4/5 ★ – TNGLiam's review of Kirby Star Allies.

Platform: Nintendo Switch Time Played: ~20 hours Status: Completed (Crown%) ⟳ Kirby Star Allies is the game in the series that is most unanimously agreed by fans as mediocre at best, and while I can see why people make such complaints, I still found myself enjoying the game a fair bit, and as it becomes even better of an experience depending on how knowledgeable of a Kirby fan one is. The main criticism that most people make in regards to this game is the friend system/gimmick. The main gimmick of this game is that Kirby can befriend any enemy he encounters that could otherwise give him a Copy Ability, with up to three friends being able to join him by his side at once. At face value, this is a pretty good idea for multiple reasons. If you're playing the game with multiple people, it can be a fun experience just like multiplayer was in Return to Dream Land, but at the same time, your friends can also add certain elemental properties to your weapons depending on your setup. So for instance, Hammer, Sword and Bomb can all have Fire, Ice, Electricity, Water and Wind elements added onto the preexisting ability just by having your friend share said power with you. This aspect heavily reminds me of the same idea that was had in Kirby Squeak Squad, which in itself is reminiscent of the Copy Combinations from Kirby 64. The main problem with this gimmick is that game's difficulty, and the friend character's AI. This is hands down the easiest Kirby game in the series if one decides to keep a full party of friends throughout their adventure, especially when it comes to bosses, which can be beaten within less than a minute depending on the setup. This lack of difficulty kind of makes it feel like the adventure is not solely your own. I really liked in Return to Dream Land the feel of having to constantly swap in and out of certain abilities in order to complete puzzles to obtain collectables, and with your party of friends, you just need to get the proper friend with the proper abilities for each puzzle, and the friend AI will do it for you, and most of the time, the enemy is placed within a single screen of the puzzle said ability is required for. But in my opinion, this problem can easily be overlooked for the simple fact, that the button combination of L+Y, fully removing the character from your party, or holding Y near a character derived from a Copy Ability, to potentially take their ability for yourself. Personally, I just decided to take out everyone from my party if I didn't have any need for them, and if I came across a puzzle that required a friend ability, I just added them to the party, and removed them once said puzzle was over. Simple as that. The AI for the friends can be a little stupid at times. There were moments when the ceiling would be collapsing, and you had to get to a certain area to be safe, meanwhile, one of my party members just decided to do the smallest jumps ever seen by man, being unable to get over the platform, killing them in the process. There were other times when I jumped inside of a cannon after lighting the fuse, and my party members just couldn't figure out how to jump inside. Sometimes, depending on who is in your party, it can take ages to get the right friend ability to be added onto your own. There were times where if I wanted Fire added to my Hammer, my Water and Plasma members kept adding to my Hammer, but not the Fire member. But these instances are few and far between, so it's more of a nitpick. Moving onto the actual journey itself, which I found pretty fun! Of course the graphics and music have been spruced up for the most modern generation which was wonderful to finally see Kirby in so much graphical beauty, and the look of each level is really helped by the absolutely beautiful graphics. I was initially surprised when I found out that there were only four worlds in this game, but as I played through, I realized that each world has more and more levels than the last. The second and fourth worlds are also comprised of different themes for each level, so in Pop Star you have your autumn level, your beach level, your ice level, and your lava level, with the same layout in Far-Flung Starlight Heroes (the fourth world). The only real downside is that World 1 and 3 (Dream Land and Jambastion) don't follow this setup, and instead keep a similar theme throughout almost the entire world, but it's excuseable because Dream Land kind of throws you off and sets you up for the good surprise of having multiple themed levels in the world after it, and Jambastion fits because of the storyline. Each world also has multiple different Extra Levels that can be found by pressing hidden switches in certain levels, something that I'm glad returned from the 3DS titles. Also, World 4 literally has 18 levels, while the others don't even have half of that, making the final world feel like a grand adventure on its own. The story of this game is pretty interesting, but it's honestly your typical Kirby fanfare. Some mysterious force does some mysterious thing, sending dark evil hearts throughout the galaxy, with majority of them ending up on Pop Star. The evil hearts start possessing some inhabitants like Whispy Woods, Dedede and Meta Knight, so it's up to Kirby and his friends to track down where they're coming from. The main villain organization, the Jambastion Religion, is a pretty alright set of villains to add to Kirby's rogues gallery. The Three Mage-Sisters fit pretty well to be a comparison to the three main friend abilities that can be added to Kirby's Copy Abilities, and Hyness was a pretty creepy and menacing boss, until he reveals himself to be an absolute crazy lunatic. Also the final boss with Void Termina is pretty great, and to jump ahead a little, I really like how each variation of his boss fight (Void Soul and Astral Birth Void) adds more and more references to past Kirby final bosses to his massive moveset. For example, Astral Birth Void's title card is a direct reference to Zero from Dream Land 3. Void Termina's winged form has the same wing pattern as 02 from Kirby 64, and he also uses the Master Crown from Return to Dream Land to attack you. The floor pattern inside Void Termina looks the same as the level leading up to 02 in Kirby 64. Void takes on multiple different faces and forms in his battles, with some of them looking just like Dark Mind from Amazing Mirror, or Dark Matter from Dream Land 2. He even uses similar moves to Drawcia Soul, Dark Mind, and many more final bosses from throughout the series. So as a game made to celebrate Kirby's entire history up to this point, I would say that Void is a perfect final boss for this game, and I absolutely love how he is a combination of every villain Kirby has faced so far, with him even looking like Kirby himself at times. Honestly, this game is just Kirby fan service the game, because as I said, it is a celebration of everything Kirby from the 25 years before this game's release. Surprisingly there is a lot of Dream Land 3 specific fan service, as a lot of enemies from that game in particular return for this adventure, with the Clean ability from that game actually making a reappearance, which was very surprising. One of my favorite pieces of fan service is the inclusion of Morpho Knight as the final boss of the Guest Star Hero mode. Morpho Knight's design is directly inspired by a concept design for Meta Knight that was featured in the special pamphlet included with Kirby's Dream Collection. The design was so cool that it quickly became a fan favorite, and to see that HAL Laboratories included the design in this game to the capacity that they did, going as far to reveal the orange butterfly that always accompanies Kirby in the intros for each modern game, really shows how much HAL cares about their fans and what they want to see. As for the new boss rush mode, The Ultimate Choice, I kind of like how they allow the player to choose what difficulty they want to face, although in order to unlock everything and to beat the mode, you still have to finish it on the highest difficulty, so I feel like just having The Arena/The True Arena return would have been better. Although I suppose that would mean not getting to see the different facial expressions of Kirby pouring hot sauce onto his curry, with a great reference to the Evil Kirby episode of Right Back at Ya! with his expression for the Soul Melter mode. The main collectables that this game offers are puzzle pieces, with 80 pieces comprising a single Celebration Photo. As of the final update to the game there are 18 Celebration Photos to get. I believe upon the game's release, it was unfortunately easy to get duplicates of the same puzzle pieces, but as of now (from what I can tell), each new piece you get always gets you one step closer to completing an image, which might I add all look so great and are all callbacks to previous games in the series, with tracks or remixes from those games playing when selecting an image. In Story Mode you can also get rainbow puzzle pieces that unlock certain sections of certain puzzles. The puzzle pieces are all distributed well throughout the Story Mode, and you always feel like you're getting a good amount. Although, there is no way one can complete all of the Celebration Pictures without playing through Guest Star Heroes multiple times, or grinding out in Story Mode. This game also got three waves of free updates, which each added three Dream Friends that could be summoned in the Story Mode or The Ultimate Choice, or played as in Guest Star Heroes. Each Dream Friend comes from a previous game in the series' lineup. We got Rick, Kine & Koon from Dream Land 2, Marx from Super Star, Gooey from Dream Land 3, Adeline and Ribbon from Kirby 64, Dark Meta Knight from Amazing Mirror, Daroach from Sqeuak Squad, Magolor from Return to Dream Land, Taranza from Triple Deluxe, Susie from Planet Robobot, and the Three Mage-Sisters from of course Star Allies. Seeing each of these characters return in this fashion is incredibly rewarding as a fan, as some of these characters had only been seen in cameos since their previous appearances. Although I can't help but wonder why they didn't include Prince Fluff from Epic Yarn, unless HAL doesn't consider it enough of a mainline entry. Included with the third and final free update was the new mode Heroes in Another Dimension, a new short little story in which Kirby and the Dream Friends travel through Another Dimension (the actual location from the climax of Return to Dream Land) in a challenging set of levels, with 120 Friend Hearts to collect along the way. This mode was actually pretty challenging compared to everything else in the main story, so it was a really welcomed addition to round out the game's content. Also the introduction of the black colorization Parallel bosses was pretty cool. Finishing this mode with 100 Friend Hearts unlocks the Mage-Sisters as Dream Friends, and they are honestly so OP compared to all of the other Dream Friends. Also Soul Melter EX, which was an additional difficulty added to The Ultimate Choice featuring the Parallel bosses, was a great final challenge to cap the game off with, especially with the amazing Astral Birth Void boss I was gushing over earlier. Also beating this difficulty allows you to change Kirby's design in Story Mode to be that of how he looked when he debuted, and honestly it's a pretty good final reward and surprise. Lastly, I'd like to talk about the Copy Abilities this game has to offer. For new abilities, we have Spider, Staff and Artist. Staff is honestly just a new version of Spear (which is only in this game through Bandana Waddle Dee's moveset) but I like it better. Spider is also pretty cool, giving the normally basic enemy Como a potential ability, and the chance to have him become your friend. And Artist is essentially a fully fledged ability based off the single-use Paint ability from Super Star. They also introduced the new single-use ability Festival, which is essentially a new version of Crash (which is still present) but includes all of your party members in the attack. Yo-Yo finally returns, and Beetle makes its comeback, same with Cleaning as I mentioned earlier. They also kind of nerfed Plasma, as it now plays exactly as it does in Super Star, no longer including the Spark move that it had in the previous three titles. Also, it's kind of odd that there are only like five mini-bosses in the game, and I feel like they definitely could've added more. Also Dedede's new redesign is even worse than his Triple Deluxe one and it makes me feel weird. Just keep him how he looked in Return to Dream Land for goodness sake. In conclusion, I personally don't understand all of the distaste for this title in the Kirby series. Sure, the Story Mode can be too easy depending on how you play it, but if you stick to the mindset of playing by yourself at every opportunity you can, or if you're able to play it with other people via couch co-op, than a really good Kirby adventure is to be had! Otherwise, the additional content that the game has to offer can also be a great time depending on how big of a fan you already are of the series, but for me, it was a good time. Check out this game! Especially if you love Kirby already!!