It's interesting coming back to this game after growing up on its remake. Super Star at this point feels like a beta of Ultra: there's a lot of slowdown, the graphics are less polished, and there's so much quality of life changes that Super Star is lacking in hindsight.

Dropping your ability as a star, sharing invincibility candies, proper maps and UIs in the Great Cave Offensive and Milky Way Wishes... not to mention so many more additional minutia all over (including how the abilities control) that you can't really describe but very much feel.

Super Star was the pioneer in Kirby's gradual shift into becoming a combat-focused platformer... but even that has been very much expanded upon in later games, where Star Allies makes every single ability extremely combat-capable by contrast, leaving Super Star in the dust.

But it's still a revolutionary game for its time, and a pivotal one in the direction that the Kirby series would take afterwards. It's important, and very much worth respecting... even if it's far shorter than the "8 games in one!" tagline may imply.

One thing I should mention in addition is that Super Star does a great job doing more with less. There's a fair amount of recycled content throughout the subgames, but they're recontexualized very well through the different mechanics and rules of each of them.
I think I'd like to see future Kirby games do this again.