Kirby and the Forgottne Land

THE VERDICT A highbar setting entrance for the Kirby franchise into the third dimension, thanks to a greatly contrasted setting, a narrative that is scaffolding by design and new features I want to always have in the future, and a soundtrack that stays with you. With the only flaws being too few gimmick transformations, a setting that has not been carried through when it comes to world design and slightly lean campaign length.

THE REVIEW The first mainline 3D Kirby game introduces some great ideas but underuses them.

Perhaps unsurprisingly my favourite parts of this game are its setting and the environments HAL built within that setting without ever deviating from it. Whoever had the idea of making a Kirby game set in an abandoned post-apocalyptic world should get a raise - it is the biggest and most positive design decision made for this project thanks to the striking contrast between the cheerfulness of kirby and the setting of abandonment and loneliness. The new gimmick is kirby being able to transform into human-made objects - a gimmick that was built around the setting of the game - or more probably the other wayaround.

For example there are dessert, lava and ice worlds which, I guess… are abandoned… but these environments are inherently abandoned BY NATURE making them less exciting to explore after an abandoned city or an amusement park. I feel like worlds that are themed around humanity-created environments would have hit much more not only because it would have fitted the games overall setting more but also because it is just more exciting exploring abandoned worlds instead of untouched ones.

There are 7 worlds including the post game - each one is visually very distinct from one another but all are trying to fit into that same abandoned setting. Some do this effortlessly, like an abandoned Amusement Park that personally reminded me a lot of Nier Automatas Amusement Park - perhaps because that games setting was similar to this, but other worlds did not fit in as well - in general I felt like the setting was made up before actually designing the worlds because half of them did not really have anything to do with it anymore sadly so.

This is also the reason why my favourite worlds are the grass one (World 1) and the amusement park (World 3) because these were the only worlds that unkompromissbar stuck to the games overarching setting within themselves (and because World 3 has the best level in the entire game that flexes the games lighting). The dessert one (World 5) is also up there, but not because of its setting but rather because of game design decisions almost completely unique to that world and iterating through that uniqueness for every level. What I mean by this are unique camera angles, experimentation with more open level design which both came as welcome changes. The ice and lava worlds are my least favourite worlds in the game for different reasons: Winter Horns had too little variety in environmental design throughout its levels which subsequently means this is the world that I will remember the shortest, the lava world was a step up in scale which helped the games length but it does so by padding its last two levels into rather generic boss rushes.

Graphically, the game looks very impressive especially considering its on switch 1, one visual flaw is the challenge rooms. Splintered throughout the worlds in between the main levels are these short bonus stages that you can often times finish in under a minute each asking to conquer it in a specific transformation. Gameplay wise an awesome addition but visually they all looked the same and there was no effort in trying to build these into the worlds environments they were placed in - I would have loved that.

Perhaps unsurprising looking back, but I was hyped by the music this game threw at me. Sound in general is the most consistently great part of it and it even does so across lots of different genres and atmospheres. We start off with a mysterious melodic tone in World 1, across a creatively composed Haunted House track that was totally unique and stands on its own over an atmospheric lava soundtrack, and closing out with final boss osts that are made to be added to my playlists!

Boss encounters were initially slow and clunky, thanks to me not knowing there was a dodge mechanic by pushing block + in a direction, a realization I have only noticed at World 5. With the dodge - combat was sufficient for a kirby game like this, dodging is easy and satisfying and elevates the combat from being awkward to having a rhythm and flow to it.

In general difficulty was what you would expect out of a kirby game: really easy with some tougher challenges at the very end of the post game. What I would love for these 3D Kirby games in the future regarding their difficulty is more variety in the type of difficulty the player is facing, all the tough challenges in this game are rooted in combat and boss encounters, but the game features much more than that, platforming (that admittedly is never hard in kirby games by nature), level design itself as well as the transformations, all these gameplay facettes deliver opportunities for incorporating different types of difficulty but they are barely taken. Kirbys floatiness in the air makes the platforming unique and very hard to actually fall, but that just means you have to come up with a separate difficulty parameter in platforming that does not revolve around kirby falling in to the abyss, often times this type of critique means introducing new gameplay elements resolves it, but in this case it is different: because the new gimmick of being able to transform into household objects exactly addresses this critique by limiting or altering kirbys movement in new ways - I just wish it was utilized more often and in more ways with even more different transformations. There are only like 10 or so of these truly gameplay altering transformations and I think doubling that number would have done this game very good not only in terms of difficulty variety.

Writing of transformations: obviously the usual kirby abilities are back in this game. Some are cut that were in previous games but the main ones are all there and with them a new feature that I loved: being able to upgrade your abilities. Some of them not only twice but thrice. These upgrades all come with cool new names and a different design for kirby and they are all so good and creative, everytime I found a blueprint for a new upgrade and had enough coins and challenge rooms completed I was genuinely hyped to go and find out how the new upgraded ability would look, how powerful it would be and what its new unique powers would entail. If I had to pick one thing that this game brought into the kirby franchise to carry over into the next game: it would be upgrading your abilities.

Performance was alright - it occasionally dipped below 30 fps but it was never unplayable. No game-breaking bugs or glitches beyond that.

My favourite character design has to go to the rat boss which is genius, creative and directly woven into its attacks and environment aswell. The final boss and secret final boss also have to be mentioned as the highlights here. Unsurprisingly these characters and their presentation consistently outperform the narrative itself - a narrative that is, like so often in Nintendo games, a means to an end, a framework in order to have an excuse to deliver memorable boss encounters, creative ideas and most importantly so allows for the setting to make sense in the first place - the reason why the game’s story is mediocre, yet delivers on this front aswell.

Postgame: It was great: One additional world that has a level for each previous world and remixes the best parts of the world including a harder version of the main bosses at the end of the levels. It also gives them a new dreamlike look thats very stylish. It tasks you to collect 300 soulfragments across the six levels - 250 are required to reach the games Secret Final Boss, which is the hardest challenge of the game, barring the Ultimate Cup Z tournament. The thematic decision to remake the worlds color palettes was a cheap one but it is very effective and the core reason of why I enjoyed this Postgame world as much as I did (next to the absolute banger of a sound track that plays while doing so).

I definitely think this won’t be the last 3D kirby we will get and am very much looking forward to having this franchise now get 3D entries aswell regularly (hopefully with upgradeable transformations). Now if you would excuse me I gotta jam out to the final boss ost of this. Thanks for reading!