Kirby's Return to Return to Dreamland (Kirby's Return to Dreamland Deluxe in review!)

     In 2011, there had been a long period of time where Kirby hadn't had a big mainline game in quite a while. At least traditionally speaking, since Kirby's Epic Yarn came out in 2010 in the US, but that wasn't a traditional Kirby game in any way. The enemies were made of yarn and you couldn't actually die, along with the most different changes of all, Kirby couldn't use copy abilities or suck up enemies, which were two things that Kirby had done since Kirby's Adventure on the Super Nintendo. Kirby's true return to form would come one year later, with a game entirely devoted to "returning" to the source material, Kirby's Return to Dreamland. There's a good reason that this game was referred to in some other regions as "Kirby's Adventure Wii," since it got back to the root of what made Kirby games the way that they were. I'm happy to say that for the 30th anniversary of the Kirby franchise, we got a lot of great stuff. About a year ago, we got Kirby and the Forgotten Land, the puffball's first full foray into the "3D Platformer" space, and then a few months after that, we got Kirby's Dream Buffet, which was a fun minigame where you raced Kirby against other ball Kirbys to collect the most fruit and become the fattest Kirby, and then a few months later, A remake of the 2011 Wii title was announced. Kirby's Return to Dreamland Deluxe is not the title that I would have gone with, but the game itself is a good time, and I'm happy to say that I've played through it now and am ready to talk about it! I will say that I never owned the classic game, so I will probably miss just how much this game improved over the original, but this is a great game in it's own right, so I'll look at it as a new game. The time has finally come to once again jump onto the Warp Star and start a new (old) adventure with Kirby!

This plot fell right out of the sky!

    Kirby's Return to Dream Land Deluxe begins the same way as so many other Kirby games do. Kirby is running around with a piece of cheesecake, with King Dedede and Bandana Waddle Dee trying to catch him on this sunny day in Dream Land while Meta Knight looks on. Suddenly a ship teleports in from a wormhole and crashes near where they all are, and so they go to investigate. The sole inhabitant of this ship is Magolor, a star traveler who came here in the Lor Starcutter, the name of the ship that crashed. Each of the pieces was scattered to a different corner of Dream Land, and so he asks Kirby and friends if they can help him restore his ship and finally get home. That's the inciting incident for sure, but the game has some wild twists and turns baked in that I won't spoil here. Kirby may be a cute character and the games may be cute overall, but you can bet that by the end of the game, there's going to be an element of Eldrich horror thrown in. That's really all I have to say about the story, but the real focus with most of Nintendo's characters is the gameplay, and Kirby is definitely no exception.

    Kirby has always been a simple game, in fact, that was the main goal when creating the original Kirby game. That simplicity carries over here, though the individual copy abilities do have some element of fighting games where you can change your general attack by inputting different button combinations. This is a pretty novel system, especially for how simple and easy Kirby games have a reputation for being. Kirby is able to destroy basically everything in his path, and there's very little that anyone can do about it, and these combos allow him to destroy even more. While on the topic of copy abilities, I have to express my love for Tornado once again. I feel like I shouldn't even have to explain how awesome it feels to have the ability to conjure a tornado around you, and give you invincibility for the short periods of time that you summon them. Sure, it can be a little hard to control at first, but once you get the hang of them, the tornado is fantastic for mobility as well as power. This remaster added two new copy abilities, Sand and Mecha, which are both a lot of fun. Sand reminds me of a shorter ranged version of Water, another ability in this game, but the neutral B attack varies between horizontal and vertical shooting sand which I really liked, and also one of the attacks brings to mind Tornado, which I just discussed as being great. Mecha Kirby is also a lot of fun, I love the different elements that this attack brings together, being not only fire (which you can dispense with the B-Up), but also some electricity, making it great for puzzles. While this Mecha ability isn't nearly as good as the Robot Suits in Kirby: Planet Robobot, it's still a great time. 

    Along with the normal copy abilities, the gimmick of this game comes in the form of super abilities, which are much more powerful and cinematic versions of normal abilities that Kirby can absorb. There are only 5 or so in the game, but they're all a lot of fun to use, and integral to some special bonus challenges that show up from time to time. Ultra Sword allows Kirby to swing a giant sword, Monster Flame allows Kirby to make a fire monster which sweeps across the screen, Flare Beam is a giant burst of beam energy that Kirby is able to control and steer where he needs it to go, Snow Bowl turns him into a giant snowball that can roll over anything in its path, and Grand Hammer gets bigger the more you move the joystick around while charging it up. Of these, I have to say Snow Bowl is probably my favorite, just from the fact that the ball of snow keeps Kirby's face always present while causing major amounts of damage, and also at one point there's a puzzle where he makes up the head of a giant snowman, which is just adorable. All of these abilities are only used in certain parts of levels where major parts of the environment are able to be destroyed, which really adds to the feeling of being extremely overpowered, even when the power-ups don't last very long.

    On top of all the abilities that Kirby can use, the game allows for four player Co-op in all of it's modes. Each of the other players can choose to play as Bandana Waddle Dee (who has a Spear), King Dedede (who has a hammer), Meta Knight (who has a sword), or a different colored Kirby. Playing as one of these other characters essentially means that you have a permanent ability, since Kirby is the only one able to suck enemies up and absorb their powers. It's all up to your specific playstyle for you to choose how Kirby plays, while the other three characters play in an understandably different way. There is actually another character that you can play as, though he has his own mode!

Many different modes of play!

    Once you beat Kirby's Return to Dreamland Deluxe, three more modes are unlocked. There's Extra Mode, essentially a "New Game +" where you play through the game again with less health and harder enemies, the Arena, which is a boss rush that you have to get through with only one life, and the third is Magolor Epilogue, following exactly what Magolor goes through after the end of the game. Magalor may have been sucked into a wormhole following the events of the ending of the game, but I'm not telling any spoilers as to why here. Magolor awakens in a mysterious world, similar to the bonus challenges that Kirby had to face in order to get the orb spheres in the main game, and he's almost completely drained of his magical abilities. The whole goal of the Magolor Epilogue is for him to get out of this alternate dimension, and in order to do that, he has to get his powers back. This mode honestly has really cool progression, and it feels great to start out the game with almost nothing at your disposal, then slowly work yourself up to beating a lot of enemies in only one hit. There's a combo meter in this mode, which I'm not sure if it's ever been used in a Kirby game, but it makes sense when the name of the game is getting high scores and as many Magic Points as possible, which will then allow you to upgrade Magolor's abilities even more. It's not a very long story, it only takes a few hours to get to the end, but it is a very cool idea, and something that I hope they'll somehow do later on in the future. Magolor does have another responsibility in this game, however, which comes along much sooner in the game.

    Magolor also acts as a manager to a neat amusement park in this game, Merry Magoland! Magoland is the location for a lot of minigames, which can also be found on the Lor Starcutter. I'm not sure why these games are all found in two different places in this game, or why in order to play them on the ship, you need to collect a certain number of orbs when you can just play them all in Merry Magoland from almost the beginning of the game, but I'm assuming that's a leftover from the original game maybe? Anyway, this game has 10 different minigames to play, some new, but most of them come from much older games in the series. For instance, we have Crackity Hack from Kirby and the Amazing Mirror along with Samurai Kirby from Kirby Superstar. If you know me, you probably know how much I love Kirby Superstar, so it's not surprising that I would bring that up. Merry Magoland is more than just the Minigame mode, as there are also lots of challenges to do involving different conditions in the minigames. Some task you with winning in a certain difficulty with a certain number of points, while some just want you to wear a certain mask while you play the game. As you can see, some are certainly more difficult than others. The masks that I just mentioned are new to this version of the game, and really they're just mostly here as fan service. These are masks that pay tribute to characters in older games, such as Rick the Hamster, Gooey, and Marx. They even included a few stand-out characters from Kirby and the Forgotten Land, which I was very happy to see. You get these masks either by completing the Stamp Rally cards in Magoland by playing a bunch of the games, or you also get masks of the different bosses in the story mode once you defeat them.

    Kirby's Return to Dream Land Deluxe is a really great time, and one that looks really good too! For the first time with a mainline title on the Switch, Kirby runs at 60 Frames Per Second, making the game look much smoother than Kirby Star Allies or Kirby and the Forgotten Land, which both ran at 30. I really didn't notice any slowdown other than the main menu of Merry Magoland for some reason. I think it was just the amount of confetti in the air maybe? It's weird and I'm not sure why that part of the game is so much slower, even when the minigames were fine for the most part.I can't speak for the frame rate on co-op mode, because I haven't been able to play it yet, but for single player mode anyways for the main story as well as the Magolor Epilogue, the game was very smooth all throughout. With Kirby's 30th anniversary finally coming to a close, I think it's fair to say that Hal Laboratory finished his birthday off pretty strong. It's been a wild year for the pink puff, and I can't wait to see the next adventure he goes on.

    Thanks so much for reading this post, friends! I just recently was able to play this game and I'm happy to say that I liked it a lot! Kirby games are always fun in my opinion, so I'm always glad to get more! Do you have a favorite Kirby game, or have you ever played one? Let me know down below (or by commenting on my post on Facebook or Twitter, I know the username situation here is weird)! Until next time, friends, I'm Jonathan, a Self-Proclaimed Kirby fan, and I hope you have a great week! I'll talk to you again soon!