With the release of Kirby's Return to Dream Land Deluxe I knew I had two options: drop about sixty dollars on the rerelease that adds big garish black outlines to the characters as if something about the original's presentation made the action inscrutable, or put the iso of the original on my Wii's hard drive and play a much better looking game... With the Wiimote sideways. Well shit, that was a pretty easy call all the way to the end.

Frankly, I've found a lot of Nintendo's rereleases on Switch to be pretty uncompelling and settled on discomfort. I should get a pro controller if I'm going to play more Wii games, holding the Wiimote sideways might be the single worst way to experience any Nintendo game. What a garbage setup, with its prank D-pad and hard edges digging into your palm... At least Return to Dream Land plays well and is so enjoyable that even despite this horrid controller setup, I often found myself thinking "damn, this might be as good as The Crystal Shards."

Return to Dream Land is about as straight-forward a Kirby game as it gets. At least in single player. I get the feeling one of the big draws to this one is playing with friends, but nobody is willing to come over and watch Kirby and Meta Knight smooch with me. Tragic, I know. On some level, Return feels antiquated, with only Super Abilities and a very minimal amount of Wiimote waggling offering anything new to the typical Kirby formula, but I think adhering to tradition makes Return comfortably nostalgic.

That adherence to expected gameplay and inclusion of co-op makes this a friendly entry point, too. Not that most people reading a Backloggd review will struggle with Kirby's notoriously easy brand of gameplay, but I grabbed a copy of Deluxe for my niece after learning about how much she adores Kirby, and she's had a great time playing it with her mom. I'm 36 and had just as good of a time playing this hunched in front of a CRT. That's uh, the power of Kirby.

Kirby's Return to Dream Land é um bom jogo do Kirby, ele é bastante divertido principalmente se jogado com amigos porem eu não sei o porque mas esse jogo não tem o mesmo charme dos outros jogos como Adventures, Crystal Shards ou Super Star.

O jogo é bem simples porem divertido mas por favor, se essa é a sua primeira vez jogando o jogo, não vá atrás dos 100%, 100% nesse jogo não é difícil, apenas cansativo, você tem que coletar varias engrenagens escondidas pela fase, porem esse jogo é sacana e ele acaba colocando alguns puzzles ou salas que se você perder a engrenagem terá que repetir a fase toda de novo, a parte mais chata do jogo são as Dark Areas que são áreas escondidas onde você tem que fugir de uma matéria negra na qual te mata instantaneamente se tocar e no final você consegue 2 engrenagens após derrotar Sphere Doomer que são um mini chefe, o problema dessas Dark Areas é que elas são muito repetitivas e reutilizadas múltiplas vezes durante o jogo todo e isso acaba se tornando muito cansativo no 100% porem além disso tudo o jogo continua sendo um ótimo jogo de Wii que vale muito a pena ser jogado nos dias de hoje.

I enjoy this game more than I probably should. It's a solid encapsulation of joyful playlike platforming, and there's not much out there that captures it like Kirby in general. It manages to hook me with its exemplary artstyle, complemented by what I personally would say is the strongest soundtrack a Kirby game has received. It's as simple as anyone would expect to play, held up by good level design and godlike charm. Kirby's Return to Dream Land is a charming fun adventure and there's not much to dig into it other than that. It doesn't NEED to have anymore than that.

My first Kirby experience! I played this one with my girlfriend in its co-op mode the whole game and I have wonderful things to talk about it, I wasn't expecting to enjoy it so much.

Before starting the game I would try to overlook the difficulty aspect, while it's not hard by any means, it didn't feel like you could just pass through enemies, which I enjoy (since it was played on co-op I feared for it being too easy).

Story wise we need to help Magolor repairing the Lor Starcutter ship after it crashed down and I won't say more about it, I'm surprised the story wasn't so dry as I thought, a sense of purpose was felt and I enjoyed playing 95% of the time with Yellow Kirby (we used Kirby for a more authentic experience, didn't want to miss out in the powerups, which were alot! I also enjoyed the very few times I used Waddle Dee, King Dedede and Meta Knight which have their own perks).

In the gameplay side of things you can run, jump, swallow, spit, float and it gets varied when you get the powerups that may be needed to get the 120 Energy Spheres the game provides (added some challenge and fun to the levels. and we had zero problems to find them all), the platforming is smooth, while not a Mario for me, it feels different and has its own vibes giving great value to the beautiful worlds, the soundtrack, atmosphere, the cute / mischevious enemies, and Kirby! The only thing I found weird about the platforming (but that is a me problem), is the fact Kirby gets really slow when his mouth is full and I'm transversing the anxiety inducing -another dimension- areas and then me or my girlfriend would die. Those areas were the pinnacle for me, and added all that made Return to Dreamland really good and made it even better.

In the co-op perspective everything's good aside when my girlfriend would die since she was player one, I would also die and restart the area again, which started those small rage moments, my recommendation for the developers (I don't know if they changed this in the Switch version) would be just restarting the game when both players died, instead of player 1, and turn off the ability to respawn if you were player 2, just respawing until the next checkpoint.

With all the energy spheres we collected, there are cool challenge levels in which I tried some, but gave up trying the gold medals (might come back to it one day to experience perfect plaforming sequences), post game they give you the option to play the game again but with what it seems half the life (an harder version literally) and arena mode (boss rush), I will not touch them much but I appreciate the work the developers have done with this one, I give my appraisal.

I give this a 8/10 and recommend you to play it, there is more than enough content to enjoy and the platforming is great, and even if you're playing co-op I consider it a very good game (take into account the disclaimers I gave in the review regarding co-op). Next stop will probably be the very first Kirby game to see how far they have come (while I don't expect a great experience, I think I will like it).

unfortunately this is one of my favourite games ever

i say unfortunately because after playing and replaying it 100+ times since i was 10 this game has no secrets for me
even playing this after some years i remember every single world every single level every collectable position everything

still even if i could play this game blind im still sucked into it like its the first time and thats the magic that makes me come back to it once in a while

as i said in some other reviews i dont usually make reviews like this im not the kind of guy to get all serious about things even more so if its about videogames
but this is a game that accompanied me through my childhood and adolescence and now even adulthood and i just cant get enough

this was my first kirby game ever so i didnt even know what this pink ball was up to until that moment and lemme tell you it was an experience playing this game for the first time

apart from corny remarks this is a competent game in the kirby series and even after playing forgotten land which in my humble opinion is to this day the pinnacle of the series i can still cut a little space for this small masterpiece in the history of the franchise

its the same kirby its the same mechanics its the same world everything is the same but still theres something about it that just detaches the game from the others in the series but maybe its just nostalgia

the super abilities the vibes the music the world design the characters and THAT FUCKING VILLAIN UGHHHHHHHHHHHHH
i listen to C R O W N E D at least 1 time a month or im losing my damn mind i swear

anyway i didnt say anything of note in this review and its not like i usually add anything important on this site but lets just say that if you want to date me and you tell me kirby's return to dream land is one of your fav games ever im walking away from you to go get some wedding rings so be prepared