Ever since buying a copy of Kirby and the Amazing Mirror in Spain on a whim, the pink puffball has always🐼 been one of my favourite Nintendo series. You can keep your Fire Emblems and Zeldas, I want to float around without a care after swallowing enemies and fight eldritch horrors in the final act.
As great as Kirby is, he’s gone stale over the last few entries. Whether you want to blame the endless spin-off games like Kirby Claꦐsh or the lack of innovationꦜ in games like Star Allies, the idea of another 2D Kirby just wasn’t exciting anymore - he needed to evolve.
Thankfully, with Kirby and the Forgotten Land, the poyo protagonist has jumped into 3D for the first time. ꦦI’ve played the first hour of t🦄he game and it’s shaping up to be the spark that Kirby fans have been seeking for a really long time.
My preview took me through the first w𝓡orld of the game, Natural Plains, which consisted of four main levels and a boss fight, as well as a handful of optional challenges called Treasure Roads. The structure is very similar to Super Mario 3D World, with an explorable world map split into sections and a bunch of challenges along the way.
In fact, Kirby and the Forg꧃otten Land is essentially Super Kirby 3D💙 World - praise of the highest order. Each level sees Kirby making his way through a new location in a fairly linear fashion, all the while finding hidden Waddles Dees and completing secret objectives to rescue even more. They’re essentially the Green Stars of the Kirby universe here.
What surprised me the most while playing The Forgotten Land is how well Kirby translates to 3D. As a fan of the series, I’ve wondered how the floating ability would be handled, but it’s done cleverly here and given a few limits to keep it from being overpowered. Kirby controls like a dream and the gameplay loop of leaping around and absorbing enemies for their copy abilities works just as well in three dimensions as it did in two. It helps that it’s absolutely gorgeous too aꦕnd runs incredibly smoothly - this is one for the OLED.
I got to try a handful of these copy abilities, as well as briefly getting to test out the new blueprint upgrade mechanic. Most of the standard copy abilities like Sword and Fire feel just like they did in Star💫 Allies (but not Return to Dreamland, sadly), although I also got to try Ranger which finally𒈔 gives the pink menace a gun. Sadly, it’s my least favourite due to its focus on shooting, but it’s worth it to finally have the meme become reality.
I can only hope there’s more copy abilities in the full game, because they don’t feel quite as fleshed out as in previous releases. They’re all fun, but don’t go expecting a massive move list. Where the Forgotten Land seems to be differentiating itself most is through the ability to upgrade copy abilities with blueprints. I saw Fire turn into Volcano Fire, which increased its range massively and made it more powerful, and saw the Cutter turn into Chakra🌠m Cutters, essentially doubling their range.
Blueprint upgrades are a promising mechanic from what I’ve seen, but I just hope the final game has enough variants to make them feel like more than just a strict upgrade - give us some fun stuff to mess around with and some choices to make. I also hope there are more co♎py abilities than we’ve seen in the trailers, as it seems to be focu💖sing more on legacy ones so far.
Every Kirby game also introduces a new take on one of the abilities to varying success - or should that be suck-cess? While you can file Star Allies under: Extremely Unsuccessful, Forgotten Land’s Mouthful Mode is more promising. This lets Kirby suck up big❀ger items around the environment, hanging on top of them like a hat and getting to use their abilities.
The few I got to control included the infamous car, the cone, and the vending machine, all of which felt pretty situational but still added some needed variety into each level. So far it seems like they’re essentially tools that help you solve environmental puzzles for more Waddle Dees, but it’s a fun ability that’s incredibly charming, much like the rest of the Forgotten Land. As with the blueprint upgrades, its overall success will depend on how many there are in the game and how much they change th💖ings up, but what’s here so far is a good sign.
I was also able to preview some of the co-op features in Kirby and the Forgotten Land, something which I previously suggested looked lౠike a disappointing step back for th🌳e series and a continued misunderstand𝐆ing of what Kirby fans want from co-op.
I’m sad to be proven right, as one player is always going to have🎀 less fun than✃ the other when playing as Bandana Waddle Dee. While Kirby gets to run around messing with a suite of powers and using Mouthful Mode, Waddle Dee has a limited moveset that gets old pretty quickly. This was just over one world, but I can’t imagine it getting any better over the whole game.
It&rs𒆙quo;s still fun to play with so𒊎meone else, but it’s a shame that it didn’t go the way of Star Allies by including more characters for the second player to choose from for a bit more variety. The solution, as it is for everything in life, is simply to have more Kirby.
Co-op gripes aside, Kirby and the Forgotten Land is shaping up to be the evolution that the series has needed for some time - it’s not aiming to reinvent the wheel altogether, but the successful jump to 3D, incr🅺edible amount of charm, and small gameplay additions make this one to watch.
