came for the main game, stayed for the masterpieces that are kirby quest, kirby's brawlball and strato patrol eos

kirby subgames have never hit this hard... except maybe drum dash.

i'd love to return to it now that i've played the pikmin games to see how i feel about the main game, but i don't have a ds at the moment.

Average Kirby game be like:

One day our lovable cream puff hero Kirby and his friends frolicked along their dream world Popstar, laughing and eating strawberry shortcake all the while. All of a sudden, thunder cracked in the sky and who appeared before them but Dark Galgoreus, the evil Laughing God of the Nothing Realm. Here I will build my outpost, growled the wicked ram-horned being, where I and my kin will rend the flesh of all dreams with our teeth, where up will be down and color will be black and white, until even this stretch of the universe will be a dark haven for the terrible might of my VoidEther power.

Who else can stop the awful might of the Dark God of the Nothing itself but the greatest defender of Popstar, Kirby the dream puff, with his friends bandana Waddle Dee, who has a spear, King DeDeDe, who has a big hammer, Meta Knight, who hopefully will feel like helping them this time, and uh, I think someone who can paint really good or something?

Yep, the Skeleton did indeed appear

I certainly was not expecting this, but I did not like Kirby Mass Attack very much. Now let's not get ahead of ourselves here, this game doesn't belong in the pits of HELL. Like every Kirby game, it has redeeming qualities up the ass. Good music, good bosses, surprisingly good side content, blah blah blah this is standard stuff for the series. My reasoning for rating this one so low is a very simple (and possibly even kind of boring) reason: I just don't find it fun. Canvas Curse and Rainbow Curse I feel executed the idea of a touchscreen controlled Kirby game in the best possible way they could without feeling too intrusive or overbearing. Mass Attack, contrary to most other Kirby games I've played, feels exhausting to play and I physically couldn't play more than a few levels at a time. Out of every Kirby game this one took me the most amount of sessions to complete, mainly because I was just dreading playing it. The main gimmick got old after a while and I was really ready for the game to be over by the 2nd world. I feel like this is definitely more of a "me" thing though, Kirby Mass Attack is just not my thing and that's okay!

It's fun because it's different.
Kirby's "stylus only because remember the DS has that" game.
Also that odd type of game where finishing requires all/most of the collectables (tho this isn't rare for Kirby I guess)

Main gameplay is cool and all but those side games cheffs kiss better than some main game levels. Especially "Strongest Sword" if only for the music

Controlling and throwing multiple Kirbys at the same time is pretty fun at first and each level is unique while using very well the new gimmick, unfortunately, later on the levels get waaaaaaaaay too long for their own good which makes them quite tiring even with it's amount of creativity, the lack of checkpoints/lives also makes this game a lot more punishing than it should be, and the game only warning you that the final world requires you to get all the Rainbow Medals almost at the end of it was a big slap in the face and made me lose interest in beating it, the gameplay is just too simple to really hold my interest in a game as excessively large as this one.

This game has quite possibly one of the best collections of minigames in the franchise, though, not only they are very varied and fun, but some of them are very complete, like Strato Patrol EOS, which is a small shooter 'em up that includes its own levels and bosses, without mentioning the amount of fan service that goes even far enough to include characters from Kirby Right Back at Ya, the sub-games are the only thing that is really avoiding this game from getting a mid/10.

Welcome to Kirby Anxiety Attack. We got:
• The most expressive Kirby ever
• Bangin soundtrack
• Incredible Nintendo level design (TM)
• You can kill Kirby!!
• Set him on fire too!
• 10 Kirbys!!
• Dedede
• Right Back At Ya references!!
• DAROACH JUST SHOWS UP
• Wacky space apes!
• You can drown!?
• Poyo when you enter a door!
• Crazy sound effects (GREAT GEAR GODDAMN HOMIE)
• Some pretty incredible side games!!
• T O P S C R E E N M A R X
• ESCARGOON MY BELOVED

With 5 medals per unique-idea-executed-in-four-steps stage and a lovely if extrenuous map screen Kirby Mass Attack is more firmly entrenched in the Nintendo Platformer Design™ space than its more experimental DS predecessor. In contrast to that game's elegant use of the touchpad, Mass Attack's central gimmick mostly amounts to scratching and tapping the screen in stages that sometimes have the tendency to joylessly iterate on concepts that should have remained concepts (Sandy Canyon Stage 6 scares me). Nonetheless, its lavish 2d production values, maybe the last of its kind from a Nintendo pipeline perspective, the pure vibes of the hot air balloon stage and the sheer quanity and quality of subgames gives it an air of sprezzatura in spite of its shortcomings. Its cute.