The game seemed to me too easy until I tried to find all the rainbow drops. Not only you required to discover the hidden room and figure out the way to access it, most of the times the needed friend and ability just aren't there. You have to finish the level, find them on a different one, bring them undamaged, perform some kind of difficult trick and do all over again if you fail. I don't mind a challenge, but sometimes it's just too much backtracking and gets rather annoying. Also, I hate when difficulties and true endings are locked behind 100% completion. But that's probably just my problem than a game's flaw. Other than that - great game, loved the soundtrack and the new friend feature. Although there are less copy abilities than in Kirby's Adventure, trying them out with different friends was fun. Still enjoyed the previous game more tho.

Not gonna lie, realistically this game isn't really as good as stuff like Kirby's Adventure or the modern Kirby games that I gave the same rating, but it's probably one of the most nostalgic games for me. This was one of the few Game Boy games I actually owned growing up, along with Super Mario Bros. Deluxe, the Game Boy Pokemon games, and Dragon Quest Monsters. It's very flawed, but at the time it was like the best platformer ever to me.

That true final boss though? Fuck that shit. Getting the rainbow drops is bad enough, but for some reason HAL decided to make this final boss a goddamn monster. Two phases, extremely quick attacks compared to a very slow Kirby, and a large healthpool even if you deflect his deflectable attacks back at him. Just terrible.

Like the original, this is a really short game that relies on its cuteness to carry it through. It's a good thing that the cuteness here is really dialed up- Kirby's animal friends are absolutely adorable and full of character- it's really fun how your copy abilities change based on which animal companion you are with. (Kine's transformations are especially great.) And the cutscene animations are really stellar, and they all look really amazing with the Gameboy Color palette.

That being said, in a regular play-through, the levels are all really basic and the whole game can be beaten pretty quickly. Hidden throughout the worlds, however, are Rainbow Drops, which will unlock a secret final boss if you collect them all. The Dark Matter fight is really cool (it's always great to pit Kirby against cosmic beings) but getting all the secret Rainbow Drops is beyond tedious, as most are locked behind barriers requiring you to carry over a series of different copy abilities and animal companions from different levels.