Good game, but a lot of missed potiential and just feels kinda poorly designed in areas which is weird in Kirby. This is the first Kirby game developed by Flagship, who was a pretty interesting company co-funded by Nintendo, Sega and Capcom. They are often cited as a subsidiary of Capcom, but that is false despite working on several Resident Evil games, they are independent. This was also co-developed by Dimps! (who made most of the Handheld Sonic games in the 2000s and early 2010s and a lot of Dragon Ball games) which I rarely hear people mention. So this mainline Kirby game is probably the most unique one until Forgetten Land went 3d. It's kind of an open world with some elements of a metroidvania. All of the areas connect together in various ways and once you find those connections, it unlocks a door in the hub world, basically letting you fast travel.You can get each shard of the Mirror (Kirby must collect 8 of them after it was shattered by Dark Meta Knight) in pretty much any order you want. The metroidvania elements come in that Kirby has some upgrades you can acquire in this game. You can get hearts (to extend his health) and maps (to map out each of the game's 9 areas) hidden in giant chests (you can really feel the developer's previous work on Zelda in this game lol). You can also get smaller chests which contain little optional trinkets such as different colors for Kirby. This is pretty cool and gives you a reason to explore all of the various areas. Kirby's feel is fantastic in this game (which makes sense since it was straight copied from Nightmare in Dream Land). He is speedy, his float feels just right, and he feels very responsive. The level design feels a bit weak tho. Having the enemies respawn literally the second they leave the screen was annoying in an exploration game. Some of the enemy placements feel cheap(This is where you can feel the Dimps design in this game lmao). The game's still pretty easy, but it's just annoying at times. The other thing I really don't like is when you explore and then you end up in an "exit" which basically gives you a bonus game to get lives and extra health. But it basically punishes you for exploring since it takes you all the way back out to the hub world. And when you realize you've seen one, you can't backtrack. This design is not as bad as I might make it seem as the world is relatively compactly designed, but I can't help but feel that this punishs exploration before you got the map. But yeah I can see why some would really love this game a lot. The ambition makes it seem quite distinct, and underneath that is still a decent but pretty flawed standard Kirby game. But I can't help but feel they should've leaned into the more ambitious aspects of the games and made a straight up Metroidvania Kirby game. Imagine if abilities worked like Milky Way Wishes in Super Star, and then you could level up those abilities kinda like how you level up souls in Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow. And certain abilities are required to access certain areas. This game would be quite a bit better than the game we got. The game we got was decent, but isn't something I think I will go back to anytime soon.