I feel bad that my first experience with modern 2D Kirby was Star Allies. While that game has its moments, it totally pales in comparison to this. First of all, running at a consistent 60 does wonders for bosses in these games, and second of all, there's actual level design. Levels aren't just a series of hills and enemies, there's shit to do! I really felt like I finally got a good grip on how to play these games, and I understand why the majority of Kirby fans nowadays are so content with where the series has been going.

Also, the bonus Magolor Epilogue is nothing to sleep on. The way the levels in that mode are based on maintaining a combo may seem odd at first, but as you unlock more of Magolor's moveset it all comes into place. Each development feels fun and substantial, and every level feels extremely well tuned to compliment the combo-based system.

This game in general does a really good job of encouraging mastery by giving you lots of little opportunities to hone skills with moves and copy abilities. Little sections in levels are all about understanding certain abilities and what they can do, and the challenge levels in Magolor's ship are all about understanding the little nuances of abilities you may not have recognized before. It's no wonder this became the Kirby formula back when this came out on the Wii, it's all done just right.

Even the side mode Merry Magoland, a collection of really solid mini-games, has this aspect of encouraging mastery through its achievement list for every mini game, as well as the super-satisfying stamp rally system. This is just an incredibly solid package, and as someone who hadn't played the original I was constantly delighted.

So I never got around to playing Return to Dreamland on the Wii for whatever reason… I think there was a period of time where I prefer watching LPs of Kirby games instead of playing them myself? I’m not really sure why, but I’m glad there was an expanded port to the Switch so I could actually play it. I mean, it did look fun, so it was probably going to be a great time, right? Yeah, it’s another game to 100%!

…I did not 100% it.

Kirby’s Return to Dream Land Deluxe is a game that I loved, like, a little over two thirds of, but boy, that last third is just. Well, I know having a harder Extra mode goes all the way back to the original Kirb, but hoo boy the autoscroll segments of Extra Mode’s orb dimension segments got kind of brutal after a certain point and bosses that I thought were decently challenging on normal were just kind of nuts. There’s nice helpful items you can get from Magoland but damn. That halved health bar is brutal. The fact that the changes to the stages effectively boil down to there being more and bigger enemies is also something I think is kind of dull for a campaign as long as Dreamland Deluxe, and I kind of wish they messed with the standard enemy models a little the way they did in the original Dreamland. So yeah I really do not feel compelled to finish Extra or the True Arena, like I am straight up not having fun with those. I got through the first level of the last world and decided I was done.

The rest of the game rules though. I really liked the Superstar-style big elaborate move lists for the copy abilities even if I found some of the inputs a little fiddly, and I enjoyed the Deluxe specific ones a lot. Mecha Kirby rules super hard and Sand is pretty neat. I gotta admit that I was especially fond of Spear too, it makes Kirby into a goddamn murder machine. The levels are fun and have some pretty neat little puzzles, and I had a pretty great time 100%ing Normal Mode.

And I gotta be real, I always love A Kirby Story. Love these little guys. Love the stylistic choice being consistent with Forgotten Land when it comes to Dedede too, he’s so friend shaped. I wouldn’t say this is my absolute favorite stage design in the series or anything but the atmosphere and aesthetics are pretty good, especially when you hit the last chunk of the game.

Speaking of Kirby Stories, Magolor Epilogue was a lot more fun for me than Extra in terms of more challenging content. The score based gameplay and upgrades were a lot of fun to mess with, and I DO love that little guy. He’s super fun to play with and his personality is a lot of fun. Maybe I do kind of wish it was just a little bit longer but eh it was still pretty great.

Magoland is the other piece of new content Deluxe brings and it’s… alright. I’m sure the minigames are more fun if you’re playing with friends instead of against the AI but I did have an okay time. Not enough to want to try and get every mask but I got a fair amount. The masks themselves are a fun collection of references and I do like them for the most part but…. I want to see Kirby’s cute little face doing his cute little emotes instead of a static mask… they did make replaying levels a little more fun and I imagine they’re really fun in multiplayer, but they were mostly Alright to me.

Honestly I wish I liked Extra mode more than I do because everything else is great and I feel kinda bad for being defeated by Kirby of all things. I mean the game just dumps lives on you constantly so it’s not like I was in danger of getting a game over literally ever, but at the end of the day this isn’t the kind of thing I come to Kirby for. I finished the stuff that mattered to me and I guess people who actually like to get their ass kicked by the cute little guy game for babies can enjoy Extra, but I think I’m good.

What an achievement from HAL laboratory. Kirby’s Return to Dreamland Deluxe is not only the best of the (relatively few) Kirby games I have played but also one of my favorite platformers of all time. An absolute joy from start to start to finish, I found myself grinning throughout most of the game. From the super abilities to the puzzles to the soundtrack to one hell of a finale, I was consistently surprised by how unique and creative this game truly was. Each level was a pleasure to explore due to the beautiful cell-shaded art direction and brilliant level design. While the combat and platforming is relatively easy to complete, some of the gears and hidden Star levels provided more than enough of a challenge to keep me engaged, and I believe the Extra mode (i.e., hard difficulty) will provide the combat challenge that is lacking in the first playthrough. Beyond the absolutely excellent campaign (and the bonus 2+ hour epilogue that I haven’t gotten to yet), this version contains another mini campaign in the form of 10 minigames located in Merry Magoland, an amusement park style area that fills with NPCs from the campaign and Waddledees as you complete over 100 missions associated with the minigames. Challenging in their own right, these were so much fun to go through and master. Alongside challenge score-attack stages for 9 copy abilities (which get insanely difficult), a boss rush mode that is a pleasure to roll through, and the unlockable hard difficulty, I’m gonna be playing this game for a long time, and I’m really excited to eventually play this in co-op, because I can already tell my partner is absolutely going to adore this. I never thought that I would enjoy a Kirby game enough to understand the passionate fanbase that the series has. Kirby’s Return to Dreamland converted me, and I am excited for whatever the pink blob and the kings & queens at HAL Laboratory have in store.

I've played many Kirby games that came out before and after the original Wii release. Was about to try it out but this remaster got announced so I said heck, let's just play this one.

Let's start with the overall main campaign:
Kirby’s Return to Dream Land set the blueprint for future Kirby games. They've improved on many things. Many copy abbilities got brought back and got improved tenfold. Ninja and Wing felt rather lackluster in their debut game but here, they are very fun to use. There aren't too many copy abbilities but the ones we have, provide a vast array of movesets. Very much quality over quantity. The optional abbility challenges are not just fun but also provide a nice tutorial for you to really master your abbilities. I also like the level design. There are collectible macguffins in all stages which require you to use your head a bit, so half-assing stages isn't reccomended. Sometimes stages also include items which Kirby have to carry, like a cannon that shoots repeatedly for example. They provide a nice temporal buff but also hinder your movement abbilities in some ways. I've found these items to be well placed and tied to the stage puzzles in clever ways. Even with these nice little small innovations and overall good design, I've found the main campaign to drag on a little too much. Near the end it kinda runs out of ideas and fails to show much new or exciting. The overall game is also a bit on the more basic side but it makes sense since it was Kirby's big Return (to Dreamland) It crawled so future games could run. The harder extra mode is also nice but not something I'd get to finish right after my first playtrough for the above mentioned reasons.

The other stuff:
This remaster features 2 new copy abbs. Sand and Mecha. Sand is not that hype in my opinion. Has some cool moves but overall, a lesser version of Water. Mecha on the other hand is pretty hype. As a mecha anime lover myself, it has one of the coolest movesets ever. The fireball launching up-attack might be a bit busted tho. You can spam it and it deals a ton of damage. Might be a better boss killer than Hammer but I still have to test it.

You also have the obligatory Arena mode. Never was my thing but I always welcome it. The new Magolor Epilogue however is pretty dope. It provides a completely new, combo and upgrade-buying based gameplay. It's fun and ends before it loses steam. For a small extra thing, It's an excellent addition.

So all in all, Kirby’s Return to Dream Land Deluxe is a perfectly fine Kirby experience. One of the best introductory games for the franchise and seemingly the definitive version. Later games are a bit better but there are still many hours of fun provided by this title. Good to play in small bursts and the Switch is just perfect for this.

This is the only Kirby game in this entire Kirbython that I went into completely blind, and I'm ecstatic to say that not only is this a really good remake, but it completely outclasses the original and is the definitive way to play Kirby's Return To Dream Land. Unfortunately, they didn't correct my biggest issue with the original (that being the fact that you essentially have to beat the game TWICE in order to unlock everything and get 100%) but all of the new stuff this Deluxe package adds are so goddamn fun and worth it that I just don't even care. Let's rapid-fire all of the new things shall we?: The game looks absolutely GORGEOUS now, they added 2 extremely badass new copy abilities as well as corresponding copy ability challenge rooms, an entirely new story where Magolor is the main character, ANOTHER new mode dedicated to returning mini games from previous Kirby games, a STUPID amount of new cosmetic options, The True Arena was completely reworked to include the bosses from the Magolor Epilogue mode as well as a new secret final boss, and ofc all of this means an entire army of new bangers in the soundtrack.

Yeah this is the definitive version of this game, no questions asked

Pop-Up Kirby is officially...found media! I enjoy Return to Dream Land back on the Wii, even finished it when I rented it from Blockbuster with my brother. Those were fun days as a kid... This truly was Kirby's return after a decade of Super Star's style left to sit there other than the DS remake. I plan to try the epilogue mode soon, but the minigame mode is a real treat of fanservice!
It's fascinating just how far the Kirby GCN iceberg goes. Once a late GameCube title canned and moved onto the Wii for a 3D action game. Then restarted development and shifted to a 2D pop-up book style game, which eventually became the game we know today. Assets reused for Smash Bros Brawl, Subspace possibly being inspired by Kirby GCN, and beta songs from all 3 iterations of Return to Dream Land. You can hear a specific motif that was truly made for Pop-Up Kirby and GCN, like yeah this totally would fit a storybook Kirby game. All of those assets were in the Wii game and still in this Switch remake, it's kinda crazy! This is just my space to ramble about Kirby GCN cuz it looked so damn cool...

(Edit: 2/13/24) Magalor Epilogue is a fun mode that adds some extra challenge to the mix. I like the moveset, upgrades and action focused level design a lot. I wish I could have tried it in co-op, but it’s a good, short experience in single player.

EU AMO KIRBY

Sinceramente, me diverti muito com o jogo. Os puzzles, embora simples, são divertidos. Pegar os segredos gamers do jogo, embora simples, deixa a gameplay ligeiramente mais desafiadora. O co-op dele é extremamente funcional, o player 2 pode trocar a hora que quiser entre os 4, fora outras versões do próprio Kirby. Isso deixa extremamente dinâmico, já que não existe aquele problema de você estar limitado por não ter as mesmas habilidades do protagonista. Sobre as habilidades evoluídas, achei meio monótono. É só um showzinho visual que diminui um pouco o dinamismo, tanto para o player 1 e principalmente para o player 2, que apenas olha. Mas isso é detalhe, o jogo continua sendo extremamente divertido.

Deixo uma dedicatória para o Magolor. Eu gostei mais do epílogo dele do que a mainline do Kirby. A evolução do Magolor é extremamente divertida, liberando habilidades completamente diferentes em relação ao jogo do Kirby, e, inclusive, o epilogo dele é bem mais dificil que o jogo normal. Eu te perdoo, meu mano Magolor.



HI!

NOTA: 8,0

Sendo uma espécie de remaster, foi merecida a chegada do melhor game da franquia Kirby do Nintendo Wii para o Switch.

Com a introdução de Magolor, um interessante personagem para o game, Kirby's returning to Dreamland Deluxe oferece a experiência que estamos acostumados a ver na franquia, com destaque nas texturas, sombras e a direção de arte sensacionais e uma trilha sonora bem fiel ao original.

Sinto que das aventuras de Kirby, esse é um dos mais divertidos no coop, oferecendo outros personagens além do protagonista, com fases curtas e em ritmo bom, com alguns chefes resgatados e remodelados de outros games e outros novos chefes.

Embora a experiência tenha sido divertida, sem dúvidas a campanha principal é extremamente curta e linear (solo é mais ainda já que as interações do jogo como os minigames são feitos para coop), o jogo poderia ter mais variedade de chefes e ser mais criativo de maneira geral (mesmo com a adição dos modos ultra, os chefes de fenda são quase sempre os mesmos também) talvez na maneira que o jogo esconde seus segredos e itens no meio da fase por exemplo.

Eu diria que o que dá uma salvada no game em questão de conteúdo e custo benefício é seu pós game, com a adição da arena e a campanha alternativa, além de no caso dessa versão em especial, a campanha do Magolor mudando um pouco a gameplay original do jogo ( destaque para o boss final, bem interessante, kirby não costuma errar nesse quesito).

Sem dúvidas uma experiência especial, porém reviver um jogo 2d da franquia me fez admirar ainda mais o Forgotten Lands de Switch com a gameplay em 3d, mostrando que de fato era necessária essa transição, ainda sim, recomendo o game para fãs da bolota rosa.

Not even the most optimistic Kirby fan (me!) could’ve imagined we’d get a remake of Return to Dream Land, especially right after we had just gotten the fantastic Kirby and the Forgotten Land (my GOTY of 2022) and the spin-off Kirby’s Dream Buffet, but we surely didn’t complain about it, and as expected of HAL Laboratory, the remake is fantastic.

Given it’s a Wii game, you’d imagine they’d just upscale everything and call it a day, but no, this is a remake from the ground up, with all models, assets and backgrounds completely remade, and HOLY DAMN if this game isn’t gorgeous! It’s even prettier than the previous 2D Kirby game on the Switch, Star Allies. Just that alone would justify the existence of this remake, but HAL is never content with the bare minimum, so they added some substantial new modes.

The one heavily featured on marketing material was Merry Magoland, a multiplayer-focused side mode featuring many subgames returning from previous games in the series and two brand new ones. Usually the subgames are just meant for a quick diversion in Kirby games, but this mode is surprisingly in-depth, featuring a bunch of missions for each subgame (that are fun to do even in single player!) and collectibles in the form of masks that you can get by playing them. Some will even alter Kirby’s sound effects when worn, which can be funny as heck (loved used the Drawcia and Haltmann masks).

But even better than Merry Magoland was the new campaign, Magolor Epilogue. You get to play as Magolor, the game’s “villain”, who starts incredibly weak, but as you progress through the campaign (which lasts around 3-4 hours, a solid amount for an extra mode) you unlock new abilities that make him overpowered af. The central mechanic of this mode is chaining combos on enemies with your attacks to get more Magic Points (that you use to get the aforementioned abilities), and it’s incredibly satisfying to chain massive combos. Undoubtedly one of the best extra modes in the entire Kirby series.

However, with all that said, Return to Dream Land is the game that started what Kirby fans like to refer to as the “modern era”. As such, it’s a solid yet pretty standard Kirby game, with simple level themes, bosses and gimmicks, aspects that would get much expanded on in the next games. If Triple Deluxe and Planet Robobot get remakes as phenomenal as this one I’ll be the happiest Kirby fan in the world.

Kirby games are ultimately fairly similar to one another, and they're typically very easy. For those reasons, I feel like I don't have too much to say about this. It's a really solid platforming game where the defining "twist," is that you can copy the ability of many enemies that block your way.

Different abilities in the game feel unique and there's a decent blend of obscure powers, classic favorites, and new entries. The challenges in the game never feel particularly difficult, but I don't think they feel mind-numbingly easy either. It's a general audience and feels approachable to everything, including children. Co-Op is super easy to jumping in and out, and everyone is able to enjoy trying abilities as Kirby. This made it a really fun time to play with my girlfriend.

The extra content outside of the main game is plentiful, but not interesting enough to get me to interact with some of it. Namely the boss rush and the mirror mode, both of which are exactly what they sound like (bosses back-to-back and playing the game again but right-to-left instead of left-to-right) The minigames were very fun however, and I have to give really big props to the Magolor epilogue.

The epilogue chapter was plenty of fun and gives you control over a character with so many awesome abilities that you can further upgrade. The character goes from performing like a wet paper towel to becoming a crazy shooting, teleporting, back-hole opening god. It's a shame that the levels in this were so much shorter and that the campaign doesn't last for more time. By the end of this, I enjoyed the gameplay style more then the main campaign, but I should just play something other than a Kirby game if that's what I'm looking for.

Ultimately, it's a Kirby game. Far from the best one, but a very good one. It's relaxing, super cute, supports some really fun and un-intrusive co-op and is worth playing. An awesome way to introduce people to video games too.

To my way of thinking, this is a straight improvement over the original game. The only thing missing is Scope Shot; otherwise you have everything that made the original Return to Dream Land what it was and then some.

I do think most of my issues with base Return to Dream Land went unaddressed. This is understandable; most of my issues with RtDL (disposable level design, Super Abilities drawing too much focus from other design considerations, Extra Mode feeling pretty superfluous, etc) were pretty core to the game's identity, and to change them would make this an inaccurate remake. Still, it's weird to see (for example) Extra Mode feel even more superfluous to the experience of the game this time around, since Magolor Epilogue feels more in-line with Modern Kirby's idea of a post-game.

But all the new stuff adds a bit! Magolor Epilogue is a very, very cool experiment, adding a River City Ransom-esque upgrade/progression system to Modern Kirby's beat-'em-up approach. It's the sort of thing I'd love to see done in the scope of a larger game, though the Magolor Epilogue itself is about the right size for what it's going for. Magolor himself gets a lot of fun characterization here through his upgrade screen commentary - I've never had the same no-holds-barred adoration for Mags many Japanese fans do, going by character popularity polls, but I'm starting to see it now.

Magolor Epilogue means the True Arena's been expanded, and quite a bit at that. An issue I have with Arenas after Super Star is that they feel so small in comparison - something I'll touch upon when I get around to a Super Star write-up - but this game's True Arena finally feels like a suitable match in scope, juxtaposing the EX fights with the Magolor Epilogue fights. Not to give too much away, but I was hoping to see the game experiment a bit more than the base game's surprise run-in with Galacta Knight, and I was pleased to see it did.

Merry Magoland is a terrific addition, too. Nostalgia's always been a huge part of Modern Kirby's identity, and this is an especially sweet manifestation of it, pulling mini-games from all across the series. I'm not completely on-board with all these picks - Crackity Hack over Megaton Punch makes sense from a representation standpoint (Amazing Mirror rep, 4-player's baked in) but I would've preferred to see the original, I would've pulled Air Grind from Nightmare in Dream Land over Bomb Rally - but it's a really fun compilation nonetheless. I'm particularly impressed they didn't chose to import Chop Champs or Star Slam Heroes from Star Allies - I would've enjoyed either of those here, too, but it goes to show how dedicated they were to reconstructing all these mini-games from the ground up. And every time I thought I'd caught Magoland in an arbitrarily restrictive decision I didn't like, I'd be proven wrong. Checkerboard Chase is slower than the original? That's just for kids to get comfortable with, you can unlock a version that's FASTER than the original. Samurai Kirby 100 only lets you play once a day? Nah, it only lets you RANK once a day, you can play as many times as you want. You can only clear a certain amount of missions per day? What are you talking about, the only other daily restriction is the Hidden Magolors, which get shuffled around.

It's small potatoes compared to everything else, but it bears mention - Kirby's spot dodge was backported from Triple Deluxe. Completely changes the mechanical flow of battles and allows the new fights to test Kirby with even more complicated patterns. It's at the cost of making certain fights, like Landia, even easier - but I don't feel too bad about that. Spot dodges require some mastery to use well, and they're my bread-and-butter for Modern Kirby anyway.

Return to Dream Land is a watershed game for the Kirby series, albeit one I don't get, or I at least don't feel what the Wii generation feels about it. Return to Dream Land Deluxe, I suspect, will not be that same watershed game for the Switch generation (after all, Star Allies and Forgotten Land are on the same hardware) - but I hope it is for some kids. There's sooooo much to do with friends and family, and much as I love Star Allies, this is a far more complete package. If I were 20 years younger, I might've spent years mastering this.

Kirby's Return to Dream Land Deluxe's biggest strength is how unapologetically happy and colorful it is.
Its visuals are bright and gorgeous except for the characters' outlines, although I did get used to them over time.

The gameplay is unsurprisingly very laid-back and ramps up in difficulty a little, but not too much.
Instead, the focus seems to be more on variety, which extends to more than just Kirby's copy abilities: On top of the normal stages Return to Dream Land Deluxe offers "chase" sequences, challenges and minigames that ensure there's always something to unlock and to do.
Because of this, completing the main story and Merry Magoland felt very natural and rewarding.

While I wouldn't listen to most of the game's music on its own, it serves the gameplay very well, going from upbeat synths to epic orchestral pieces in its final moments.
My personal standouts are definitely Freezing Temple and CROWNED.

The story (including the Magolor Epilogue) was interesting and I'm looking forward to finding out more about it, but it felt like they could've done more with it instead of keeping the story at a minimum.
I also felt like the parchment aesthetic of the cutscenes put an unnecessary distance between the player and the action, which made it harder to get invested in this joyful experience.

My only gripe with the gameplay is the execution of sprinting: Having to push the control stick in a direction twice to get to full speed takes just a little too long for an action that is supposed to be fast.
It also created multiple situations where Kirby didn't perform an action I intended to perform, because I was sprinting (or not sprinting) without my knowledge.
Mapping that action to a button would've probably made it easier and cleaner to execute.

The level design was pretty much exactly what I was looking for, but it did feel to be at its strongest when it was designed around a single ability and didn't have to account for 24 others.
This is especially obvious in the new Magolor Epilogue, which was solely designed around Magolor's moveset.

Slowly upgrading this little character from almost nothing to being excessively powerful gave this mode a sense of progression as strong or even stronger than the main game.
Your mastery of all the different moves is repeatedly being put to the test by confronting you with harder bosses, some of which actually gave me a little trouble!
Admittedly, I wasn't a big fan of having to grind for the last few upgrades, but I'd be more than happy to see the mechanics of the Magolor Epilogue return and be fully explored in a whole game.

Finally, I want to point out how much detail was put into this game.
The art design, how much personality the characters have, Manager Magolor's statistics: There are so many aspects that show how much love went into this remake that I heavily recommend this game to anyone who's looking for a little positivity.

To be honest I never actually played the original game on Wii (didn't actually own any Kirby games on the system until 2018... and even then it was just Dream Collection lol), so this was ultimately my first experience with the game. And, well, all I can say is that it was a really good one.

Levels are overall just well-designed and fun in general, full of variety in terms of the core level design, art style and all the different power-ups/abilities you can pick up, while also being open for replayability and completion with collectibles like the Energy Spheres which unlock new challenges and 'rooms' within the Starcutter.

The 'Super Abilites' were especially interesting to me, largely coming down to how they used upgraded versions of the regular abilities to change up the environment and unlock dimensional rifts, adding a sort of mini-challenge taking place within a sub-level that allows you to unlock energy spheres. Plus the game is generally well designed around the abilities in general and how you can use certain abilities with the environment and level design.

The visuals are also really nice and colorful, and I really like the storybook aesthetic for the cutscenes. Plus the controls also feel really good.

Really, the only thing that I can complain about is that the difficulty is really on the easy side, especially if you're just beating the main story mode instead of going for collectibles. It does pick up a bit towards the end, but even then I was able to hold on to around 50 lives at the end of the game just on my first playthrough. That being said I don't think Kirby is really a series that is going for any level of difficulty so it doesn't bother me all that much. Guess I could also point out that Kirby's ground movement was a little slow for my liking at least in some areas, but again, didn't really bother me too much.

This remake also adds some new features and further replayability to the game. Admittedly I didn't really get too into it as I just focused on beating the Story Mode for this playthrough, but I do think it is worth noting in addition to the updated graphical style, there's also the addition of masks, the 'Merry Magoland' mode, and the Magalor epilogue that adds some lore to the character - something I'm definitely going to go back to and try at some point and gives some added value to the remake even for those who already own and/or played through the original version.

Overall, really solid remake and I can see why this game is among the fan favorites. As someone who's just now getting into the series, this might be my favorite out of what I played (which granted is just Kirby's Dream Land 1, Forgotten Land and this lol) and honestly between playing it and Forgotten Land last year I do kind of wish I played more Kirby games growing up.