Kirby’s most complete and fun delivery for many years establishes a new stage for the character, even with some loose end.

Can you not like Kirby? I understand perfectly that some players could bore them, or just not interest them, but I do not get to imagine a situation in which someone tells me, in a totally serious way, that actively dislike the Games of the pink ball. I do not think this has to see, at all, with the undeniable adoribable of Nintendo’s mascot, but rather with the fact that in most cases it is titles designed to avoid, as far as possible, Friction with the player. Games in which not to frustrate, in which we feel we move forward, in which nothing is permanent and we can always retry it. Small peaceminders who respond to any of our efforts with prizes and surprises and who feel, sometimes, as the equivalent of leaving a little space for a child so that he has the opportunity to win in the game. Titles that are not difficult, nor do they need it, because their focus is on another side: in making us feel good and have fun without making us sweat.

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Basic information

• Developer: Hal Laboratory
• Editor: Nintendo
• Platforms: switch
• Proven version: switch
• Availability: 03/25/2022

Precisely because of this I found something strange that the first compasses of Kirby and the forgotten land disgraded a little. Nothing tragic, nothing dramatic: very beautiful but very simple levels, in which practically everything is within reach of our hand and it is impossible to be lost. I understand now that this Kirby has a slightly strange position within its franchise: to advance it towards a totally different place, one in which we abandon – most of the time – its characteristic lateral displacement to face a 3D world in the That combat and platforms work differently. Some first trailers that showed us a game that seemed, a priori, much more free and open we receive us with initial worlds that are remarkably linear and where new mechanics do not shine particularly. However, if we give him a little patience, the title manages to take off from his own tradition and to start thinking about different ways, to propose new things, and to make us understand that this is the path he has decided to take from now on.

And it is, the truth, a good path. The premise of the game is that Kirby is transported to a universe in which the Waddle dees have been kidnapped, and that we will have to explore to rescue them all. The village of the Waddle Dee will serve as a central core of the adventure, and that is where we will start the game and where we will recurrently return when we want to improve our skills, recover life or simply relax a bit and play a few mini-games. Then, we can access the main map, divided into six worlds with a variable amount of phases and small challenges counterreloj. Not all phases are mandatory, but to access the final boss of each world we will have to have rescued, at least, a minimum of Waddle dees, so we will surely want to do them all (or review very well, very well that we have already played to make sure I would not have a bichillo jumped).

When starting each phase we will be offered the two main objectives of each: first, overcome the phase, and secondly, rescue as much Waddle dees as possible. In addition, there will be three other objectives – that will also serve us to get more Waddle Dees – and that will be at least initially, hidden. We will discover them when we finish the level or when we start to complete them. Some of the secondary objectives have to do with collecting collectibles, or to beat heads using concrete transformations, with solving puzzles or finding and visiting secret areas. Thus, we will want to explore each level well and put it basically everything, because anything can potentially be a secondary goal that will offer us a reward when completing it.

The levels themselves, especially when we pass the first worlds, have a more or less wide and free structure, but they are designed to be linear. Still, they will leave us, from time to time, separate ourselves from the main road to make puzzles or secondary sections. Virtually none of them will take more than a minute, or two as much, but they strive to keep the sensation of discovery, in which we have to look at the screen a few seconds before it makes us “click” how to solve the puzzle. In that sense, I think the objectives are quite useful to guide our exploration. They make us pay attention to things that we may not normally notice, and they serve us to realize whether we have skipped out some section or some secret, encouraging the go back to discover it. In general, Kirby and the forgotten land do not want us to lose anything, and this implies a relative permissiveness when it comes to going back and retrying the sections. I have almost never taken the totality of the objectives of a phase to the first, but it was rarely cost me more than two or three attempts.

Playably, yes, everything works quite similarly to the usual. Kirby can absorb some enemies and expel them in the form of a projectile; When we absorb certain concrete enemies, we will copy the skills of it. Here we have all the usual suspects: the sword, the pumps, the fire, the ice and others. I have not missed any of the classic skills in particular, even though it is the feeling that they are less numerous than in deliveries such as Planet Robobot. Even so, Kirby and the forgotten land manages to introduce more dynamism into his battle with the skill improvement system. With the objects we will obtain when you overcome the optional phases of counterreloj, and with the plans that we will obtain as a reward to solve certain secret rooms or defeat the heads, we can go to the village Waddle Dee and improve our Amery skills. Each skill can be improved up to three times and even though they maintain quite similar movements, they usually add new features that make them acquire them again.

The great novelty of this delivery is the transformations, which are different from the copying skills in which they are limited to concrete areas and that allow Kirby, temporarily, in objects. An idea with which the saga has flirting from Epic Yarn and that, the truth, works very well. It is true that what we have to do with them is usually quite evident: destroy a wall with the shelf, reach a high place with the ladder or break a floor or a pipe with the cone, for example. But they are satisfactory to use, visually very funny, and always illuse us a little when we see the opportunity to use them. Maybe he could throw him in the face of the game that the sections in which they appear are quite short: usually the design of each phase will manage so that we can not move very far with them, putting barriers that can only be overcome with the standard Kirby, without transforming. For example, if we take the Kirby refreshment machine, we will immediately meet some area that can only be accessed through a staircase because in this way, we can not scalar, so we will have to reverse the transformation and continue walking normal. Even so, the best parts of the game are, without a doubt, those in which the game lets us experience a little more with the transformations, well because it lets us use them during longer sections of normal, or because they are part of puzzles Complexes

Beyond this, it is true that the visual aspect of the game is also a source of constant surprise. Without being particularly fine in the technical – at the levels with many enemies we will notice, especially in the desktop mode, as the frame ratio flake a bit – the game does have a very fine artistic section and, above all, a wide range of ideas that explore and then subvert almost constantly. In this sense, my favorite world, for its variety, is the one that is inspired by an amusement park, where we will find ourselves from Karts races to Russian mountains or a level of the house of terror that, if it is not my level Favorite of the saga, at least it is among the first three.

Anyway, what rounds Kirby and the forgotten land are not necessarily the levels, but the way in which he understands that the best games of the character’s history come from a mixture of mini-games, optional challenges, Boss Rush and other little things. As we advancing and overcoming the main levels, with the rescue of Waddle dees that it entails, the central village will unlock new facilities. From the fishing minigame or the cafeteria to a coliseum in which we can face all the final leaders, different types of collectibles and options to listen to music and kinematics again. Every time we go back to the village and something new has been unlocked, we can not help but run to Tiequita it a bit and, to what we want to realize, it has spent half an hour. The gigantic variety of the game, for which we can jump from one activity to another, of a mini-directress to overcome a level or a boss to a collectible hunt, of fighting with Knight goal to fish a while, it feels like A whole celebration of everything that is and all the reasons why we like Kirby.

Thus, even if there is undoubtedly unexploded in this Kirby and the forgotten land, I think your arrival is good news: all its elements set a new direction for the saga that seems more than solid as to hold a good handful of deliveries. Also – even though I did not have to do it! – After finishing the main story we can enjoy a pretty extensive post-game that inevitably recycles a bit of the levels we already know, but that it is raised as an adequate a little more challenging and difficult to complete for those who want to live a little more In your world. A more than remarkable brooch for a 3D jump that may not hit all his shots, but who always has in mind to be exactly as we like Kirby: soft, sweet and pretty, without tensions.