2.5/5 ★ – Spongyoshi's review of Kirby's Adventure.

On the end of the NES' life cycle, this little puffball starring in a very simple platformer makes his debut on home consoles with a fully-fledged platforming adventure! But can that title even interest players? First thing first, the presentation is amazing. Very clean title screen, amazing tutorial cutscene + intro with a complete plot if you wait, a save system and amazing visuals and soundtrack! Say bye to only 4 stages, now you have 7 complete worlds to explore with a fun world map that links the stages together with bonus minigames and other surprises along the way! The whole interface is very fantastic! But let's talk about the elephant in the room, Kirby's arsenal has been reworked, he can now dash and slide which are very welcome additions, and when an enemy is in his mouth, if he eats them, he gets a copy ability which changes his inhale move to a brand new move! It's a really fantastic idea and makes the game way more fun to casually play through, especially since unlike power-ups in Mario, they're quite varied, there's 24 of them, in fact!! Definitely the most interesting part of the game and this game's best addition by far as it basically implemented Kirby's biggest identity as a game franchise! But while the presentation & concepts are solid, the rest is honestly pretty weak. Kirby feels pretty loose to control as sometimes, few inputs wont register if it's out of a dash, a landing, a jump, etc... The hit detection can also be pretty wonky and pressing up by accident is still as much of a problem, I even had it happen while trying to dash. Enemies are also pretty unpredictable and with the abondance of enemies in stages, it can be pretty difficult to keep your copy ability for a while. Not to mention the level design is pretty nebulous and forgettable which is a huge shame. Bosses were also downgraded, most of them being forgettable and mini-bosses no longer work as an introduction for the full boss, instead being randomly thrown out at random during stages. Overall tho, the game still has strong points, a few moments are still really strong and it still plays nice but mostly, the beggining is strong, the game ends on a very strong note as well, and the rest is just kinda there which is a huge shame... It's a good game mechanically and the presentation is sublime but the majority of it is kinda mindless and messy and it's a huge shame for all the right it did, oh well...