Kirby and the Forgotten Land
I’ve never been too big on the Kirby series. They’re not bad games per se, but most of them have incredibly similar level design to the point where I feel like I’m playing the same game every time, which is probably why I’ve only been able to finish 4 of them Forgotten Land included. As much as I hate to say it, it’s almost New Super Mario Bros levels of monotony to me. Even the ones that truly make the attempt to stray from the rest of the series like Epic Yarn and certain parts of Super Star left very little of an impression on me.
Enter Forgotten Land. A game that somehow manages to both succeed spectacularly and fail miserably in its attempt to stand out from the rest of the franchise. A lot of aspects of this game are ripped straight from the previous 4 games, but they’re implemented in ways that actually feel somewhat natural and fleshed out. For instance, 3 of those 4 games had some sort of major gimmick that usually just acted as a way to mix up gameplay, FL has something similar in “mouthful mode.” The difference is that mouthful mode feels less like one massive gimmick that they throw in to a level when they ran out of ideas and more like a part of the world that was specifically designed to incorporate the gimmick.
On the topic of mouthful mode, I’ve seen a lot of people compare it to Mario Odyssey’s capture mechanic, and to an extent it is very similar, however theres one main difference. In Mario Odyssey all of the captures are specific to the area you’re in. You are always going to find that one tree capture in that one specific area in the wooded kingdom. You are always going to find that pokey bird in Bowsers Kingdom. The only exceptions are when they’re generic enemies like goombas, or when they’re in sub worlds that don’t really fit into the rest of the games world to begin with and are just used as an excuse to have a random platforming challenge. The Mouthful mode in Kirby is the exact opposite. They’re thrown pretty much anywhere they’re needed, and while there’s an attempt to make them fit with the rest of the world, sometimes it falls flat. The example that comes to mind is the speaker system that they made traffic cone shaped just because they needed an in-context reason for Kirby to inhale something shaped like a traffic cone. It looks incredibly jarring. This could’ve been fixed if they had more things to inhale with mouthful mode, but as it stands there are about 9, 10 if you count the 18-wheeler that you inhale at the final boss and amounts to nothing more than a quick time event. Compare this again to the Capture mechanic in Odyssey, where there are about 50 different things to capture, and each feel completely in place where they are in relation to the world. You might say “well maybe that just means that more time is spent on each mouthful mode ability.” Again, not really. Once you’ve seen each ability once, you’ve pretty much seen everything that it can do. Sure the levels where you use them might get harder, but they’re almost never used in ways that feel more exciting. I don’t dislike the Mouthful Mode mechanic, like I said it’s easily the best gimmick we’ve seen in recent Kirby, but if you compare it directly to Mario Odyssey its clearly inferior.
There are other things introduced to the game that I think are nice changes. The main collectibles this time around are Waddle Dees, which unlike previous collectibles which just kinda unlocked random rooms or an extra level, actually expand the hub level. Now when you get a minigame from collecting X amount of things, it actually gives an in world reason for it. In addition to that, you can unlock shops and other buildings that actually do stuff. The item storage from Squeak Squad and the 3DS games returns, but now you actually have to buy the items with a newly introduced currency. This, in addition to the new stat buff items, makes the games combat feel more thoughtful than before, as now you have a reason to go out of your way to prepare before a fight. On the topic of that…
The copy ability system has actually had a slight overhaul to it. Ever since the copy ability mechanic was introduced in the 2nd Kirby game, they just kinda kept it the same without altering it too much. The most they ever did to evolve it in later titles was in Super Star and Crystal Shards, where they added full movesets to each ability and added the option to combine abilities, and even then both of these aspects would only occasionally be brought back in future titles (hell, the combo abilities have yet to be fully implemented in another game, only halfway implemented in Squeak Squad and Star Allies). Most other Kirby games have done absolutely nothing to change the way copy abilities work and instead opted to just add a ton of new ones, most of which add very little to the game. There are 28 copy abilities in Star Allies. 28. That’s a massive number of power ups that are almost never gonna be used by any given player. Forgotten Land, on the other hand, has 12. 10 returning, and 2 new. The thing that makes this so great is that Forgotten Land actually allows you to upgrade them all. 8 of them have 2 separate upgrades, 2 have 1, and the other 2 have 3. All of these you need to go out of your way to find the upgrades for. I can’t stress enough how much of an improvement this is over the previous system. Now each copy ability gets it’s due time in the spotlight, and while there are a few abilities that I miss (most notably, beam and spark are surprisingly missing despite both being staple abilities), if sacrificing them was necessary make these changes than so be it. My biggest complaint with the copy abilities in this game is that they don’t have anywhere near the same level of intricacy as they did in Super Star or Return to Dream Land, most likely because it would be a lot harder to implement them in a 3D space. Most of them have a normal attack pattern, an aerial attack, and a charge attack, with the sword abilities having a few extras. Most of the upgrades simply add an extra effect to the existing attacks, such as the ice ability creating little snow men on the ground where you’re attacking or the dragon fire ability having a super long attack range and a residual damage effect. Even without the extra attacks, the combat is still incredibly fun, though by the time you get to the final post game boss in the true arena, you’re most likely going to exclusively be using the Morpho Knight Sword upgrade, as it does massive damage and has a ton of special abilities like the charge attack buffing your sword damage and range for the next few seconds and your base attack having life steal. Yeah, it’s incredibly broken, and you can even buff it further. I managed to kill multiple bosses in exactly 2 hits, and it would’ve been 1 if the game didn’t keep them alive at one HP just because the cutscene for their 2nd phase hadnt played yet
All of these things are well and good, but at the end of the day most of the level design still feels exactly the same as the rest of the franchise, despite being in 3D. The only real difference is that there’s a lot less of an emphasis on flying, which I feel like is for the better. Apart from that it’s level design feels like any other Kirby game. But that’s just it, the game exists to be compared to other games. Nearly every aspect that stands out is something that can directly be compared to something else, and unfortunately, outside of a few select aspects like the copy abilities, Kirby and the Forgotten Land never feels like it goes above and beyond to push the envelope of what it could be. It’s an evolution of Kirby for sure, but one that should’ve happened over 20 years ago at the very least, and one that serves to play catch up to compete with other, far better 3D platformers.
For what it’s worth, I enjoyed this game. Hell, I enjoyed it enough to 100% it, so I clearly liked it. It’s definitely the most fun I’ve ever had with a Kirby game, but completely pales in comparison to some of the best platformers I’ve ever played, both 2D and 3D
7.5/10