If you have browsed for a new Nintendo game, you may have come across a picture of a round, pink, marshmallow looking thing with legs. You would call it a Pokemon if you were too young, but Kirby has been around since 1992! I once played his games, but the concept soon got old to me and the games were always a little too easy. Then March 25, 2022 Kirby and the Forgotten land released on the switch and as I ignored its release as another essay entry, I noticed in the Japanese market it had risen to be the top selling game for a few months in a row. “Maybe there is something to this game I am unaware of” I thought out loud on an episode of a podcast I have with my friends. I went to GameStop, found a used copy and intended to use their return policy if it was a bad game (sorry GameStop it’s your policy). I started the game and was greeted to an amazingly refreshing, yet somehow brutally hard game which I doubt could be completed by many children.
Cliche tutorials but also do or die training
So to skip all the details Kirby is some kind of vacuum who can suck things in and spit out a projectile, and if he ingests certain things, special things happen. He can get a new power, a new set of moves, a health boost, or turn into things in this weird new puzzle feature. You start the game and they ask you to choose your difficulty, which only has an effect on your health bar. If you have played an installation of Kirby before, then you will recognize some of the fiends you can eat to get powers and you know the routine. What’s interesting in this game is as you progress you can upgrade your abilities after finding a blueprint and if you have enough rare stones. The puzzles in the levels become easier as you upgrade your powers so they have created the classic incentive without making it a requirement to upgrade. Finding the blueprints is hard enough, but in order to get enough rare stones you must either participate in the coliseum a million times or you must complete Treasure Roads which are crazy tutorial levels that make you learn to use your powers in ways you may not have imagined. For example I learned that you can hold a boomerang in place and alter its course of trajectory to hit switches.
Ultra Hard Bosses
The difficulty curve in Kirby is huge! It went from I could kill everything without being touched, to I had to stand up and get closer to the TV to focus while using my pro controller so I did not accidentally throw my switch in a rage. This game can be easy, but if you do some of the side quests and missions, it can easily become a legitimately difficult game. They even made bosses hit harder so you could not just cheese them using your upgraded Godly powers. They can literally knock your ability out of you, forcing you to run around chasing your power before it disappears and you have to make a new gameplan.
Conclusion
This game kept me on my toes while also making it beat me just enough so I would know I could get better and beat the obstacle which just killed me. I apologize to Kirby, because initially I would have missed out on this game and if I was not researching things for my gaming podcast, I would have never had the chance to play what may now be one of my top ten games on the Switch.
