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).
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).