It's very strange to look back at this game in a time where it's remake outclasses it in almost every way, but also where the series it hails from has evolved artistically far beyond itself.

There are times where the art direction is very detailed and makes great use of perspective to indicate scope (like Dyna Blade's nest in the mountains or Meta Knight's ship looming in the orange sunlit skies), but there is an overuse of prerendered and image-based graphics that leave a weird uncanniness. For example, those weird flat green mountaintops in Cavios, those swinging bells in Gourmet Race, and those terrible compressed cloud JPEGs in the last area of Great Cave Offensive. They all clash pretty heavily with the otherwise lovely spritework of bosses and other characters.

Although I may not always like its presentation, it is distinctly charming for its era. I think the soundtrack is what truly elevates it to that weird dreamy status a lot of early Kirby is shrouded in (like pre Nightmare in Dream Land), especially the Dyna Blade subgame. My personal favorite subgame was Milky Way Wishes, although Revenge of Meta Knight is very close behind it.