Check it out, everyone: someone on this site is posting about a Kirby game!

Return to Dreamland is your typical Kirby platformer: along with your standard left/right movement and jump ability, you can keep pushing the jump button to FLY INFINITELY. Also, just like other traditional Kirby games, you can hold the attack button to eat enemies and star blocks, at which point you can either shoot them out as a projectile weapon or swallow them to absorb their powers (if they have one), and swallowing two or more enemies with powers triggers a roulette that gives you a random power (the power-combinations from Kirby 64 may be gone for good). New to this game is that if you shake your Wii-mote, you can eat specially-designated stone blocks (on top of being able to eat further and more at once), and shaking the Wii-mote is also how you escape the grip of larger enemies (and how you deal the finishing blow to the final boss). You can also abandon your power by pushing the minus button, at which point it turns into a star and bounces around for a few seconds; it’s actually a good idea to do this (especially with mini-bosses) because the game likes “hiding” the optional collectibles behind barriers that can only be broken with maybe one or two powers, one of which was that enemy you just killed, and no, you don’t get to backtrack to where it was, so you have to play the whole level again just to get that one last collectible.

Obviously, being a Kirby game, you can expect the difficulty to be fairly low. It’s far more substantial than something like Shu, but, like, if the official New Super Mario Bros. games make you rage-quit, this is the franchise for you. I lost count of how many levels start off with what’s basically a flat hall with the occasional enemy that only attacks whenever it feels like it, without even so much as a spike trap or bottomless pit (that, again, you can just fly over). To make things even easier is the game’s main gimmick: Super Powers. Basically, every two-or-three levels, around the half-way point of said level, there will be a glowing enemy that the camera will focus on for a couple seconds, and swallowing this enemy will grant you said Super Power. They only consist of one attack each (on top of having a limit to how much you can use said attack before it runs out and you go back to being normal Kirby), but said attacks are much more powerful and further-reaching than standard attacks. Plus, these segments always have that one object scattered throughout the room that only interacts with the aforementioned Super Power, and triggering the one near the end opens a portal to an auto-scrolling segment followed by basically-the-same-mini-boss-each-time-except-maybe-the-arena-is-a-bit-different-now-or-maybe-it-has-one-new-attack, and defeating said mini-boss gets you two more of the game’s optional collectibles. Honestly, I’m not that big a fan of the Super Power segments since they come across as scripted and gimmicky (though less so than Giant Kirby from Triple Deluxe since this game at least starts to do interesting things with the Super Powers by the final world, like making you time the snowball-dash between crushing pillars). It seems like it’s only there for the power-fantasy element: “Hey, remember all these mini-bosses that made you actually put forth some effort to get through them? Now you can kill them in one hit! Doesn’t that feel so amazing?”

Well, at least the rest of the game is fairly solid. The difficulty in the main game doesn’t really think about picking up until you make it to the boss of world 5, but there are plenty of optional segments that help add some challenge. On top of the auto-scrolling segments mentioned previously (where you’re being chased by a harmful wall of purple that slows down if you get too close), there are segments where you can race an enemy holding a key in order to unlock a door, which usually leads to another optional collectible; it helps spice up what would otherwise be average rooms. There are even segments where the key is just sitting there, but you actually have to hold the key and bring it to the locked door yourself (and holding an item prevents you from flying, though you can still jump). Similarly, there are a some segments where you can enter a giant shoe (which also prevents flying), and if you want whatever secret is at the end of the section, you have to time pushing the jump button at the moment the shoe stomps on an enemy in order to make a full jump (otherwise, it’s just a small bounce that’ll force you to abandon the shoe before you fall into a pit).

Now, you may think that whole “ ‘s “ in the title would imply that Kirby has to journey back to his home, but Kirby actually starts off in Pop Star and spends five worlds with the promise of being able to go somewhere else. Instead, that whole “return” is meant to imply a return to form after 11 years without a new, traditional Kirby game, and this is reflected in just how much content is recycled from earlier entries. I’m okay with normal enemies being the same since level design is what’s supposed to keep platformers engaging, but half of the mini-bosses are lifted from Kirby’s Adventure, and all of the mini-bosses are regularly recycled throughout the game. It takes until the final world for the game to start doing unique things like “now there’s a cannon in the boss’s room!” or “you have to fight two mini-bosses at once!” There’s even a level that’s just a mini-boss gauntlet because, hey, Kirby’s Adventure did it, and people liked that game, so clearly everything in the game must be a good idea! Even the final boss takes some cues from the final boss of Super Star/Super Star Ultra, but at least it has (mostly) its own attack pattern. However, I think the most annoying part of the game is that if you lose your power (and there are a few attacks that force this if you get hit by them), you won’t have any way to attack the boss on your own; you have to wait for the boss to throw a special projectile or for a collision to generate fat, yellow stars that you can absorb and throw back at it. There were a few times where I found myself just standing around, waiting for the boss to throw me a bone (or energy ball or whatever), and if you get your chance and miss, like with the final boss that likes to teleport without warning, you get to wait some more. I also found it weird that, whenever I died against a boss, its health seemed to go down much faster the second time than the first. At least the game managed to incorporate Super Powers for a couple bosses while still giving them a bit of challenge, which was neat.

Even though the entire campaign is built around single-player, it’s possible to play this co-op with up to four people. Similar to NSMB Wii’s multiplayer, the camera tries to keep everyone on screen at once, potentially leading to there not being much camera space to see incoming enemies, and players can also bounce off of other players to jump higher (except in this game, that’s usually a bad thing since if we wanted to go up some more, we’d just use the built-in flight mechanic!). However, unlike NSMB Wii, anyone who gets too far away from Player 1 gets teleported back to Player 1 (it even delays the respawn if Player 1 was shot from a cannon and hasn’t landed yet). Another exception is that, in NSMB Wii, anyone could come back as long as there were more lives and someone else still alive. In this game, Players 2-4 can keep coming back even if the life count is at zero (though another life gets spent if it’s above zero); however, if Player 1 dies, everyone goes back to the last checkpoint (or the beginning of the level if the life count is at zero). Playing multiplayer can even break some of the optional challenges: rather than having to throw the key onto the conveyor belt and run to the other side before it falls down, one player can be on the other side to catch the key as soon as the other player throws it onto the conveyor belt. It also helps the boss fights not be so time consuming: Kirby may still have to wait for something to spit back at the boss, but Meta Knight, King Dedede, and that one random Waddle Dee never lose their weapons and can keep up the offensive. Oddly enough, while none of Kirby’s powers have any friendly fire, the giant shoe and the equip-able cannon do have friendly fire, so if you’re playing multiplayer, you’ll have to be careful not to hurt your allies (Super Powers also seem to have friendly fire, what with the knock-back animation playing, but actually looking at the health bars seemed to show no change).

Despite any recommendation I could give, this is one of those games where you already knew whether or not you’d like it by reputation alone. If you’re a huge Kirby fan that somehow doesn’t have this game yet, you’ll enjoy it (it may not be worth buying an entire console over, but that’s what Epic Yarn and Rainbow Curse are for). Are you looking for an easy game, something to introduce someone else to video games, or just something to have fun with no more than three other people you know? Then yeah, it may be worth checking out on sale. However, if you’re looking for a more challenging experience, or if you believe that succeeding games in a franchise need to do something drastically different than its predecessors to be worth checking out, then this isn’t a game for you. The game does have a few challenging parts, but it takes its time getting there.

Let me know if you found the hidden reference in my post. Spoilers