Topic: User Impressions/Reviews Thread

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Kirby and the Forgotten Land
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Time to Completion: 15+ hours

Nintendo's surprise reveal of Kirby and the Forgotten Land in late 2021 was cause for celebration for many a Nintendo fan around the world. Even moreso than Game Freak, developer HAL Laboratory's popular and successful series of Kirby games have long counterbalanced their willingness to experiment with a curious lack of technical ambition. Kirby games have often been some of the first to showcase the gimmicks in new Nintendo hardware, as was the case with a multitude of Kirby games on the Nintendo DS: 2005's Kirby: Canvas Curse, for example, was a deeply weird platformer where players controlled Kirby entirely via the touch screen as they drew platforms and made flicking and stabbing motions with the stylus on various objects in order to help Kirby complete his adventure. Kirby Mass Attack in 2011 had players, in a Pikmin-like twist, control large herds of Kirbys across various levels. Even older games with more traditional controls, such as SNES classic Kirby Super Star saw the developer experiment with an unconventional structure that divided content up between a series of smaller and functionally diverse game modes.

It's always been weird, then, that they've been so simultaneously technically conservative. Major gaming icons such as Mario, Link, Donkey Kong, and Sonic saw their first 3D adventures release in the mid-to-late 90s. Some of these transitions took better than others (3D Mario and Zelda titles are mainstays on modern Nintendo consoles and rank among the highest-rated games of all time, whereas Donkey Kong retreated back into the second dimension in his subsequent GameCube, Wii, and Wii U outings; the success or failure of Sonic's transition to 3D, on the other hand, is still a controversial subject to this day), but Kirby never had a major 3D outing before now. The Kirby game on the Nintendo 64 was one of the few non-3D games on the system. Subsequent console outings until now have restricted themselves to the second dimension as well. Technically there was are some 3D spinoffs (GameCube racer Kirby Air Ride and Kirby's Blowout Blast on Nintendo 3DS come to mind) , but these don't have the same weight as a full-fat, mainline platformer entry.

But we finally got a full 3D Kirby game on Nintendo's wildly popular Nintendo Switch hybrid system this March! How does it hold up?

In most respects, quite well! Kirby and the Forgotten Land is possessed of a charm and polish that one would normally associate with Nintendo's own internally developed games. HAL Laboratory has absolutely mastered the task of transitioning the eponymous pink puff into three-dimensional space quite well. There's a fluidity to the experience that's more than a little reminiscent of Nintendo's own italian plumber.

Forgotten Land begins with an almost absurdly beautiful cutscene as a vortex opens in the skies above Dream Land and sucks in Kirby along with the local population of Waddle Dees, spitting them out across the post-apocalyptic ruins of an alternate world. With the help of a mysterious creature known as Elfilin, a small group of Waddle Dees form a settlement, and Kirby is tasked with setting off to rescue the missing ones from the Beast Pack, a mysterious group of superpowered baddies who have kidnapped them. Who, or what, is Elfilin, really? What are the intentions of the Beast Pack? Why is this world so utterly destroyed in the first place?

Kirby has always been a series that de-emphasizes storytelling in favor of a focus on gameplay and its own (weirdly dark) lore, and Forgotten Land is no exception to this. While there are the rudiments of a (genuinely fascinating) story here, little time is wasted on establishing character motivations or fleshing out the nature of this world... explicitly, at least. Reading between the lines, there's a lot to unpack this title, with environmental details and the descriptions for collectible action figures you can find throughout the game. Yes, we are indeed in Dark Soulsian "The plot is in the item descriptions!" territory here. Also worth mentioning that an impressive amount of attention was put into this aspect of the game: there's actually a fictional language in this new world that adorns buildings and signs throughout the ruins of a once-thriving civilization, and fans of the series are already piecing together signs and texts they're coming across. Interestingly, the game's theme song is sung with vocals derived from this language.

When Forgotten Land was first revealed, the footage seemed to be hinting at something more open-ended. Such speculation was quickly dashed once subsequent trailers revealed the game's level-based design, however. The biggest (and only major) disappointment of mine concerning this Kirby game was when I learned how restricted in scope it really was. This is definitely technically a 3D game, but the linear level design, lack of camera control, and smaller environments make it feel very much like a continuation of the design principles of Kirby's previous 2D adventures. This is basically the Kirby equivalent of Super Mario 3D World, except with even less exploration and more tightly-designed levels.

Each level, while, again, exceedingly linear, is also stuffed with secrets and hidden Waddle Dees to find. Progression across Forgotten Land is determined by how many Waddle Dees you've saved leading up to a world's boss. Certain Waddle Dees are obtained just as part of completing a level. Others are optional, but usually hidden in plain view. Others require a significant amount of messing around to find. There will also be optional objectives in each level that award you with even more Waddle Dees. These can be anything from finding and ripping down wanted posters of Kirby posted throughout the levels to gaining access to environmental terrain that's somewhat off the beaten path. These optional objectives provide the game's levels with a significant amount of replayability, and it's not very often you'll complete every single objective in one run. Especially since the descriptions for certain objectives are hidden until the player completes a level for the first time.

Every Waddle Dee you rescue goes back to Waddle Dee Town, and Kirby will gain access to new facilities and functions as the town grows over the course of the game. Despite the linear structure of the game, Kirby is able to return to Waddle Dee town from the world map at any time with a press of the button). The town houses many options that other games would relegate to a menu. The music player, for example, is actually a Waddle Dee band that stands on stage and plays the tune you request. To access the movie viewer, you actually have to enter a movie theater. Kirby has a house you'll want to return to frequently that provides free healing like an inn in a JRPG, and you'll get a cute little cutscene of the little guy sleeping (either with elfilin or Bandana Waddle Dee, depending on whether you're playing single-player or not) in a bed. There's also eventually a gachapon machine you'll be able to pump your star coins into to fill out your collection of figurines (you'll probably be able to get double the hours out of this game if you go full completionist with it, but without trophies, I just stopped playing when I felt like I'd exhausted the substantive content available to me). as well as fun mini-games via a food stand Kirby can work at for more star coins and a gyroscopically-controlled marble minigame where you'll roll a Kirby-shaped ball around a board filled with increasingly dangerous challenges. Eating food will recover Kirby's health (which you can do at home for free), but, usefully, you'll also be able to buy a to-go order to take with you if, say, you happen to need healing in a particularly tough boss encounter. That can even be done in the arena, by the way, a staple of the game's endgame challenge suite which challenges the player with sets of increasingly challenging boss rushes. This sounds fairly optional, but the game actually hides certain bosses within these arena challenges that players will want to confront.

There is one more function in the town, though, and it's arguably one of the most one in the entire game.

Forgotten Land has retained one of the signature aspects of the gameplay that have defined Kirby games since Kirby's Adventure first released on the NES, and that's the gigantic plethora of copy abilities available to him. When Kirby inhales an enemy with a particular attack skill, he can copy that skill and re-fashion it for his own purposes. Almost all of these skills are fun to use, with some being more useful than others. Usefully, in a first for the series, Kirby can actually upgrade these abilities at a weapon shop in Waddle Dee town with blueprints he finds hidden in various levels. These upgrades go beyond increasing the damage dealt, as the outfits donned with the upgraded copy abilities and usually different and can sometimes even function differently to account for their increased usefulness. As just one example, the bomb ability, when upgraded a few times eventually gains the ability to both track the enemy down and explode in a chain, affecting everything in the area. If the player is so inclined, once the upgrade path is finished, they can power up these abilities even further if they have the extra rare stones for it.

Rare Stones are the resource the player will use for all ability upgrades (along with blueprints, which are needed to unlock these upgrades), whether it's turning them into more powerful abilities or just buffing their damage once the upgrade path is maxed out. A few secrets in town and endgame challenges will award rare stones, but, throughout the game, you'll unlock access to them whenever you upgrade your abilities, which give you access to a gigantic array of challenge levels where you'll need to make use of your new abilities to complete different timed objectives. At the end of each of these challenge levels, you'll find a rare stone. These challenge levels were a great idea, since they simultaneously function as a sort of tutorial area for the player to test our their new abilities, and are also different enough from the main levels to provide a welcome distraction when they crop up. Each challenge level can easily be completed in the time limit. They also have sub-goals which task you with completing each challenge level much more quickly, forcing the player to master them. This theoretically adds replay value to these levels as well, but the game unwisely chooses to only reward the player with a handful of star coins for achieving these optional objectives, which makes them, frankly, not worth the trouble of pursuing. Again, trophies could have helped provide some incentive here, but Nintendo doesn't believe in trophy systems, for whatever reason.

I didn't mention them until now, but surely anyone who has paid any attention this title will be aware of the rather unique class of copy abilities unique to this game. Throughout the game, in Kirby will find and inhale particularly large and/or strangely shaped objects such as cars, traffic cones, giant light bulbs, vending machines, and so on. These absurd "Mouthful Mode" transformations often give Kirby something of a ghoulish appearance (particularly Light-Bulb Mouth Kirby, which approaches nightmare fuel territory for me), but they're needed to progress the levels, usually wildly change up how Kirby plays, and often even have combat functionalities (Vending Mouth Kirby, for example, can hilariously pelt enemies with cans of soda, although these are a finite resource; Water-Balloon Mouth Kirby sees Kirby inflating himself to absurd proportions with water so that he can waddle around spraying enemies away with a stream of water he spits out; and so on). These transformations aren't as omnipresent as Mario's cap possessions in Super Mario Odyssey, but they do add more variety to how players will progress through levels.

To complement the focus on copy abilities and tight (and sometimes visually spectacular) combat, Forgotten Land features some of the best boss fights in the pink puff's long history. Most of the main game encounters can be actually beaten without too much issue, of course, but one begins to appreciate the care put into their movement patterns when. for example, fighting them without taking damage, which is an optional objective in all of the main boss stages. The downright horrifying final boss of the main story campaign is surprisingly tough, though, and the difficulty only goes up as players take on the remixed story bosses in the course of clearing this title's post-game world. I mentioned special arena battle boss rushes before, and, for the true masochists out there, Forgotten Land's final cup, "Ultimate Cup Z," culminates with the title's final and ultimate combat challenge, a hidden boss so brutal that it took me a few tries to beat it.

This combat challenge curve, by the way, is pretty standard for modern Kirby games. The majority of the game is accessible to people of all skill levels, but optional content will test the reflexes and determination of completionists and gamers looking for a greater set of obstacles to overcome.

All of this can be made easier, if you like, by having a second player join in as Bandana Waddle Dee. Aside from challenge levels, this second player can join you through virtually the entire game. The implementation of co-op is a little on the slapdash side, though, as full control of how the level progresses is given to the player controlling Kirby. Combined with the tight camera angles, this often means the second player will be dragged along wherever Kirby goes, sometimes even to their detriment (if Kirby falls off into a pit, guess where Bandana Waddle Dee is going!). Whenever Bandana Waddle Dee dies, he's able to be revived after a small buffer period, which makes him a great option if you want to play with someone who is perhaps less skilled at platformers. But the game is clearly single-player oriented, and I imagine some players could become frustrated with feeling like a less than equal partner on Kirby's adventure if playing as the co-op partner. My first run through this game was done with my nephew, and we minimized the effect of this by trading off who played as Kirby each level. It's something to keep in mind, though, especially if you're playing with someone of a similar skill level to you. Co-op is there, and it's reasonably fun, but the game was clearly oriented around following one player on-screen at a time.

Presentation-wise, Forgotten Land mostly excels. While it's a shame the game only runs at 30fps, the developers do make use of the headroom this provides to give us some of the most visually spectacular effects I've seen in a Nintendo game to date. Some of the fully upgraded copy abilities fill the screen with particles and visual effects that would cause most other games on the system to choke. Image clarity also benefits: The game tends to hang around between 900 - 1080p in docked mode, and usually hits a native 720p when undocked, making it a particularly attractive portable title.

More important is the sound, though, and Forgotten Land thankfully features a surprisingly good soundtrack. Probably the best in the entire series to date.

You, of course, get your usual chipper Kirby tracks:

But a lot of tracks in this game surprise. Take this amazing, and very 'Westerny' level theme, for example:

The game also features some stand-out boss fight themes. Really fantastic stuff:

While I don't think this track is a particular stand-out, I did want to link it just because I love the hilarious song name:

Kirby and the Forgotten Land is, in some regards, a safe sequel, but also an exquisitely executed one. The developers at HAL Laboratory really nailed the challenge of transitioning the broad movesets of the iconic pink puff into three dimensions, and even managed to improve combat to such a degree that it stands out among its other 3D platformer peers (particularly for the challenging and intricate boss fights littered throughout). While the level design is a little more linear than I'd like, it's also rich with secrets and optional objectives. Kirby is still in need of his Mario 64 moment where he's allowed to fully embrace the potential of his 3D freedom, but, all things considered, his first major 3D adventure is still a delight, and one I'd recommend to anyone who enjoys the genre.

8.5/10