It’s Kirby brought into the third dimension. Narratively it’s quite simple; Kirby is whisked away to a new world via a vortex where he finds the Waddle Dee in captivity by the Wild Beasts. Accompanying him on this adventure is a creature named Efflin (and Bandana Dee if you’ve got a second player with you), and together they traverse across the lands to rescue the dees and explore what the world has to offer. Aesthetically the game is vibrant even with the locales being your classic environments, helping with that is the charmingly cute animations and the whimsical music that that capture the feeling of going on a grand adventure. Stages task you with getting to the end, platforming and solving simple puzzles you come across, while saving any Waddle Dees in a given stage. Kirby’s fluid and responsive controls makes it an ease to take on any obstacles the game throws your way, with the copy abilities also by your aide. Each have their own quirks that can be used to vanquish foes or navigate the terrain to rescue Waddle Dee’s, such as using Ice to extinguish flames to pass or travel through the ground with the Drill ability. New to this game is “Mouthful Mode”, which allows Kirby to swallow large objects like vending machines to spout soda cans or cars to traverse quickly thru. The variety in the abilities you can obtain makes it so the games always feels fresh with each ability you decide to use. Plus, you can upgrade abilities so that they become more powerful, which requires you go thru warp roads, star-shaped rifts laid thru out the lands that offer mini timed challenges for star bits, and blue prints scattered throughout stages. Stages are always composed of five objectives, each rewarding you with a set number of Waddle Dees, with the first being a given simply for getting to the end of the stage. Finding hidden dees, taking down posters, defeating bosses in the allotted amount of time are some of what the game task of you to execute a rescue of the orange puffs. All this in order to unlock the boss stage for each land. I never found it to be all too difficult, even playing on Wild Mode, the games higher difficulty. The only thing that got a little irritating was how objectives don’t appear until the stage is completed or you do them while active isn’t the stage, making it so that every time you miss an objective and complete a stage, you have to start it all over again to complete a different objective, which I felt a restart option would have solved the issue. It’s available for Warp Road stages but not main stages. For every number of Waddle Dees you rescue, the more the town, your main hub area, will expand. Here you can evolve copy abilities, fish, participate in tournaments, or even just rest. It was always satisfying seeing the town appear more lively the more Dees you rescued. The game isn’t too long, but I feel it does what it needs to to satisfy my platforming needs.

Overall, I had a fun time with Kirby and the Forgotten Land. It’s a solid time from beginning to end. Hoping a follow up can go further beyond standard affair and do something more extravagant.All that aside, it was a fun time.

RANK: A