Kirby's Dream Land 2 was a little... underwhelming, considering what had just come before it in Kirby's Adventure. Granted, it's back on the Game Boy, so I will cut it some slack there, but it just wasn't as enjoyable or finely tuned as either of the preceding Kirby games, to me.

In Dream Land 2, the amount of copy abilities has been cut down a bit from Kirby's Adventure. This is a bit disappointing, but not totally surprising. In their place are new Animal Buddies, each offering different forms of movement and altering your copy abilities in different ways. The idea of riding animals as Kirby never really appealed to me before, and I definitely stand by that opinion now that I've played with it. Some animal buddy combinations are so strong that they break the game (Owl + Parasol). It paints the rather monotonous level design as even more of a slog than it already was, forcing you to hear the same 1-3 animal tracks for most of the game instead of actual stage music.

Level design often only requires you to pay attention when it comes to auto-scrollers or Rainbow Drops. That said, I don't find the Rainbow Drops to be nearly as tedious of a collectible as others have suggested. It might take a couple guesses of the right ability and/or animal buddy, but I find that inoffensive at worst. World 6 was the only standout for me, requiring a guide after multiple failed attempts, but the rest felt fairly organic to solve. Auto-scrollers, by contrast, felt pretty indefensible. Especially the trial-and-error maze in 7-6. Most of World 7 felt pretty uninspired, truthfully.

All-in-all, Kirby's Dream Land 2 felt like it took an interesting concept (animal buddies), but utilized it in a series that wouldn't really take advantage of it. It didn't do short-and-sweet gameplay as well as Dream Land 1, and it could never handle the thoughtful stage design of Adventure. Certainly not a bad game, but not one I would ever recommend.

Kirby's Dream Land is a pretty alright experience. I'm surprised that it's the first Kirby game and not the second, given that it feels like a simplified spin-off, sort of like Super Mario Land.

You control Kirby, who can Inhale enemies to spit them back out, and Float endlessly over terrain, but not much else. Kirby didn't debut with his iconic Copy ability, so the controls are quite simple. Added to that, there are only 5 levels, so the whole experience takes less than an hour to finish the first time around.

With all that said, there's not much to complain about here. It's a simple game, and it does well for what it is. But it doesn't light my world on fire, and I wouldn't have been asking for a sequel if I didn't know what other plans they had for Kirby in the future.

Honestly, I was blown away when I realized this game was an NES title. The graphics, music, level design, and depth are all ahead of their time.

While only the 2nd Kirby game, it's surprisingly the first to feature copy abilities, including things like the Hammer, Beam, Wheel, and UFO abilities! The level designers really went all out, utilizing Kirby's immense copy-enhanced moveset to create much more intricate stages than in Kirby's Dreamland. It also has significantly more stages than Dreamland, with tons of secrets and puzzles. And it all culminates in an absolutely unforgettable final boss battle.

Sadly, the game runs terribly. In a way, it's further proof of how advanced the game really is for the hardware. It absolutely chugs when there are only a handful of things on screen, and it makes Kirby frustratingly hard to control during more pivotal moments, even dropping my inputs at times. Topped off with most of the unlockable stages being filler 1-UP mini-games, and it sours the experience a little when looking at the whole picture.

Overall, an absolute must-play if you're a fan of Kirby or the NES. It has some misgivings, but playing it makes it easy to understand how and why Kirby became such a Nintendo superstar, and it's definitely an important piece of video game history.