Kids deserve good art. I enjoy experiencing kids media even as an adult. Kirby 64 was my favorite game as a kid. In 2022, Kirby's Dream Land 3 is kind of insulting.
As an art project, Kirby's Dream Land 3 is technically impressive for its time. There's extreme dedication to its crayon aesthetic, with every environment and texture filled with craftsmanship, and special effects like layered semi-transparent parallaxing. However, this is one of many elements that suggest poor prioritization of how to make this project playable and fun as a video game for kids.
With such high uniformity in its aesthetic, there is a notable lack of contrast between characters, foreground, and background. All that detail to the environmental elements comes with a cost, which is fewer unique elements per level. The result is multiple nondescript, impossible to remember level layouts with textures repeated so often per section as to render the richness of their detail meaningless.
Make no mistake, separate from visuals, the level design is bad. But the level design is bad as a compromise to two fatal flaws at the heart of this game - the game's movement options and the animal friend system.
First, Kirby's movement is awful. Kirby has slow flight speed, running that can outspeed the camera's ability to track him, and zero conservation of momentum when doing any attack animation. Every attack is slow with a small hurtbox, and every copy ability only has one or two attacks.
The reason why the game has so few (8) copy abilities - Kirby can ride on any of 6 animal friends, which all have their own animations for Kirby using a copy ability while riding them. Together, this brings the total number of unique attacks closer to 50. Although interesting in concept, this presents multiple problems in execution.
For one, you can only ride one animal friend at a time, and only get the chance to change animal friends once, maybe twice per level. If you lose a life, your animal friend is gone. In practice, you will not see a majority of the game's moveset most of the time. Worse, each individual move has limited utility because of the effort spent creating the full set. So for a majority of the player experience, you will see a fraction of the total on repeat.
Even discounting moveset variety, the animal friend system is broken in that they change Kirby's movement systems, and they are all worse. (And remember, Kirby does not feel great in this game.) Without a friend, Kirby can fly infinitely, attack underwater, and run consistently. Some animal friends control worse in the air, or cannot jump infinitely, or otherwise direct his attacks in unintuitive, non-forward facing directions.
All this is a problem because the animal friend system is 100% completely optional, meaning no level is designed to take advantage of their unique mechanics without it also being possible to play as Kirby. It is also possible to take animal friends between levels, which means every level is not designed to be impossible to beat with any animal friend, either. In essence, there is no reason to use them, and their inclusion tanked the variety in level design to a series of bland hallways that try to discourage the player from playing as Kirby and just flying over everything.
So the whole gimmick of the game is balanced around making it less fun to play... as Kirby.
Bland, slow, devoid of personality, you'd think I'm being overly critical on an old game, until you remember it was the last SNES title to release in the United States. Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island had already done a coloring book aesthetic with sharp contrast that made it easy to read character placement and level design. Fire up Kirby Super Star, and it feels like it was made yesterday - fast and fluid animations that are punchy and funny, and a helper / co-op play system lightyears ahead of whatever Gooey is in Dream Land 3. With levels that, while kind of eyebleeding in their relentless color, are bursting with personality and designed around Kirby's incredible moveset (multiple attacks for every copy ability!), encouraging experimentation to find secrets and shortcuts.
In my rating system, 2 stars represent an average, C grade game. I award Kirby's Dream Land 3 a single star as a D rank game. Its not unplayable, but there's no reason to do so after the release of Kirby 64. The director of both releases, Shinichi Shimomura, reused character designs, enemy designs, and level concepts, resulting in a game that sits at the pinnacle of the franchise. Instead of the animal friend system, he adapted the concept into the power combo system, letting the player access that game's 35 powers with much more regularity. Every level is handcrafted and unique in theme, while also encouraging gathering powers in one level to find secrets in another. It elegantly solves every problem in Dream Land 3 with a Kirby that is satisfying to control in a game that is engaging to play. I could only recommend Dream Land 3 as a curio for seeing how this series' misstep influenced other games going forward.
As an art project, Kirby's Dream Land 3 is technically impressive for its time. There's extreme dedication to its crayon aesthetic, with every environment and texture filled with craftsmanship, and special effects like layered semi-transparent parallaxing. However, this is one of many elements that suggest poor prioritization of how to make this project playable and fun as a video game for kids.
With such high uniformity in its aesthetic, there is a notable lack of contrast between characters, foreground, and background. All that detail to the environmental elements comes with a cost, which is fewer unique elements per level. The result is multiple nondescript, impossible to remember level layouts with textures repeated so often per section as to render the richness of their detail meaningless.
Make no mistake, separate from visuals, the level design is bad. But the level design is bad as a compromise to two fatal flaws at the heart of this game - the game's movement options and the animal friend system.
First, Kirby's movement is awful. Kirby has slow flight speed, running that can outspeed the camera's ability to track him, and zero conservation of momentum when doing any attack animation. Every attack is slow with a small hurtbox, and every copy ability only has one or two attacks.
The reason why the game has so few (8) copy abilities - Kirby can ride on any of 6 animal friends, which all have their own animations for Kirby using a copy ability while riding them. Together, this brings the total number of unique attacks closer to 50. Although interesting in concept, this presents multiple problems in execution.
For one, you can only ride one animal friend at a time, and only get the chance to change animal friends once, maybe twice per level. If you lose a life, your animal friend is gone. In practice, you will not see a majority of the game's moveset most of the time. Worse, each individual move has limited utility because of the effort spent creating the full set. So for a majority of the player experience, you will see a fraction of the total on repeat.
Even discounting moveset variety, the animal friend system is broken in that they change Kirby's movement systems, and they are all worse. (And remember, Kirby does not feel great in this game.) Without a friend, Kirby can fly infinitely, attack underwater, and run consistently. Some animal friends control worse in the air, or cannot jump infinitely, or otherwise direct his attacks in unintuitive, non-forward facing directions.
All this is a problem because the animal friend system is 100% completely optional, meaning no level is designed to take advantage of their unique mechanics without it also being possible to play as Kirby. It is also possible to take animal friends between levels, which means every level is not designed to be impossible to beat with any animal friend, either. In essence, there is no reason to use them, and their inclusion tanked the variety in level design to a series of bland hallways that try to discourage the player from playing as Kirby and just flying over everything.
So the whole gimmick of the game is balanced around making it less fun to play... as Kirby.
Bland, slow, devoid of personality, you'd think I'm being overly critical on an old game, until you remember it was the last SNES title to release in the United States. Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island had already done a coloring book aesthetic with sharp contrast that made it easy to read character placement and level design. Fire up Kirby Super Star, and it feels like it was made yesterday - fast and fluid animations that are punchy and funny, and a helper / co-op play system lightyears ahead of whatever Gooey is in Dream Land 3. With levels that, while kind of eyebleeding in their relentless color, are bursting with personality and designed around Kirby's incredible moveset (multiple attacks for every copy ability!), encouraging experimentation to find secrets and shortcuts.
In my rating system, 2 stars represent an average, C grade game. I award Kirby's Dream Land 3 a single star as a D rank game. Its not unplayable, but there's no reason to do so after the release of Kirby 64. The director of both releases, Shinichi Shimomura, reused character designs, enemy designs, and level concepts, resulting in a game that sits at the pinnacle of the franchise. Instead of the animal friend system, he adapted the concept into the power combo system, letting the player access that game's 35 powers with much more regularity. Every level is handcrafted and unique in theme, while also encouraging gathering powers in one level to find secrets in another. It elegantly solves every problem in Dream Land 3 with a Kirby that is satisfying to control in a game that is engaging to play. I could only recommend Dream Land 3 as a curio for seeing how this series' misstep influenced other games going forward.