One of the most huggable games ever made, but so fundamentally slow and clumsy that it works out to not being very good. Side objectives are tedious but no more difficult or engaging than the regular ones meant to be achievable for Literal Babies (no way I'm going through all those levels to get the second ending), movement is the most sluggish shit I've ever felt with a hilariously unresponsive double tap to run, powerup combinations are cool but often worse than their base forms, etc. There's a number of impressive setpieces but they're often held back by how incompetent they are at communicating depth and when hitboxes will be active, a problem that would have been understandable earlier in the generation but is absurd to see in a game released in the 21st century.

But I can't rate it lower. Kirby is just a lil guy, yknow?