Kirby games are just different, man.

Is it kind of ass to play? Sure. I'm not really gonna write home about this one in any capacity. Maybe within the grand picture of Kirby I can at least say this one is "different", but that's as far as my praise really extends.

All you're really gonna find here are some cute visuals, good music, and a gameplay loop that's tired out as soon as you discover there's really only, like, 4 abilities worth having.

With that being said, I can't be mad at this guy. I mean, look at him. Whenever he sets off on a mission he looks so happy. Who am I to try to take that from him? I'll probably keep playing games starring him just to keep seeing him be happy.

Maybe I’m a victim to marketing, who knows.

Absolutely one of my favorite games of all time. It has this immaculate vibe that's very specific to the Dark Matter trilogy and that I feel is fully realized here.

It's not exactly edgy, but it's weird, it has a very unique soundtrack and every level is varied and fun, not even mentioning how great the copy ability mixing system is. It might be a bit short, but it's part of it's strength honestly, as 100% it is very fun and I do it every re release it gets.

Definitely my favorite Kirby game.

Kirby passa longe de ser uma das minhas franquias favoritas. Tendo crescido nos anos 90 com outros tipos de plataforma mais desafiadores, conheci a franquia já mais velho e sempre achei fácil demais, simples demais e num geral, mediano.

The Crystal Shards em comparação a outros Kirbies traz o interessantíssimo conceito de fusão de absorções, algo intrigante que infelizmente não é ensinado no decorrer do jogo, mas sim no encarte/manual. Se você não o ler, talvez termine o jogo sem saber dessa possibilidade que junto dos chefes é a melhor coisa da experiência.

Os níveis são interessantes. Há bastante verticalidade e curiosamente é um jogo ligeiramente mais difícil que outros jogos da franquia. Sem power-ups, o Kirby é bastante limitado e impotente e se em alguns jogos é possível "voar" pela fase inteira, aqui uma restrição impede que o jogador abuse da habilidade e evite ter de enfrentar inimigos e obstáculos.

É saudável retornar a fases já vencidas pra coletar cristais que o jogador talvez não tenha conseguido pegar, seja por uma falha em executar um desafio específico (manobrar em uma queda, explorar um cômodo específico), seja pela necessidade de ter um power-up específico pra conseguir determinado cristal. Mas o ritmo de jogo mais lento talvez seja um desincentivo, especialmente se você estiver experimentando o jogo pra conhecer a franquia, ao invés de investido em completá-lo 100%.

A fusão de power-ups dá toda uma dimensão de curiosidade e experimentação que diverte por um bom período até que seja possível ao jogador encontrar uma combinação que lhe traga conforto e a sensação de poder que lhe agrade. Mas aqui e acolá tem desafios que exigem uma combinação específica que acaba requerendo que o jogador retorne posteriormente com outros poderes pra conseguir coletar. Esse backtracking não é muito animador, porque é necessário descobrir qual é, onde pegar e só depois tentar. Esse processo pode consumir MUITO tempo e sinceramente, como dito anteriormente, a velocidade e ritmo do jogo não torna tão convidativa essa tarefa.

Eu me diverti um bocado, mas não consegui me motivar a ir até o fim.

Only thing saving it from 2.5 is that Miracle Matter was actually a pretty fun boss. The game controls no where near as sharply as super star and feels really sluggish, mixing copy abilities is a great idea and a good innovation for the series but the system overall feels incredibly half baked with a lot of really useless ones, and outside of that the game provides nothing meaningful to the series. Its fine if you're really bored and have a passing interest in this game but I don't see myself ever genuinely recommending this to even big Kirby fans that just somehow missed this one.

Really enjoyed this game and I personally think its the best of the "Dark Matter Trilogy". It still has that issue Dreamland 2 & 3 had where "hey you need this combo to get this collectible" and you leave a level and come back with the proper thing, but at the very least Kirby 64 has quick levels so it never felt like too much of a bother despite the puzzle solving being very minimal on that front.

Overall though, I really liked the level design, feel, visuals, music, and just the premise of Kirby going on an adventure with some friends to save the world. A pretty cozy game.

One of the most huggable games ever made, but so fundamentally slow and clumsy that it works out to not being very good. Side objectives are tedious but no more difficult or engaging than the regular ones meant to be achievable for Literal Babies (no way I'm going through all those levels to get the second ending), movement is the most sluggish shit I've ever felt with a hilariously unresponsive double tap to run, powerup combinations are cool but often worse than their base forms, etc. There's a number of impressive setpieces but they're often held back by how incompetent they are at communicating depth and when hitboxes will be active, a problem that would have been understandable earlier in the generation but is absurd to see in a game released in the 21st century.

But I can't rate it lower. Kirby is just a lil guy, yknow?

OH SHIT I FORGOT TO REVIEW KIRBY 64 AFTER FINISHING IT AND ONLY JUST REALISED NOW, 2 WEEKS INTO 2024, AS I TRY TO GET SOMETHING DONE AFTER WORKING A SOUL-DEVOURING 12 HOUR WAREHOUSE SHIFT PICKING FUCKING FRUIT THAT I MUST RETURN TO FOR 7AM - 7PM AFTER WAKING UP AT 5:30 AM, IT IS 11PM AS I TYPE THIS I WILL GET BARELY ANY SLEEP TONIGHT

Uh yeah it's decent. Absolutely love the visuals; that low-pokly N64 vibe always hits real nice, and I love the idea of combining powers, in spite of how damn cumbersome initiating the action is. Some real toe-tapping music throughout, which is always a way to endear me towards your game just a slight bit more.

Most importantly though, Kirby 64 is still more Kirby. At this point, I've kind of accepting Kirby as a pretty bread-n-butter platformer series that rarely has an abject bad game (DL2 not withstanding through my experiences thus far), and even when it doesn't outright wow me like Forgotten Land or Nightmare In Dream Land did, I can generally come away having a good time. 100% being a bit of a drag not withstanding, but at least it's better than the unbearable slogs of 100%ing DL2 and especially 3.

The definition of comfy.

Adorable visuals, wonderful music, creative ability combining mechanic that's more there to let you have fun than to "Beat that specific boss that's kicking your ass".

To the people that don't like this game, you should try playing it on a cold winter night under a blanket with some hot choco to drink, it'll bring you so many smiles!

I was really stressing out about my driving test yesterday, so I decided to boot up an old favorite to help take my mind off of it. It's been a few years since I've played Kirby 64, but I played it a TON when I was little, and I remember it very fondly~. Part of my love for it is certainly down to nostalgia, but I think it still holds up really well among the increasingly large pantheon of Kirby games. I got all the shards to get the real final boss, and it took me around 5 or 6 hours. I played through the Japanese version, but aside from some very small cosmetic differences, it's identical to its international counterparts.

An evil darkness has attacked a planet of fairies and shattered their giant crystal. One of the fairies, Ribbon, takes a larger crystal shard and is flung to the far off planet of Pop Star where she plummets onto Kirby's head. Kirby quickly agrees to help his new friend and they team up with Waddle Dee, Adeleine the painter, and King Dedede to save the solar system from these evil black blobs. As in the manner of Kirby games before it, the story is told with no words through brief cutscenes that play between worlds. Your friends largely play cosmetic roles, but they occasionally hop in to aid Kirby and add a special section to the gameplay. Waddle Dee provides vehicles for minecart sections (like DKC but nowhere near as brutal), you can hop on Dedede's back for hammer swinging action, and you'll sometimes pass Adeleine and she'll paint a powerup (health or a 1up) that will come to life to aid you.

The gameplay otherwise is fairly standard Kirby with some new twists. 22 stages across 6 worlds with 7 boss fights, it's not a super long game, but it's definitely longer if you're going to try and find all the crystal shards to fight the real final boss. There are 3 hidden within each non-boss stage, and they're either a reward for beating a mini-boss, a reward for completing a simple puzzle, hidden in the stage, or hidden behind a colored bit of level that you need a special power or power combo to break.

Kirby's animal friends may be gone from the Kirby's Dream Land games, but the main gimmick for this Kirby game is that you can combine powers. You have many mainstays of Kirby, cutter, rock, fire, but you can combine them with themselves or one another to make all new powers! Combining powers just to see what they'll be is still something that makes me smile all these years later. You can either combine a power with another of itself for an upgrade of that power (cutter + cutter = BIG cutter blade) or combine them with other powers for all new stuff (cutter + electric = double-bladed lightsaber, one of my personal favorites X3). This does however mean that most of the powers are just "press B to make power", and most powers have virtually no directional inputs to change how they work (like how powers worked in Kirby Super Star).

The presentation is colorful, happy, and very Kirby. Cute enemies, cute powers, cute allies, it's nothing out of the ordinary for Kirby of this era. The music is fantastic though. This is easily one of the best soundtracks on the N64 in my book.

The only real negatives I can say about it, other than that the solutions and locations for some of the shards can be a bit obtuse at times, is the lack of any co-op. The co-op in Kirby Super Star is one of the reasons I adore that game as much as I do, and the lack of it here is very unfortunate. There are some multiplayer competitive mini-games you can play from the game's main screen, which are all games I've had good fun with friends with in the past, but it's hardly a replacement for Super Star-style co-op play. The game is also harder than I remembered it was. Newer Kirby games are certainly quite easy, but a lack of tons of healing items in later stages as well as the use of the Kirby's Dream Land 6-hit health bar system means you can't just barrel through a level and probably be okay. You do have to try at least a little XP

Verdict: Highly Recommended. One of my favorite Kirby games and always will be. The power combo gimmick is a really strong one that I really wish newer Kirby games had at least tried to experiment with a bit more. Given that this is on the Wii Kirby Anniversary Collection, I'm not sure the game is worth hunting down on its own if you're gonna pay a big bundle for it, but if you're fixin' for Kirby and want a good one, it's hard to find much better Kirby than this UwU

Joguei só até o segundo mundo e droppei...

Infelizmente assim como Donkey Kong, a franquia Kirby também não teve sucesso em se reinventar no Nintendo 64 como os jogos do Mario e The Legend of Zelda tiveram.

As medidas tomadas para tentar encaixar a estrutura de gameplay dos jogos anteriores em um ambiente 2.5D acabaram por deixar o jogo muito lento e fácil, que acabam sendo os dois piores defeitos do jogo. Os ambientes possuem menos detalhes e menos profundidade, o que resulta em uma exploração vertical entediante, e pra piorar, o movimento de "flutuar" do Kirby também é LIMITADO.

Não me entenda mal, Kirby nunca teve a premissa de ser desafiador ou algo do tipo, mas o fato do jogo ser ridículo de fácil acaba por canibalizar uma das novidades mais legais dele, que é a combinação de poderes. Por que ficar testando várias combinações (que em maioria nem são interessantes) se você pode simplesmente pegar a bomba e sair atropelando tudo no seu caminho?

Kirby 64 não é de todo o mal, o visual é muito lindo e charmoso e os modelos de personagens e chefes envelheceram igual vinho (infelizmente não se pode falar o mesmo das animações e efeitos sonoros), principalmente o do Kirby e o do King Dedede, além da trilha sonora ser excelente também... mas no geral me decepcionou bastante, sempre ouvir falar muito bem dele.