As a giant ring, Kirby creates blasts of air that, among other things, set this boat in motion.
Story Hook is a dimensional vortex that suddenly appears, engulfing everything in its orbit and spewing it out elsewhere in the universe. Even protagonist Kirby cannot escape this strange power and shortly after the start of the game he finds himself in an environment full of overgrown ruins. What happened here and how does he get out of there? Not clear! The only thing that is certain is that the inhabitants of the world – the so-called Waddle Dees – have been kidnapped by animal-like creatures and urgently need Kirby’s help.
Great worlds, creative level design
The rescue operation that follows takes about ten hours and takes you through half a dozen beautifully designed scenarios, each with four main levels, a boss level and a multitude of additional challenges. The beauty of it: It doesn’t matter whether you are exploring the natural planes, exploring the Everblue Coast, exploring the ruins of a fairground, exploring the ice and snow-covered winter hilltop, roaming the Origins desert or invading “Rothart’s Forbidden Lands” – that Level design in all six worlds is bursting with creative ideas and crazy transformation possibilities for our hero.
As soon as Kirby has freed himself from the fingers of this nasty giant gorilla, a graphically worth seeing, but not particularly demanding boss fight begins.
In the abandoned amusement park of Wunderia, for example, Kirby can transform himself into a roller coaster car with the help of his brand new “Stuff Up” ability and thus scour the track for collectibles. Elsewhere, after tapping a tap, he mutates into a gigantic water balloon that effortlessly sprays enemies out of the way with a steerable jet, cleans dirty level areas or gives new life to withered flowers. But vehicles, vending machines, lifting platforms and even huge scaffolding can also be sucked in at the push of a button, which Kirby then transforms into exactly these objects and gains new possibilities for action.
Tons of skill upgrades
On the other hand, if the hero sucks in regular opponents, he takes over their special ability – as in previous “Kirby” games. A swallowed knight, for example, turns Kirby into a sword wielder himself, while a sucked in fire enemy grants him the ability to shoot fireballs. Important innovation in this context: For the first time, all twelve talents can be improved several times in exchange for well-hidden blueprints, special stars from additional levels and the collecting stars scattered everywhere at the arms dealer in Waddle-Dees-Stadt. For example, the “discoverer” Kirby, armed with only one pistol, becomes the “noble explorer”, who then wields two handguns.
The rapid roller coaster ride is one of the optical highlights in the fairground world “Wundaria Ruins”.
The ability upgrades fit harmoniously into the game concept and primarily lead to the fact that the already quite simple fights can be mastered even faster. This applies in particular to the boss duels, which genre connoisseurs usually tick off at the first attempt. It is much more challenging to beat the best times set by the developers in the additional treasure hunt levels and to master the additional challenges, some of which are very well hidden, in each main level.
If you like, you can also tackle “Kirby and the Forgotten Land” completely in two-player co-op mode and switch from the regular “Wild Mode” to the “Fresh Breeze Mode” at any time in the options menu. The latter is primarily aimed at action game beginners and gives Kirby and his Waddle Dee co-op buddy a particularly large number of life energy points.
In order to beat the best times in the treasure hunt levels specified by the developer, several attempts are usually necessary.
Beautifully animated and catchy to music
Technically, “Kirby and the Forgotten Land” cuts a very good figure. The levels are wonderfully colorful and packed with lovely details, effects worth seeing and strong animations. In addition, there is a soundtrack composed with heart and soul, which is immediately catchy and underlines the omnipresent good mood feeling from the first minute. The loading times are limited and the frame rate was also pretty smooth in the test – with a few exceptions. The only downside: the camera can only be readjusted manually to a very limited extent.
Greetings from “Super Mario Sunshine”: In his water balloon form, Kirby cleans dirty level areas with a focused jet of water.
Fortunately, in most cases this is not necessary anyway. From time to time, however, it means that some passages are more confusing than they should be and you overlook collectibles, among other things. Do you want to play a test first? Then take a look at the free demo version in Nintendo eShop.
Release: “Kirby and the Forgotten Land” was released on March 25, 2022 for Nintendo Switch and was approved by the USK for ages 6 and up. A demo is available on the Nintendo eShop.