A fun little story in a cool new location. I wish the main games environments were designed like this DLC's. Kitakami while smaller felt more interesting to explore on foot compared to Paldea's barren flat open lands that I just zoomed through. The story was simple but enjoyable enough but the new rival characters made it more interesting, going through a neat character arc thats a reversal of expectation. The game still runs like garbage though which really jarring and disappointing, but I still enjoyed my time in this expansion and I'm looking forward to Part 2.

A bunch of smaller Kirby games in one bundle. Overall it’s pretty solid! Spring Breeze and Dyna Blade are standard fun Kirby adventures, but the back 3 games, Great Cave Offensive, Revenge of Meta Knight and Milky Way Wishes all try to change the formula a bit and they mostly succeed. I enjoyed Meta Knight’s fast franctic action and Milky Way’s ability collection was a fun twist, but I couldn’t really get into Great Cave Offensive. The Metroidvania aspect is neat, but a lack of map or any sense of direction made me feel like I was just blindly bumbling around till I stumbled on the end. Still the whole package is great and finally being on the SNES means Kirby’s colorful cartoon world finally gets to pop with color and animation.

Kirby Series Ranked

For every positive this game has there’s a negative:

+ More levels than Dream Land 1
- The levels are poorly designed, varying between boring and annoying with the enemy placements

+ Copy ability is here!
- There’s only 6 abilities you can get and they’re barely useful most of the time

+ The animal friends are a neat addition
- They usually aren’t much help outside of the specific situations they’re needed/giving you a bit of a health buff

+ A very cool and challenging final secret boss
- That has a timer feature on its final phase that feels very unfair

So yeah, very torn on this one. It’s not terrible but definitely not as good as Dream Land 1 or Advenure.

Kirby Series Ranked

Completed on both regular and extra modes.

Kirby’s first adventure is a very quick and easy game. Five short levels with little challenge save for a some later bosses. Then you get the extra mode which cranks the difficulty up and adds some more challenge, but it’s still a short game that can be quickly cleared.

If only there were some sort of ability Kirby had that added a neat gameplay gimmick to make fighting enemies and bosses feel a little more engaging and exciting. Hmmm…

Kirby Series Ranked

A cool little game that fit's the metroidvania mold. The gimmick of piloting a tank and being able to get out on foot feels very ambitious for it's time. Was unfortunately held back for me by its NES era mean-ness with its enemy placement and level design, and the lack of an in game map makes navigating difficult and confusing. Also it doesn't affect the gameplay at all but I don't know why they made the localization changes they did? An intergalactic war feels like a much more interesting set up than a boy chasing his pet frog.

A really fantastic open world adventure. Visually this game is absolutely stunning. Every location and point on the map is gorgeous and the world balances the imagery of scenic beauty and the harsh effects of war very well.

The games story is pretty straightforward and simple, invading forces quickly take over and the player fights back and builds a resistance to take back their home. It's not bad but it's not really for the first 2/3 of the game. But the end of Act II and all of Act III really ramps it up with lots of twists and dramatic turns that really made the whole thing worth it. It's also where one of the main themes of the game (Honor, change, and what it takes to save your home) that was simmering for the first chunk of the game finally comes to the surface, culminating in a shocking final boss fight and a final difficult choice to determine the ending where both options feel right and satisfying. And that's just the main story! The side stories are also fantastic! The ones involving the other main characters have entire arcs with their own twists and turns, they feel like entire stories within the main story which is amazing. Even smaller side missions help build the world and add to the main themes of the game. After beating the main story I ran into a small open world event that tied into some of the ramifications of the story which I found fascinating. The world truly feels alive, connected, and affected by the story which is something a lot of open world games fail to do.

Of course its not just the story and visuals that make this game fun, it's the gameplay. Combat is extremely smooth and satisfying. You get multiple sty,es to switch between depending on what type of enemy you're fighting which keeps fights from being completely monotonous and as you progress you unlock so many tools, moves and abilities that you can tackle fights in tons of different ways. Exploring the world is also fun, as stated before it's visually stunning and using the wind and birds as way points is brilliant and doesn't clog up the screen with markers. The one negative about this game though is that it falls into the typical open world problem where there's a bit too much side content and collectibles. While getting all of them is by no means required, it still becomes monotonous when you've done what feels like 20 fox shrines and you find yet another. It all just feels a bit like padding/filler that stretched out the playtime.

Still overall this game is absolutely fantastic and there's so many little things on top of what I've already mentioned. Highly highly recommend experiencing this one for yourself.

MISC FINAL THOUGHT: Honestly not sure if they should make a sequel to this. While it would be cool to see Jin go on another adventure with new gameplay additions and places to explore, the story and journey in this are so well done and self contained I kinda feel like it should remain a one and done story. But I guess we"ll just have to wait and see if that's something Sucker Punch decides to do.