3.5/5 ★ – TNGLiam's review of Kirby's Dream Land 3.

Going into this title, I was unsure as to what I would come out feeling. I recall hearing how this game was mediocre at best and its coloring book art style was all it had going for it. So after experiencing it for myself, I can say that this is mostly true, but not to such a drastic extent. It is true that the game's art style is very unique in that it looks like that of a coloring book, and the game really takes that theme and runs with it. Everything looks so gorgeous and polished in the graphics department that really gives this game an identity of its own. Along with that, this game's soundtrack is unique, soft and bubbly, but in a way the Kirby series hasn't seen since; I believe it's because of the game's soundfont. But following up after "Kirby Super Star" and it's drastic improvements to the gameplay formula, "Kirby's Dream Land 3" really falls flat. The tight, fast and precise controls of "Super Star" aren't present in this game, with it feeling more like "Dream Land 2", but on an even lesser scale. Kirby's dash feels stilted, and all the animal buddies generally feel really slow and once again uninteresting to play with, which meant I only played with them when necessary. Speaking of the animal buddies, Rick, Kine and Koo are back, along with three newcomers; whom being Nago the cat, Pitch the bird, and ChuChu the... ChuChu? Regardless, using and sort of copy abilities with these characters halts the usefulness of majority of them in two, with some abilities having no attacks whatsoever, leaving you completely vulnerable unless you discard it. Moving onto copy abilities, this game moves away from the approach "Super Star" brought to them, having multiple moves and such, and instead brings us back to the singular move approach, which once again halts gameplay completely. Not only have the amount of abilities once again been drastically reduced, but some abilities have been completely nerfed and entirely changed, making them way less useful as they were before. A new character was fully introduced into the series to act as Player 2's avatar, that being Gooey the Dark Matter. While you can summon him to play alongside you during single player, I didn't find myself bringing him out too much. One of my favorite aspects about these games for far are the boss battles, and this game delivers greatly on them. Not only have veteran bosses been revamped with new and surprising ideas, but new bosses are still fresh and unique that still allow them to be fun, challenging, and entertaining. Some great examples are Whispy Woods uprooting himself to chase after you, or King Dedede floating in air as he's once again been possessed. Not to mention the final boss, Dark Matter and Zero who once again feature a unique copy ability that features aerial/shooter gameplay that makes for a great final challenge. "Kirby's Dream Land 2" had the seven Rainbow Drops, which were incredibly irritating and frustrating obtain during my playthrough of the game, yet they were still necessary in order to challenge the true final boss. In "Kirby's Dream Land 3", this is no longer the case. This time around we have the Heart Stars, with one located in every level, with each one being given to Kirby by an NPC located at the end of the level, who you have to do a task for in order to receive the Heart Star. None of them were particularly annoying or irritating, but some required a lot of backtracking and replaying in order to get the right copy ability or the right animal buddy. Overall, I believe this was a fun and entertaining time to be had, but it's still not a title I see myself revisiting any time soon, as there are much better times to be had in some of Kirby's other adventures. Check it out if you so wish!