sango
2021
They did the part where you take pictures of pokemon very well and everything else kinda sucks but the one thing they did really good is what you do for 90% of the game
Fun game, but I don't find most of the levels to be as memorable as some of the other Kirby games. One of the best soundtracks in the series though. Final boss kicks ass, other bosses are the most forgettable bosses in the series. Other dimension segments of levels got boring after a while, especially because you play through one like once every two or three levels.
1992
it's worth the less than 30 minutes it takes to beat the game. very decent game.
1995
a lot of the bosses have a shit ton of health, especially later on. a lot of copy abilities are worse than just playing as normal kirby because of how much of an unsafe position you have to put yourself in to use their moves. theres like an 7 copy abilities in the game too, which I guess is supposed to be made up for with the fact that the game has animal friends, but Coo is the only one I found fun to use. Levels are also a lot more boring than other kirby games ive played. you have to keep fighting the same mid bosses throughout the game over and over again. game would be like a 1 or 1.5 stars if it werent for the final boss being goated because its a kirby game of course the final boss is gonna be goated.
Great game, but weighed down significantly by how many of the game's puzzles to get the crystal shards is bringing the right copy ability combination to blow up a color coded block. At some point I just started looking ahead in the wiki to see what copy abilities I would have to bring to the next level so that I wouldn't have to keep replaying levels. aside from that it has great level design and combining copy abilities is cool. kirby is very cute in this game.
remake of an already great game. great level design and movement, except for turning around being shit. When you're running and you hit the oppsite direction you slide like you hit a fucking luigi wavedash and you're not even facing in the direction that you pressed. would've also been nice if they brought the full moveset of the copy abilities instead of all of them only having one move because that's what they had in the original, but it's not the worst because the game was designed around that moveset.
2006
it's like great cave offensive but not nearly as cool. definitely on the weaker side of the kirby games in terms of level design, i just beat the game and I barely remember it, but its kinda fun i guess.
2018
this is an interesting game. theres a lot that i love about this game. I love the visual style and the ui, i love the new copy abilities, i love the advancements it makes in the lore, i love the music, i love the new friend mechanics and how the level design is a lot more focused around having friends than super star or amazing mirror was, and i love the mechanic of mixing your copy ability with your friend's copy ability to infuse your weapon with some element or do a special move. the new mechanics that they introduce are great, and if the level design was good i honestly think this couldve been one of the best kirby games.
I like the puzzles in this game because they use the new mechanics and I like the new mechanics, but the puzzles themselves are bad. theres one puzzle where youre supposed to have a friend light a rope on fire while you do a special move with the parasol copy ability, with a newly introduced mechanic, to block water from falling on the rope so it can keep burning. this one puzzle takes advantage of two new mechanics, and it wouldve been a great puzzle if the answer wasnt literally right in front of you. for every puzzle in the game the copy abilities that you need to solve them are either in the room or right outside of it. its not a puzzle if the answer is right in front of you. obviously this could work if the game did something like having the requirement to solve the puzzle be the weirdest combination of copy abilities that uses them in a really creative way, but that just isnt the case. most puzzles are solved with the most obvious application of the copy abilities. because of how the levels are set up, it conditions you to think about levels in a fucked up reverse puzzle way, where instead of you thinking "there's running water here, I wonder how I block it", you think of it as "there's a lot of parasol abilities here, I wonder if i'm going to use it in a puzzle in a second", and with that you've solved the puzzle before you've even seen it. isnt that fucking stupid? the puzzles could've been a way to make certain levels stand out, and that is what they try do, but because almost every puzzle is optional the puzzles dont feel really rewarding to do. most puzzles just reward you, ironically enough, with a random puzzle piece, and puzzle pieces are just a collectible that exists because they need some collectible in the game to reward you with when you complete puzzles. with most of the puzzles just being optional you barely have to engage with the level design, and with the reward being so small for completing the puzzles and with how brainless the puzzles are to solve most puzzles are just forgettable. The level designs aside from the puzzles aren't great either a lot of it is very hold forward gameplay. you dont have to put any thought in the game to beat most levels. it's just way too easy. obviously kirby games are meant to be easy, but this game pushes too hard in the easy direction to the point where it almost feels like it plays itself. And when a game feels like it plays itself, i dont feel like playing it. it's this weird conflict of them trying to appeal to young children by making the game really easy, which I guess in that sense it succeeds, but it also has more fan service than any other kirby game, appealing to long time fans of the kirby series, who is the exact opposite of young children. long time kirby fans are going to find the level design extremely boring, and people playing a kirby game for the first time are going to wonder why the game thinks its so important that you can play as gooey that they announce it at every chance they get.
Guest star mode is a mode where you can play as most enemies or a fan favorite character from one of the previous games and play through the game. conceptually I like it a lot. its just a shame that this is the game that this mode is on. The mode encourages you to go through the levels as fast as possible with a timer in the corner at all times and ll, and that means most of the puzzles, the one thing that gives the levels the slightest bit of identity, are meant to be skipped or are impossible. This is the mode that really shows how dull the games level design is, with being able to autopilot your way through everything. Playing guest star mode is like playing the game for the first time again, but not in the way the game intended. All of the levels are so forgettable that when you play them in guest star mode youve completely forgotten the level so everything is new. Guest star mode is everything it should be. All of the playable characters are given a full moveset that is fun to use. The only problem is that the levels themselves are not good, and playing through them as daroach from squeak squad doesnt solve this problem. it is a mode that was doomed to be bad from the start.
the one saving grace of this game is the "heroes in another dimension" mode, which was added months after the game's release so most people probably never played it. for this mode you're forced to play as whatever copy ability or dream friend the game wants you to, and whats great about this mode is that even though you are given all of the copy abilities that you need to solve every puzzle in the room that the puzzle is in, it makes you solve puzzles by taking advantage of your moveset in ways that aren't initially obvious and solving puzzles leads the path forward, like a game with good design. In this mode the collectibles are hearts, and if you collect at least 100 of the 120 hearts you can fight a secret boss, like a rewarding collectibles system. heroes in another dimension's level design is actually great, and it takes advantage of all of the game's new mechanics in somewhat challenging ways that makes it actually memorable. In the few months between the game's release and the release of the patch this mode came out on, they remembered what good game design is.
anyway. praying like shit that they learn what they did wrong with this game and that forgotten land is a banger.
I like the puzzles in this game because they use the new mechanics and I like the new mechanics, but the puzzles themselves are bad. theres one puzzle where youre supposed to have a friend light a rope on fire while you do a special move with the parasol copy ability, with a newly introduced mechanic, to block water from falling on the rope so it can keep burning. this one puzzle takes advantage of two new mechanics, and it wouldve been a great puzzle if the answer wasnt literally right in front of you. for every puzzle in the game the copy abilities that you need to solve them are either in the room or right outside of it. its not a puzzle if the answer is right in front of you. obviously this could work if the game did something like having the requirement to solve the puzzle be the weirdest combination of copy abilities that uses them in a really creative way, but that just isnt the case. most puzzles are solved with the most obvious application of the copy abilities. because of how the levels are set up, it conditions you to think about levels in a fucked up reverse puzzle way, where instead of you thinking "there's running water here, I wonder how I block it", you think of it as "there's a lot of parasol abilities here, I wonder if i'm going to use it in a puzzle in a second", and with that you've solved the puzzle before you've even seen it. isnt that fucking stupid? the puzzles could've been a way to make certain levels stand out, and that is what they try do, but because almost every puzzle is optional the puzzles dont feel really rewarding to do. most puzzles just reward you, ironically enough, with a random puzzle piece, and puzzle pieces are just a collectible that exists because they need some collectible in the game to reward you with when you complete puzzles. with most of the puzzles just being optional you barely have to engage with the level design, and with the reward being so small for completing the puzzles and with how brainless the puzzles are to solve most puzzles are just forgettable. The level designs aside from the puzzles aren't great either a lot of it is very hold forward gameplay. you dont have to put any thought in the game to beat most levels. it's just way too easy. obviously kirby games are meant to be easy, but this game pushes too hard in the easy direction to the point where it almost feels like it plays itself. And when a game feels like it plays itself, i dont feel like playing it. it's this weird conflict of them trying to appeal to young children by making the game really easy, which I guess in that sense it succeeds, but it also has more fan service than any other kirby game, appealing to long time fans of the kirby series, who is the exact opposite of young children. long time kirby fans are going to find the level design extremely boring, and people playing a kirby game for the first time are going to wonder why the game thinks its so important that you can play as gooey that they announce it at every chance they get.
Guest star mode is a mode where you can play as most enemies or a fan favorite character from one of the previous games and play through the game. conceptually I like it a lot. its just a shame that this is the game that this mode is on. The mode encourages you to go through the levels as fast as possible with a timer in the corner at all times and ll, and that means most of the puzzles, the one thing that gives the levels the slightest bit of identity, are meant to be skipped or are impossible. This is the mode that really shows how dull the games level design is, with being able to autopilot your way through everything. Playing guest star mode is like playing the game for the first time again, but not in the way the game intended. All of the levels are so forgettable that when you play them in guest star mode youve completely forgotten the level so everything is new. Guest star mode is everything it should be. All of the playable characters are given a full moveset that is fun to use. The only problem is that the levels themselves are not good, and playing through them as daroach from squeak squad doesnt solve this problem. it is a mode that was doomed to be bad from the start.
the one saving grace of this game is the "heroes in another dimension" mode, which was added months after the game's release so most people probably never played it. for this mode you're forced to play as whatever copy ability or dream friend the game wants you to, and whats great about this mode is that even though you are given all of the copy abilities that you need to solve every puzzle in the room that the puzzle is in, it makes you solve puzzles by taking advantage of your moveset in ways that aren't initially obvious and solving puzzles leads the path forward, like a game with good design. In this mode the collectibles are hearts, and if you collect at least 100 of the 120 hearts you can fight a secret boss, like a rewarding collectibles system. heroes in another dimension's level design is actually great, and it takes advantage of all of the game's new mechanics in somewhat challenging ways that makes it actually memorable. In the few months between the game's release and the release of the patch this mode came out on, they remembered what good game design is.
anyway. praying like shit that they learn what they did wrong with this game and that forgotten land is a banger.
2014
It's just a great kirby game. great level design consistently introducing new and creative mechanics. first 3d kirby game to actually take advantage of it being 3d with the levels playing with the foreground and background a lot, which is something I really love even in robobot and also they completely take away in star allies for some reason I have no fucking idea why. When hypernova was first introduced I thought it was gonna be like the super abilities in return to dreamland, where you just go up to the place where you use the ability and then you use the ability and then go forward and thats it, and to an extent hypernova is also like that, but they keep introducing new ways to use the big succ throughout the game which always made it fun to use. I could see those sections being boring on repeat playthroughs but overall it's an extremely well made game. Maybe im just biased because I just got off playing star allies so the goods of this game feel especially good, who knows.
2008
I love the art, writing (of the english translated version at least), world and storytelling of the game, but most of the puzzles aren't good, especially early on, being really easy to understand but just taking a long time to find the answer because you have to traverse an entire area to find the different parts of the answer, the combat is really boring, every enemy encounter including bosses can just be beat by flowcharting "attack and then heal when health low", and I hate random encounters. It has cool ideas but it just isn't a well made game.
2017
whats funny about this game is that the worst part of it is the combat and then you learn the person in charge of the combat in this game directed astral chain which has the best combat
i wake up crying every day because people let this game sell like shit twice
There's a lot about this game I really love and really don't like. When it released people called it a lazy cash grab, and I really couldn't disagree more. The lazier cash grab thing to do would've been to just make a safe 1:1 remake of the original game and not add as much as this game did. I like the story a lot, even if the ending doesn't make a lot of sense, the combat is great. The graphics are cool too I guess but really my shit with the graphics is when you hit an enemy and sparks fly in like two million different directions I'm a big fan of that.
I'm not sure if it's the voice acting or the writing or the animations or the direction or what, but in nearly every dialogue scene something just feels so unnatural. Side quests also aren't great. I've played this game three times, once on hard mode, and there's a lot of parts of the game I legitimately dread and never want to play again. This game's pacing can be quite awful, with some parts of the game where you just go from one place to another being stretched out to like an entire hour and it's so fucking boring. Of the 18 chapters I'd say there's like 4 that I fucking despise.
Hard mode is also a lot of fun. All of the enemies are harder yeah, but also you can't use items. You can recover health with magic or resting on benches, but you can't recover MP as easily so there's another layer of difficulty with managing your MP like that. There's also a few secret bosses exclusive to hard mode that are pretty ridiculously hard, and I just used a guide on how to beat those because I would be stuck on them for a fucking long time if I didn't but it's cool that they added that. I don't think I would ever play hard mode again, but it's a fun thing to do once.
There's a lot the game doesn't do well, but hey, the story is good and the combat is fun. That's pretty cool.
I'm not sure if it's the voice acting or the writing or the animations or the direction or what, but in nearly every dialogue scene something just feels so unnatural. Side quests also aren't great. I've played this game three times, once on hard mode, and there's a lot of parts of the game I legitimately dread and never want to play again. This game's pacing can be quite awful, with some parts of the game where you just go from one place to another being stretched out to like an entire hour and it's so fucking boring. Of the 18 chapters I'd say there's like 4 that I fucking despise.
Hard mode is also a lot of fun. All of the enemies are harder yeah, but also you can't use items. You can recover health with magic or resting on benches, but you can't recover MP as easily so there's another layer of difficulty with managing your MP like that. There's also a few secret bosses exclusive to hard mode that are pretty ridiculously hard, and I just used a guide on how to beat those because I would be stuck on them for a fucking long time if I didn't but it's cool that they added that. I don't think I would ever play hard mode again, but it's a fun thing to do once.
There's a lot the game doesn't do well, but hey, the story is good and the combat is fun. That's pretty cool.
The combat is a lot more fun than the base FF7R and the side quests aren't bad, but I don't think I have a lot of good to say other than that. I think Yuffie is annoying and I don't care about any of the other characters, I think the story is pretty pointless, it's basically Yuffie going to Shinra to steal the "ultimate materia" and I kinda don't care. I still think it's a lot of fun especially with Yuffie's combat style because god Yuffie's combat is fun. I just. Don't care for it. Maybe I expected the wrong thing because I expected it to be the continuation of FF7R and not like a side story that happens during the game. I don't think much happened in the story that had to be in a 5 hour long campaign, and couldn't just be explained in like a couple of sentences when Yuffie meets with the rest of the characters, if it even has to be explained at all because nothing really happens.
2022
I certainly admit this game isn't entirely for me. I love the From Soft games, and I love exploring the areas within them, but I don't love it enough that it's all I want to do in them. For me the bosses and the combat and the customization options and all that were what I love most about the other games. I still enjoyed exploring most of the time in Elden Ring, but I can't tell you how many times, especially after around 40-50 hours that I found a new area and fucking dreaded exploring it. I just got tired of it after a while.
Another problem I have is with the bosses being incredibly repetitive, especially the smaller dungeon bosses. A few bosses even just get used later on as normal enemies, and pretty often too. Even aside from being repetitive, I'm just not the biggest fan of the bosses in this game. This is definitely more of a personal preference thing, but bosses are designed around summoning spirit ashes, but I just find the bosses from other From Soft games that are designed around only having 1 person to target so much more satisfying than the Elden Ring bosses where you're expected to use time that the boss targets your spirit to heal or attack them from behind.
But still, I can't deny what this game does well. Even though I got tired of the game because the map was so huge, a lot of people will fucking love the game for it. The game's side quests are also as great, there's so much customization available (for better or for worse because it seems to have become a bit of a balancing nightmare), a lot of the bosses are great, music, art direction, enemy designs, cool armor, different locations, fucking hell. Even though I got tired around 40-50 hours in, at the same time it was strangely a game I never wanted to stop playing. I didn't consistently enjoy it as much as I enjoy a lot of other games, but I can't bring myself to give this game anything below a 9/10. Up until I got tired of the game I was considering it for my top 10 favorite games. It's a fucking amazing game.
Another problem I have is with the bosses being incredibly repetitive, especially the smaller dungeon bosses. A few bosses even just get used later on as normal enemies, and pretty often too. Even aside from being repetitive, I'm just not the biggest fan of the bosses in this game. This is definitely more of a personal preference thing, but bosses are designed around summoning spirit ashes, but I just find the bosses from other From Soft games that are designed around only having 1 person to target so much more satisfying than the Elden Ring bosses where you're expected to use time that the boss targets your spirit to heal or attack them from behind.
But still, I can't deny what this game does well. Even though I got tired of the game because the map was so huge, a lot of people will fucking love the game for it. The game's side quests are also as great, there's so much customization available (for better or for worse because it seems to have become a bit of a balancing nightmare), a lot of the bosses are great, music, art direction, enemy designs, cool armor, different locations, fucking hell. Even though I got tired around 40-50 hours in, at the same time it was strangely a game I never wanted to stop playing. I didn't consistently enjoy it as much as I enjoy a lot of other games, but I can't bring myself to give this game anything below a 9/10. Up until I got tired of the game I was considering it for my top 10 favorite games. It's a fucking amazing game.