A nice dessert course for Kirby’s 30th! (Kirby's Dream Buffet in review)

     Hi friends, I know sometimes I write about confusing and convoluted topics, and that can be hard to read week after week, I know. That's why I'm excited that this week, I'm talking about maybe the simplest game that I've ever discussed here, Kirby's Dream Buffet! Released just a few weeks ago, this game has charm and Kirby fan service flowing out of it's adorable pink ears, and allows for genuinely fun gameplay in little five minute bursts or so that are seemingly infinitely replayable. In contrast to some games that have come out in recent months (*cough* Mario Strikers: Battle League), this game is only $15 on the Nintendo Eshop, with ironically more content to unlock and play with than those full priced games. Let me grab my Dream Fork so I can roll you through what exactly this game has in store!

Sweet treats!

    This game has almost no plot to speak of, which is fine, as this isn't the kind of game that really needs a deep storyline. Kirby finds a huge strawberry shortcake and is getting ready to chow down, with his fork in hand, when suddenly it's revealed to be the Dream Fork, which allows dreams to come true! It seems Kirby's dream was to eat a giant cake, because the fork shrinks him to the size where the cake that he was just looking at now seems like a mountain. Any other character would be really worried about that circumstance (I mean, it was the entire plot of Mario Party DS), but Kirby is ecstatic. That is all that the game has to offer, really. You play as Kirby and compete against three other Kirbys to get the most strawberries over four rounds as you roll around these food themed courses. Whoever is the fattest Kirby at the end of the game wins, and that's just about it. The four rounds consist of two races, a mini-game, and the Battle Royale round. The races are pretty self explanatory, and in my opinion, the most fun part of this game. There are so many different paths to take and power-ups that will give you an edge over your opponents, while also picking up as many strawberries, blueberries, cherries and raspberries as you can. It is a race, and as such, the goal is to reach the end before your rivals. Whoever gets to the end first gets 50 strawberries, second place gets 20, third gets 10, and 4th place gets to pick off whatever scraps are dropped by the other three. The mini-game section is hardly even worth talking about, as it goes for 20 seconds and honestly doesn't get you very many strawberries. The minigame is a mix of either breaking boxes to get strawberries, killing enemies to get strawberries, or jumping into a cup to get strawberries. Those are the three types of minigames and now I'm moving on. After the minigame round, we have the second race, and then the "Battle Royale." Battle Royale is exactly what it sounds like, you try to knock out your enemies so that you can steal as many strawberries as possible, so really it could all change in the final round. Just because you have the first place finish in Battle Royale, that doesn't mean that you win. We have the Mario Party-esque bonus strawberries, based on various random chosen factors. It's annoying to be in first place and then ending up in third after the bonus strawberries because you didn't float enough or eat enough blueberries, especially since they could pick anything to focus on. The game is a lot of fun, especially for the different collectibles.

A Nice Collection of Goodies!

    There are so many collectibles to unlock in this game, I was really pleasantly surprised. There are 130 levels to raise your Gourmet Rank to, and for each of those levels, you unlock something. You unlock new colors for Kirby, new Costumes based on different characters from the series or just different food items in some cases (shout out to the Kirby car cake), new music that will play during the different events, and even new courses that will be added to the pot of random selections that can be chosen from (which would have been nice to select, but there's no option for choosing unfortunately). On top of all these things that are specifically tied into the level-up mechanics, you also get little cookies or other sweets that make for added fan service. These are similar to the keychains from Kirby: Triple Deluxe or the stickers from Kirby: Planet Robobot, in that they're basically just pictures from older titles in the series that have been presented in a cute way, which I'm all about. The cookies that you get seem to be obtained at random, and you can use them to decorate a cake on the "Home Table" as it's called in this game. The cookie that's at the top of the cake determines what icon you start out on during races as well, so that's also pretty great. These are all just cute little additions to the game that makes it much more satisfying to come in first place on a Gourmet Course, and the fact that new stages are also tied to how many strawberries you have/ how high your Gourmet level is, definitely gives you more incentive to keep playing to see what's coming next. I have to say my favorite course that has been unlocked so far is either the little cake that looks like Elfilin from Kirby and the Forgotten Land or the Battle Royale level that looks like Whispy Woods and his domain. There's just a lot of charm in this whole game and I feel like especially for $15, it's a great little burst of fun, which Kirby has always been really great at.

    Thank you so much for reading this post, friends. I hope you've been having fun with this game as I have. It can be annoying sometimes for sure, as I said, the strawberries just don't seem fair (Why are they being rewarded for falling off the stage the most times?), but as a whole, this is a sweet little buffet as the title suggests, and especially for Kirby fans, there is a lot to gorge yourself on. I hope you'll all have a great week and I will talk to you again soon. I'm Jonathan, your Self-Proclaimed Biggest Kirby, and I hope you will one day be as happy as Kirby is when he stares up at a giant cake.