I have a love-hate relationship with mini golf, which carries on over to this game. It's very neat and usually decently fun to go out and do, but with 1 player it's lonely and depressing and with more you're always making a big scene at each other bc like your friend will do something like bounce you out of the way and get in the hole before you at the same time. So usually mini golf video games end up on about the same enjoyment as actual mini golf every time. (unless the course is fucking dogshit, like Kingdom in Tower Unite for example. Fuck you. Die)

I'm currently trying to play all the Kirby games in release order, and this is the first spin-off title on that list. I really didn't know much about it before going in, other than it's a "mini-golf" style game. Quite frankly, I think this Kirby's Dream Course is more brilliant than it sounds on paper.

This is just another one of those classic Nintendo games with some really smart game design (alongside some that come to mind for me like Wrecking Crew and Panel De Pon). Yes, the main goal is to putt Kirby into various enemies before reaching the hole, but there's much more variety here than a typical game of golf. Not only do holes appear where the last enemy on the course is located, but the game utilizes traditional Kirby mechanics like tomato health and power-ups. This combination actually creates a puzzle game with various strategies and solutions the player can choose to go forward with. Especially during the later courses, it's almost required to examine the map and plan out your moves and power-ups ahead of time, and that makes for some brilliant design.

My only wish is that there were more courses, perhaps some post-game challenges, especially after an obtuse final boss fight. Those cons definitely outweigh the pros though, and Kirby's Dream Course is simply another smart and charming game to come out of old-school Nintendo. It's great, and definitely worth your time if you're looking for another puzzle game.

I've been playing this game for YEARS, like I mean years, when I was like a teen my cousin had it on the SNES and I played it a lot but didn't beat it. As the years went on, I've played this on every console/service it released on and only just now beat it on my Nintendo 3DS. So did I like it?

Had I been asked years ago, I would have said it was okay...not an overly interesting spin-off, but a decent one for Kirby, but as the years went on, I recently began to notice how interestingly smart the courses were and how the setups were put together. For those unaware, this is basically a golf game with Kirby as the ball and no clubs. You aim the shot, the bounce, trajectory, power and so on, same stuff you'd do in golf. Kirby also has abilities from his regular games which change how he gets around obstacles and such.

The abilities like in all Kirby games is where this game shines at its best because the courses are set so abilities can help you get a faster par or possibly a hole-in-one if planned correctly. Unlike golf the hole isn't set in stone, the hole appears when you've killed the second to last enemy, so if you aren't careful you can screw yourself over if that enemy is on a slope or very close to a hazard or somewhere you can't access as easily. On a side note, what actually brought me to want to finish it, aside from this being one of the few Kirby games I never finished, was seeing how disappointing Mario Golf: Super Rush was, sad that a game that came out 27 years ago ended up being more fun with it's limitations versus something recent practically following the same sport.