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
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