and it ends up being quite good at it. Most of the levels are fun, most of the powers are fun to use (except Bomb, which I’m not really enjoying this time despite it being a power I usually love), the completion aspect is really well implemented and fun, the boss battles are great… I honestly have very little to actually complain about here.

Honestly, the one thing I can point to is the 3D concept making some of the levels are a bit too easy because enemies are so simple to avoid because there’s so much space to move around to not even have to worry about them, but in actuality, the game almost fully avoids this issue with actually really good level design. The other thing I could point out is the mild slowness of gaining coins and rare stones for weapon upgrades, which is only a “problem” in the post-game and at that point, you’re just grinding colosseum if you want to get power-ups, it’s essentially optional.

Definite recommendation on this one. It’s good, just buy it.