Kirby Star Allies is one of the weirdest games I've ever played because I genuinely don't know what my thoughts are for the most part. It just felt... very bland compared to most other Kirby gimmicks. At the very least some other games have a gimmick that interests me or excites me for my inevitable playthrough or replay like the Super Abilities in Return to Dream Land or the Robobot Armor in Planet Robobot. This game's gimmick just being Friends is just... not really that interesting when you consider that it's just something that already existed in Super Star. Which by the way, seems like this game took a lot of inspiration from that game because the last area before the final boss felt like Milky Way Wishes but... worse. I guess my two biggest complaints are that the level design is so easy that it can get boring at times and the pacing just seemed to be really off. Dream Land, Planet Popstar, and Jambastion were all really short while Far-Flung Starlight Heroes was significantly longer than the rest. The rematches with previous boss fights were also just, not interesting. The bosses in this game are relatively easy, actually scratch that, the whole GAME is relatively easy, so there's no challenge until Hyness Unhooded AT MOST. The game is also VERY generous with lives so even if I did lose some, I'd never run out. I guess I just would've liked the last area to be shorter because this game just really wasn't doing it for me and it felt like it was starting to overstay its welcome. It is very flawed but I wouldn't say it's the worst Kirby game, mainly because there's still some great qualities like the visuals, music, and new Copy Abilities, which are easily the best part of the game. I really like Spider and Paint, and the Power Effects (the Copy Abilities that are fused with an element) are pretty cool too. I liked running Sword a lot with any of the elements, though as a standalone, I really like Beetle a lot (though I know it wasn't introduced here). Overall, this one was just a lot more disappointing than other Kirby games, but as a whole I wouldn't say it's bad or mid, just underwhelming.

Uno de los peores Kirby en mi opinión.

El juego fue concebido como un homenaje por el aniversario del personaje con muchas referencias a otros títulos, pero no se vuelve bueno con eso.

Mi problema principal es que el juego fue hecho principalmente para jugarlo en cooperativo, toda la gimmick de ir con tus amigos en un solo jugador es insufrible, los NPC hacen TODO por tí, sin necesidad de mover el joystick, solo falta que le hagan un masaje a Kirby mientras le llevan a cuestas hasta el final del nivel.
Hay secciones donde los personajes hacen una rueda, de puente o montan en una nave que también se hacen pesadas.

Los jefes están bien pero solo hay como 5 y a 4 los repiten con diferentes colores o cambios de diseño mínimos.

Los juegos de Kirby son fáciles, pero este parece incluso que es aún más fácil al punto de parecer insultante, te regalan monedas por dar 3 pasos, acabando con una cantidad ingente de vidas que no te sirven de nada, cosa que se corrigió en La Tierra Olvidada, aún así en los juegos anteriores del personaje a lo mucho podías acabar con 25-30 vidas, aquí si no tienes 3 dígitos es porque has estado esquivándolas.

A futuro agregaron más personajes y un modo de juego donde los usas en un epílogo de la historia pero tampoco es la gran cosa, laberintos idénticos con puzzles interesantes eso sí, que aprovechan bien las mecánicas de cada personaje.

La boss rush la cambiaron, ahora puedes ajustar su dificultad, no me gustó el cambio, ahora o es muy fácil o es endemoniadamente difícil.
Admito que usé la habilidad de la roca para pasarme la más dura y me la quité en el último momento para que se registrara que me lo pasé sin habilidad, merezco vuestros mejores insultos.

Visualmente es increíblemente bonito eso sí, aunque la variedad de entornos es muy simple a comparación de los de los juegos de 3DS.

I am a HUGE sucker for Kirby games (no pun intended), so I was absolutely all over this when it was announced. After being so enammored by the demo a couple weeks back, this became the first game since Wolfenstein The New Order that I've pre-ordered and then played day one. After being a little underwhelmed but satisfied by Triple Deluxe and Planet Robobot, this was a very pleasant upgrade, and definitely my favorite Kirby game in recent memory :D

Star Allies, at its core, is basically a combination of Return to Dreamland and Triple Deluxe with a smattering of Super Star Ultra's charm on top of it. The gimmick this time around is that you can not only play with four players like in Return to Dreamland, but the other three players are re-skinned enemies, like in Super Star Ultra. The art style is very much Triple Deluxe, and the powers in this game are a greatest hits of basically every Kirby game since Super Star Ultra, with yo-yo, wave, whip, beetle, and even some new ones like web (which are very fun). The controls are also the proto-Smash Bros style that Super Star Ultra had, with blocking, directional attacks, and the like, so every power has an "easy to play, hard to master" feel to it (save for one or two). The game also felt a good length. It's not suuuuper long, but it felt like a more finished experience like Triple Deluxe, where Robobot and Return to Dreamland felt like they ended a bit prematurely by comparison.

Gone are many of the more abrupt gimmicks from earlier games. The super powers from Return to Dreamland? Gone. The ultra-inhale seeds from Triple Deluxe? Gone. The robot suit from Robobot? Gone. In their place, are friend-powers, which utilize your number of friends to do a special thing that changes up the flow of that level. You have the friend-wheel (a non-stop forward rolling ball), friend-train (you run forward and can run up walls, like Super Baby Mario in Yoshi's Island), friend-star (basically it's a shmup now), and the friend-bridge (basically you're moving up and down as a platform to allow a friendly enemy to walk past). They're not usually too intrusive, but they're not really as fun as the mech suit from Robobot. The worst sin they commit, tbh, is that they are inherently one-player focused, as EVERYONE can jump during them and move equally, so the best way to do them is to just make everyone else sit and wait until it's over and let the best player among you handle the jumping.

This is really a shame, because this game does SO much to make itself an otherwise awesome multiplayer experience for gamers of all skill levels. For starters, the last gimmick in the game, and the best one by far, imo, are the combo powers you can make between your allies. If you hold up on the D-pad/joystick, you can get an ally to imbue your power with theirs. It doesn't work with all powers, but most of them, as each power in the game effectively falls into being either what I refer to as a base, an augment, or an other.

A base is something like Sword, where it's a power all in its own and doesn't affect others. An augment would be something like Fire, where not only is it its own power, but if an ally with a base holds 'up', you can imbue their weapon with that element. Some powers like Cleaning (the broom from Adventure 3) even have several elements they can imbue. Additionally, a base with an element can even augment other bases, so you don't need to keep fire if you have a fire sword, for example. An other is stuff like Suplex or Beetle that have a kind of throw move as their up-attack, so they don't get imbued or do imbuing, but have their own tertiary special ability.

The design of how the Star Allies even work is also very cleverly done to facilitate easy play among four players. Instead of having to eat a power and then use it up to generate a friend like in Super Star Ultra, this game gives Kirby a throwable friendship heart on his Y-button. This can be thrown at any enemy that could be normally eaten for a power to turn them into a friend. Other player characters also have these hearts, and anyone currently playing can be chosen to become that new befriended character if your roster is full of four characters. This makes getting new powers something easy that every player has agency in, not just Kirby. Something to mention, though, is that only the first player can actually be Kirby, and everyone doesn't get to be one like in Return to Dreamland. However, like in Return to Dreamland, your buddies can get the ability to play as Dedede, Meta Knight, and Waddle Dee, who have some really crazy imbued powers and combos they can pull off (particularly Waddle Dee).

The game also really never wants to kick anyone out. The camera always centers on Kirby (it doesn't do any shared nonsense like in Donkey Kong Country Returns 2 or anything), which can occasionally lead to your friends getting a bit lost. This is generally never a problem, however, because your allies never die when they fall down pits, they just get returned to Kirby's current position. Your allies also never die when they get their health dropped to 0, instead falling KO'd on the ground to be brought back to life by a friend who comes over and holds down X for a few seconds (a little like Castle Crashers). You can even share food with kisses just like you could in Super Star Ultra :D

The only way for an ally to actually get permanently toasted is if they get crushed by a crusher wall, although these are so few and far between that it was never really a problem for me. These features mean that, aside from the unfortunate way that most friend-powers are managed, no one ever needs to be waiting for Kirby to find a new enemy to friendify to come back into the game. They never need to get kicked out of the action. The game is also fairly easy, with every player having a quite generous amount of health, so dying happens pretty darn rarely (I died 3 times, and it was always from doing something stupid, not because that bit was hard XP ). Beating Story Mode also unlocks a speed-run mode a bit like how Robobot had it's Meta Knight mode, but this time going through as a group of allies with no Kirby (you pick powers at the start and have them 'til the end), as well as a boss rush mode, so there are some more difficult modes if that is what one is truly looking for in a Kirby game (although difficulty is clearly not this game's main focus).

Verdict: Highly Recommended. HAL have really knocked it out of the park with this one. This is one of the best multiplayer Kirby games they've ever made, and second only to Overcooked in my mind as the most brilliant couch co-op game of the decade, and second only to Octodad in terms of just sheer easy-to-access fun factor. It also only needs one Joycon to play, so you can do two-player co-op right out of the box :D

Flame me all you want, I don't give a fuck. I absolutely, unapologetically, unabashedly, genuinely, wholeheartedly, 100%, without a shadow of a doubt, adore the shit out of this game. Out of every Kirby game ever, this one is the biggest, loudest, most bombastic celebration of the entire franchise's history up to this point. And that love oozes out of every pore of this game. I know people have huge issues with this one, such as it being way too easy for Kirby standards, and that the game only felt 50% completed upon first release before the updates, but those are complete non-issues for me. I am just having too much damn fun to care. Especially considering that over a DOZEN MAJOR CHARACTERS THROUGHOUT THE FRANCHISE ARE PLAYABLE CHARACTERS WITH EXPANSIVE MOVESETS??? HELLO????

I can understand someone not caring for this game if they aren't already familiar with the Kirby series, and this was definitely a game made for the fans, but as a Kirby FANATIC myself, Kirby Star Allies means a lot to me

Kirby Star Allies is a really divisive title. Many fans of the series consider it a stepdown compared to other previous titles of the franchise. Other see it as a rehash of classsic ideas that are not combined together in the most effective way.

And at launch this may have been the case. However, I consider Star Allies to be my favorite Kirby game. And why is that?
Because it encapsulates everything I love about this franchise. It's a proper celebration of the over 20 years of iconicity of the squishy pink boy, brought together by a collection of playable heroes and villains of across the series, a series of great side modes that adds a lot of spice to the difficulty, and a story that opens some of the most fadcinating lore speculations I have seen in a Nintendo title (also yes Kirby Lore goes hard...)

Maybe not the best start if you are new to the franchise, but.... it's really worth cheking out if you're a fan of the series.

fairly standard Kirby game, good combat as always and set of copy abilities to use, new mechanics with the elements and the return of buddies helping you are both interesting, really fun boss-fights, the visuals and music are still fantastic, very colorful and full of charm like any previous Kirby game.

the level-design is a bit basic though and the game is extremely easy, way more than an Kirby game usually is, if you want an challenge I think it's generally better to not rely on your Helpers through the game, maybe just 1 helping you is enough even if that means that some puzzles will be impossible to complete without an group of 3.

I still think it's worth playing especially if you are looking for an enjoyable action platformer to play with your friends and family, it's the perfect game for that but in comparison to previous Kirby games such as Triple Deluxe or Planet Robobot but even more so after Forgotten Land, Star Allies is nowhere in the same level as those 3 games as whole.

I was struck a month or so ago with a vicious bug to play a bunch of Kirby after a friend was talking about how they were playing the post-launch content in Kirby Star Allies. I thought what better game to start with than Star Allies itself, as I'd never given much time to the content other than the main story to begin with. I spent some 20-odd hours playing through the post-launch Heroes in Another Dimension mode as well as the Guest Star ???? Star Allies Go! mode and the The Ultimate Choice modes. They were so substantial, particularly the Heroes in Another Dimension mode, that I figured I'd do a writeup just for them, if only a short one.

For a quick recap, Kirby Star Allies' big thing is that it's a 4 player Kirby game, not unlike Return to Dreamland on the Wii was, but the thing this time is that instead of a bunch of Kirbys, you can turn the powers you grab into buddies like you could in Kirby Super Star on the SNES. You can even add elemental powers to physical weapons and such for even more combo power, and it's a really fun time. At launch, there were also a few special guest stars who you could play as after you rescued them in the game, King Dedede, MetaKnight, and Waddle Dee. However, after launch, several batches of more guest starts were added based on further Kirby games (from the group of animal companions in Dreamland 2, to Marx from Super Star, to Dark MetaKnight from Amazing Mirror, and so so many more), and all of these 15+ guest stars play super differently to everything else in the game, and have really cool intricacies as to how they play. You can play through the normal game's levels as these guys, which is fun in and of itself, but you can also play the bonus modes with them, and that's why I felt they really shined.

First of these modes that's been in the game since launch is the Guest Star ???? mode, which in the original game functioned as basically an hour-ish long speedrun of a bunch of levels from the proper game with most of the bosses as well (including a new boss at the end exclusive to this mode) where you have to play as one of the Star Allies, and Kirby isn't a playable option. This wasn't something I had much patience to play through when the game came out, but it's a lot more fun if you play as the guest stars (which you can do after beating it with a normal enemy once). Each of them has a special intro stage that sorta runs you through their particular unique abilities, and they also have a special stage near the end of the run (and sometimes a few peppered in the middle of their run as well) as well that cater to their particular playstyles. I ended up having so much fun that I played through it as all of them, and while all aren't equally fun, I had a blast doing it. The new characters just play SO differently that it really did feel like a great new challenge every time despite the levels largely being the same.

The big thing that shows off these characters best is the Heroes in Another Dimension mode, though. This is a special challenge mode that they added once all the guest stars had been put into the game, and in it you play through a series of challenges as each and every one of the guest stars. This is a lot of puzzle platforming as well as some new extra hard boss fights, and they're put together really well! There are 120 hearts to collect along the way hidden behind a bunch of puzzles and reflex tests that you'll do with the guest stars' unique abilities, and if you manage to get 100 of them, you'll get a special boss at the end and unlock the hidden final guest star! It's all around a pretty darn tough mode, especially those boss fights, but it's a really good time, and well worth checking out if you enjoyed your time through Star Allies the first time.

The last thing I played was The Ultimate Choice, which is this game's Arena mode. It has several levels of difficulty, and you don't get the percentage bonus for completing it until you've done it at the highest level of 8 (Soul Melter difficulty). This is a pretty damn hard mode to do, even with the ability to pick exactly who you have in your 4-person team from the very powerful guest stars (I found Marx to be the best and safest pick, generally), but I actually managed it! I never thought I'd be able to get this mode done and get my save file to 100% completion, so I was pretty proud of myself for finally doing it~. Upon beating it, you even get told a secret code to unlock a super SUPER hard Soul Melter EX difficulty mode, and it's the same difficulty code that unlocks the harder mode in the original Kirby's Dreamland, which I thought was super cute ^w^ (I didn't try that mode though. Normal Soul Melter was hard enough for me XP).

Verdict: Highly Recommended. Giving a recommendation for what's basically free content is a little weird, but it's well worth going back and trying if you enjoyed Star Allies back around when it came out and are feeling the pull to go back and try some more Kirby fun. The normal modes in the base game were already good, but the guest stars add a lot more fun into them, and Heroes in Another Dimension is another really nice addition to an already pretty big package. It all adds up to be a pretty darn impressive free bunch of stuff added to the game, and if you like Kirby, Star Allies is more worth picking up than ever before in my opinion~.

generally for me, kirby is a fun & lighthearted reprieve from other games that i get into. after forgotten land, I was interested in playing more and getting a fuller picture of the characters and music - things that I really enjoy about the series. after playing nightmare in dreamland, I hoped for a more modern experience, and turned to star allies.

as expected, the themeing, characters, music, and artistry was beautiful and varied. with all of the free character dlc since its release, i loved checking out the palace where I could bring others into my next level, specifically characters that I remember from when I played kirby as a kid. also, the final world's boss levels and final boss fight had me surprised at how interested in the character alterations came to be, with kracko coming back and the new whispy woods.

however, this game is extremely easy, which, i think, is a plus in general. while i could've enjoyed a bit more challenge, i would have prefered to go elsewhere for it, since running through kirby's levels and plowing through everything with every ability made me feel like a true pink-puff god killer. any other way, the bubbly and whimsical nature of the game would've clashed with difficult gameplay. while this is not a game where i was interested in finding every secret & replaying levels over and over again, i'm glad to have gotten to play another kirby game and seen him dance a whole bunch.