I personally didn't end up having a good time, but it's not a bad game. It's actually a really creative exploration of tilt mechanics, quickly switching from one high-concept level to the next Donkey Kong Country-style without giving any one mechanic time to grow stale. Given how much of a novelty this type of game design was, such that the cartridge would have used a custom gyroscope, I have a lot of respect for what they were going for.
Where it fell apart for me was with the port to Switch. Ironically, it's because of how much technology has improved; the Switch port leverages the Joy Cons' built-in gyroscopes, which are worlds ahead of what Hal Labs was able to stuff into the GameBoy Color carts. Because it's so sensitive, you have to have much more precise control over your movements than you ever needed in the original. Plus, if you're playing the game docked (which I was, since I was streaming my playthrough), there's an additional degree of abstraction and separation from your play that just makes it that much harder to wrap your head around. This is absolutely not a fault of the game itself, and I have in fact played a good chunk of the Japanese cart on original hardware for comparison; the base game is hard, but not quite as hard as it is the way I played it. My recommendation to you is to absolutely play it in portable mode, if you're trying out the Switch port.
Still, I do think some of those levels are designed to be annoying time sucks, and I'm not keen on that. Several levels are "walls" that will halt your forward momentum until you can solve them. Some of these I think are okay - 3-1 is a huge time sink, but it's very forgiving and specifically designed so the player can recover and try again while they learn. But other levels are endurance runs, and those really wear on me. I hold particular distain for 3-4, 5-2, 7-3, 7-4, and 8-4. I'm generally not a fan of any sequence where you're waiting for something to happen, whether that's the dumb bridge-building robots, the dumb conveyor belts bringing you back to the room's entrance, or anytime you're bouncing off a single bumper and trying to turn all sparkly. I know these are just how the challenge is designed and represent normal difficulty progression and scaling; maybe it's be better to say that I didn't enjoy the process of getting good enough to master the particular challenge this game had to offer.
For that matter, while all the sub-games are cute, there's a persistent issue that you MUST leave a high score in order to gain 1ups from them. Not a big deal at first, but it's quite easy to screw yourself over in, say, Kirby's Chicken Race by scoring really well the first time, then being unable to surpass that as the game difficulty scales. And Do The Kirby is another example of the game wasting time to get to a certain point. I like Simon-type games well enough, but a 3up is not a strong enough incentive to spend ten minutes per attempt trying for a new high score.
This is one of the earliest games to give Kirby voice acting, after Super Smash Bros. and Kirby 64. This is Makiko Ohmoto, who would become his regular voice actress, but you can kinda tell that everyone was still figuring out what the little guy should sound like. There are all sorts of early bits of weirdness, like Kirby cheering "Yatta!" when he collects a red/blue star, or his horrifying anguished groan when he drowns. All things that would be ironed out, but funny to run into here.
This would be Kirby's very last 8-bit outing, notwithstanding throwbacks like NES Remix and 3D Classics Kirby's Adventure. The game almost feels like a back-to-basics title, trimming its ensemble most of the way back to its Dream Land cast (with some exceptions, like Mr. Frosty and Starman), taking out Copy Abilities, and reintroducing a Mint Leaf-equivalent. A consequence of all this is that the game feels a bit sentimental, like it's an accidental send-off to Classic Kirby. By coincidence, this would be the last title before Kirby's rough patch, where progress on a mainline GameCube title stalled out and Kirby mostly got by on its anime and handheld outings - not unilaterally bad things, but inconsequential enough in the broad gaming market that Kirby fell from its B-list status among Nintendo properties to C or D-list. On a personal level, this would have been the last Kirby game to come out before I got into the series with Nightmare in Dream Land - so finally getting to play it really felt like I was putting a bow on my full series playthrough.
I have pretty mixed thoughts on the game, as you can see, but I'm willing to accept that that's largely a me-problem. Still, do try to play it in handheld mode, if you're playing it on Switch.
Where it fell apart for me was with the port to Switch. Ironically, it's because of how much technology has improved; the Switch port leverages the Joy Cons' built-in gyroscopes, which are worlds ahead of what Hal Labs was able to stuff into the GameBoy Color carts. Because it's so sensitive, you have to have much more precise control over your movements than you ever needed in the original. Plus, if you're playing the game docked (which I was, since I was streaming my playthrough), there's an additional degree of abstraction and separation from your play that just makes it that much harder to wrap your head around. This is absolutely not a fault of the game itself, and I have in fact played a good chunk of the Japanese cart on original hardware for comparison; the base game is hard, but not quite as hard as it is the way I played it. My recommendation to you is to absolutely play it in portable mode, if you're trying out the Switch port.
Still, I do think some of those levels are designed to be annoying time sucks, and I'm not keen on that. Several levels are "walls" that will halt your forward momentum until you can solve them. Some of these I think are okay - 3-1 is a huge time sink, but it's very forgiving and specifically designed so the player can recover and try again while they learn. But other levels are endurance runs, and those really wear on me. I hold particular distain for 3-4, 5-2, 7-3, 7-4, and 8-4. I'm generally not a fan of any sequence where you're waiting for something to happen, whether that's the dumb bridge-building robots, the dumb conveyor belts bringing you back to the room's entrance, or anytime you're bouncing off a single bumper and trying to turn all sparkly. I know these are just how the challenge is designed and represent normal difficulty progression and scaling; maybe it's be better to say that I didn't enjoy the process of getting good enough to master the particular challenge this game had to offer.
For that matter, while all the sub-games are cute, there's a persistent issue that you MUST leave a high score in order to gain 1ups from them. Not a big deal at first, but it's quite easy to screw yourself over in, say, Kirby's Chicken Race by scoring really well the first time, then being unable to surpass that as the game difficulty scales. And Do The Kirby is another example of the game wasting time to get to a certain point. I like Simon-type games well enough, but a 3up is not a strong enough incentive to spend ten minutes per attempt trying for a new high score.
This is one of the earliest games to give Kirby voice acting, after Super Smash Bros. and Kirby 64. This is Makiko Ohmoto, who would become his regular voice actress, but you can kinda tell that everyone was still figuring out what the little guy should sound like. There are all sorts of early bits of weirdness, like Kirby cheering "Yatta!" when he collects a red/blue star, or his horrifying anguished groan when he drowns. All things that would be ironed out, but funny to run into here.
This would be Kirby's very last 8-bit outing, notwithstanding throwbacks like NES Remix and 3D Classics Kirby's Adventure. The game almost feels like a back-to-basics title, trimming its ensemble most of the way back to its Dream Land cast (with some exceptions, like Mr. Frosty and Starman), taking out Copy Abilities, and reintroducing a Mint Leaf-equivalent. A consequence of all this is that the game feels a bit sentimental, like it's an accidental send-off to Classic Kirby. By coincidence, this would be the last title before Kirby's rough patch, where progress on a mainline GameCube title stalled out and Kirby mostly got by on its anime and handheld outings - not unilaterally bad things, but inconsequential enough in the broad gaming market that Kirby fell from its B-list status among Nintendo properties to C or D-list. On a personal level, this would have been the last Kirby game to come out before I got into the series with Nightmare in Dream Land - so finally getting to play it really felt like I was putting a bow on my full series playthrough.
I have pretty mixed thoughts on the game, as you can see, but I'm willing to accept that that's largely a me-problem. Still, do try to play it in handheld mode, if you're playing it on Switch.