We have now come to the third and final game in the DKC trilogy and funnily enough, this was the first of the three I ever played. I remember feeling ecstatic when I found this at my local flea market randomly for $10 I think. I'd just gotten into collecting retro Nintendo games and a title like this was perfect for my collection I thought. I played this and enjoyed it back then, but seeing as it was my first SNES DKC game, I didn't know how it compared to the other two. Well after beating those two, I realized how much weaker this game is in comparison. After replaying all three games back-to-back, yeah this still holds true today.

Let's (again) start with the gameplay changes. K Rool has once again kidnapped Donkey Kong. Not only that, he kidnapped Diddy Kong this time around! So it's up to Dixie to team up with her baby cousin, Kiddy Kong, to save them both. The first thing you'll notice is the fact I said baby. Yes, you play as Dixie and a literal baby this time around. Yes, he is lame conceptually. But I also think he's kinda lame gameplay-wise too. Dixie plays the same as she did in 2, however Kiddy is basically like Donkey Kong from DKC1. He's heavy and can bounce on enemies Dixie normally couldn't. Not only that, he has the ability to bounce on water if you time it right..and also the ability to destroy weakened floor with a team up. Both of these new mechanics are barely used in the game, so it's easy to forget about them. Otherwise, he's just Donkey again only less cool which is disappointing considering I preferred the two lighter weight characters from 2. The team up is also not as responsive in this game for some reason? You can do it anytime you want in 2 but here, sometimes it won't work, and you have to move a bit for it to go. Idk if it's because Kiddy is big character or what, but it can be slightly annoying. Not the worst thing in the world but just annoying since this wasn't an issue in 2. Other than all that, the gameplay is the exact same as the first two, which means it's still a fun time for the most part.

The actual levels I find to be a big downgrade from 2 and even a bit of a downgrade from 1. The level settings in 1 weren't amazing but they were interesting enough. The ones in 2 were amazing and were full of a variety of settings I really enjoyed. 3 I just find super boring when it comes to it's level themes. It has forest levels, factory levels, snow levels, levels that are supposed to be Canada?, sawmill levels (okay those aren't terrible), lakeside levels, cave levels etc. Besides the sawmill levels, which are kinda neat, I find the level settings in this game to be uninspired and boring compared to the first two games. I also think because of this, this game visually looks worse than 2. Due to its environments, 2 could be really vibrant and eye-catching. 3 does not have a pleasing color pallet to me and I generally think it looks ugly a lot of the time because of that. The levels themselves are mostly standard fare I'd say. Some of the gimmicks near the end, and yeah this game loves its gimmick levels, can be really annoying tho. Infamous ones like Lightning Look-Out and Poisonous Pond are annoying yeah. There are also some other annoying ones like Koindozer Klamber and Rocket Rush that I don't hear talked about as much and they were even more annoying than the two I mentioned prior. Still, these levels are all in the endgame. Otherwise, most of the game's levels are pretty alright.

The collectables in this game are pretty similar to 2's. Bonus games back again, and this time there's a new one where you must collect 15 green bananas that dissapear after 2 seconds. This is a fine addition to the minigame lineup, tho I must say some of these were super annoying. I don't remember having many issues with the ones in 2, but here they can be brutal. This game changed it so every level (besides the Lost World) has exactly two bonuses and honestly I like that change. Once you've gotten two in a level, you know you don't have to look for more. Again, besides the Lost World which throws in a couple levels that have 3 bonuses. The DK coin was also changed. Instead of just being in a level randomly, and collecting it just like that, you must defeat an enemy called Koin. He uses the coin as a shield and you must ricochet a metal barrel off a wall or whatever to hit him as he always faces whatever direction you're in. I honestly liked this change as well since they kinda turned the DK coin into a little puzzle where you must figure out how to kill this enemy and it's pretty cool.

The animal buddies are again back. They got rid of Rambi, which is weird since he's in the first two games and is a staple buddy after this. Enguarde is still here though, and so is my boy Squitter. They got rid of Rattly but kept the several Squawks. Besides all these returning ones, there are also two new ones. Parry the Parallel Bird floats above you and can collect items in the air. If they get hit, they die but if you bring them to their animal buddy sign, you'll usually get something nice from it. The other new animal buddy is Ellie the Elephant. She gets used a ton in this game and has several different abilities. She can suck up water and shoot it out of her trunk. She can suck barrels from far away. She's afraid of mice and that mechanic gets used a couple of times. She's not bad honestly but she's also not one of my favorites.

I didn't really mention the overworld in my review for 2, because it was similar to 1's, however I must commend this game for switching things up and improving the overworld this time around. You can actually move around the world of DKC3, which makes it feel more alive. You use a variety of vehicles from Funky and you get more as you progress. Throughout the world, you can also find secret caves which house Banana Birds. You must do a Simon Says type game to get them, but these birds are used to get 103% and the true ending. While I personally don't care about the birds themselves, having secrets to find in the overworld was a nice addition. Besides this, you also have these bear characters you can interact with. One bear gives you a couple items in exchange for bear coins (this game's new Kremkoin) that you can then give to other bears in exchange for some banana birds. Other bears require you to do certain tasks in levels or the overworld to unlock banana birds as well. These are fine imo, but they're less fun than just exploring the overworld and finding the caves. Plus the bears designs I don't really care for, they never felt like "Donkey Kong" to me idk.

The bosses this time around, while better than 1's, aren't as good as 2's. For some reason, they made like every boss in this game uncanny and creepy and I don't dig their designs as much as 2's bosses. Besides that, I felt like they were simpler compared to 2's. With the exception of Barbos which I ended up kinda liking, the others I wasn't much of a fan. That includes the K Rool fight too. This is my least favorite version of his fight. I don't really dig how you fight him (I think it's less fun than the cannonballs in 2) and I don't really like the whole Frankenstein thing they went for. Kaptain K Rool was just way cooler.

I may have complained throughout this review, however nothing compares to the OST. This is a massive step-down from the 2nd game and a big downgrade from the 1st game as well. I did like Water World, that song stood out from the rest and proves that the water themes in these games are always the best, however the rest of the OST was incredibly forgettable. Compare the beginning level theme from 2 and then 3. It's night and day. Only reason I'm bringing this up is because this series is known for its amazing soundtracks. I know David Wise didn't work on this game and it definitely shows.

While I was definitely really negative throughout this review, I don't think this game is bad. It has the same old gameplay everyone loves, and even does some things right like the overworld and the collectable changes. However, with the OST being a massive downgrade from the first two games, and the levels themselves being worse overall, I can confidently put this at the bottom of my SNES DKC ranking. I'd never play this over the first two games but I've definitely played worst platformers before lol.

And with that, the DKC trilogy is done. I'm gonna take a break with Kirby as well, as I've been burnt out on platformers a bit. I actually do plan on starting a Zelda marathon next (I might alternate the Kirby marathon with this as well eventually) with some buddies of mine joining me too so stay tuned for a Zelda 1 review in the near future!

Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

For the longest time, this was in my top 5 Kirby games. I got this on the Wii U virtual console back in the day, and remember enjoying it a lot. I also remember that I used save states on certain parts and was annoyed at other parts of the game but I generally loved the game's aesthetic and vibe, I guess those aspects overshadowed the bad parts in my mind. What do I think of the game now though? It's not bad at all, but it does have some really annoying issues that nowadays do hamper my experience.

Let's talk about the gameplay first and foremost. Compared to Superstar, it's a big downgrade. Kirby's running speed is very fast, but his walking speed is incredibly slow. This wouldn't usually be an issue however, a lot of them the camera won't pan at the start of a new area until you've gotten until the edge of the screen. Unless you're as careful as can be, if an enemy is there it will hit you. This never happened at all in Superstar. When Kirby floats and gets out of a float, he loses all momentum he's gained and will basically stop in place. Maybe this is so you don't spam the float but it ruins the flow of the gameplay a bit and is an annoyance since Superstar also never did this. It's also incredibly easy to get hit in this game, not only because or the whole screen having to catch up with Kirby, but because the invincibility frames last like a second or less so it's so easy to just get comboed if you're unlucky. This is something I noticed even back in the day, you get hit A LOT in this game and it's quite annoying. One last thing this game downgraded from Superstar, and this one isn't as bad as the other things I mentioned (at least for me) is Kirby's moveset. Kirby goes back to only having one basic move per copy ability. While this is naturally a downgrade compared to Superstar, the animal friends return from Dreamland 2 and do make up for this a bit I think.

Not only are Rick, Kine and Coo back from Dreamland 2, this game adds three new animal friends as well. Nago the cat, Pitch the bird and ChuChu the octopus are the new additions and they're all very solid. Nago is actually my favorite of the six, cuz he feels the best to control but also because he has a very helpful triple jump. Pitch doesn't really have any abilities but he is a cute little guy. ChuChu can only float a couple of times at once but she has the ability to hang from ceilings (it only really gets used once tho lol). Anyways, like Dreamland 2, Dreamland 3 gives each animal friend their own specific take on the copy abilities. With six animal friends now, and 8 copy abilities, that's 48 unique animal friend abilities. There are way less copy abilities in this game compared to Superstar, however with this many animal friend abilities, I feel like it never gets boring since you're more than likely always discovering new ones throughout the game which is fun.

Going into the level's themselves, they aren't great tbh. A good chunk of them are very simple with enemies littered throughout. The level design is way too basic and can get boring some of the time (mostly some of world 3 and 4). They try to combat this with the game's main collectable, the heart-stars, but this can also be a mixed bag. Early on they aren't bad. Each world has six stages, and each of the six stages use the same heart-star conventions. The first always deals with flowers. The second always has you bringing a specific copy ability or animal friend to some part of the stage and interacting with whatever. The third has you playing a minigame a way into the stage. The fourth has you collecting a single object in the stage and bringing it to the end. The fifth has you bringing a specific animal friend to the end of the stage so they can be with their girlfriend/boyfriend. And the 6th has you collecting several objects in the level and bringing them to the end character. Yeah, you get a heart-star from a character at the end of the stage..and they can be pretty fun to see. Mostly because this game cross overed with other Nintendo properties like ROB the Robot and Metroid. Anyways, heart-stars aren't usually too bad to get but the endgame has some really annoying ones. The last couple minigames are like annoying as balls to do without save stating, otherwise you have to redo the stage each time you lose, so I decided to just save state again like I did all the way back in the day. That plus others can just be plain cryptic, and yeah..the collectables aren't super fun to get some of the time.

I know I've spent most of this review complaining so far, and yeah, the gameplay probably is the weakest part of this game, but some of the other aspects are fantastic and make up for the gameplay a bit. The visuals for example are amazing in this game. I still think Yoshi's Island is the best-looking Super Nintendo game, however this is right next to that. This game is a coloring book come to life and it's so nice to look at. It fits Kirby perfectly too and I really wish the modern games tried to do something like this again. Besides the amazing art style, this game is just really charming in general. Whether it's all the animal friend's reactions to Kirby picking other friends instead of them, or the bosses of each world standing idle not fighting you after you purified them by getting every heart-star in the world. Gameplay be damned, it's clear the Kirby3 team were passionate about the actual world and characters. I also always loved the atmosphere in this game. Idk if it's because of the cutesy art style combined with Dark Matter as an antagonist, but this game always felt a bit off in a way I really liked. I don't know how to describe it, but Dreamland 3 fans will probably understand what I mean.

The bosses in general are solid. You have the usual Wispy Woods and some other cool ones. Besides the introduction of Ado (who is basically just Adeline before Adeline), Dark Matter and Zero are great final bosses to the Dreamland trilogy. Dark Matter is cool ofc but Zero is very creepy especially for a Kirby game. The fact it's a giant white sphere that bleeds as you attack it, and the fact its last final form is its eyeball ripped out of the sphere, all bloody and everything, it's so unlike Kirby and just gives the game this eerie feeling I love.

The music in this game is also super good and drives the atmosphere home even more. My favorite songs were probably Grass Land 1, Grass Land 4 and Ripple Field 1. The entire soundtrack is really solid though and like I said, really helps with game feeling atmospheric.

I'm sad this isn't in my top 5 Kirby's anymore. This game has a lot of charm and heart to it but on the gameplay side, it just has too many issues for me to rate it super high. My judgement was clouded back then by the art style and atmosphere, and while those are still great now, I can't deny this game isn't as good as I once thought. I still like it overall, but I will kneel to all the Superstar fans despite not loving that game's structure...that is the superior Kirby game. If they took the gameplay from Superstar and the art style, atmosphere and single campaign structure from this game...I may have gotten my perfect Kirby game. Ah well, a man can dream. I will say tho, I do like this more than Dreamland 2. There isn't a level as bullshit as that trial and error in 2 and this game visually just looks so much better of course. That and I have more nostalgia for it haha. Anyways, next is Donkey Kong Country 3 so look forward to that!

6.5/10

This was actually the last mainline DKC game I played. My first was returns, as I said in my DKC1 review. I played 1 and 3 shortly after that and I played Tropical Freeze the day it released. I didn't play 2 until years later in 2018 where an Instagram account I was following was selling a CIB copy for $35. That sounded like a good deal back then, and considering it's almost $90 now it's even better now, so I bought it off them. I really enjoyed my time with it, but it wasn't until replaying it in 2022, where I truly saw it as a masterpiece. Do I still think that now? Look at my score to find out (that means yes).

Let's start with the gameplay changes. The thing you'll notice when you first start the game is you don't play as Donkey Kong anymore. You still play as Diddy Kong but replacing Donkey is newcomer Dixie Kong. The main plot this time is King K Rool is back, he has kidnapped Donkey Kong and you must team-up as Diddy and Dixie to defeat him and save DK. Pretty simple but it works. Anyways, Diddy plays pretty much the same but Dixie is a bit different. Her main gameplay change is the fact that she can glide by using her hair. This is incredibly helpful with certain segments throughout the game and because of this plus being more fun to control, I definitely prefer this duo over the first game's. I still think Diddy feels better to play as since he's still faster here and has a better roll (Dixie's roll sucks if you're trying to roll jump off a cliff) so he was my go to Kong when I had both but Dixie is still very fun to play as here due to her glide. This game did add another new big mechanic that plays a part in a bunch of levels. By pressing the A button, if you have both Kongs, you can perform a Team Up. This basically lets you throw the kong upwards in whatever direction you want, and it lets you get up to high places you normally couldn't get to or collect items up high. It's nice and quick to pull off and just adds that much more depth to the levels.

The levels themselves are better than ever here. The level design is improved, with each level feeling pretty distinct from each other. One moment you'll be riding air balloons over a pit of lava and the next you'll be racing enemies in a haunted amusement park. Levels have gimmicks but they never feel intrusive or annoying to me. The level themes are also way more interesting this time. The mains setting here is pirates and that first world makes great use of it. You had levels where you run on top of a ship, levels where you are swimming inside the ship itself and then levels where you're climbing up the top of a pirate ship. That's all the first world, and even tho it's all pirate themed, they all feel distinct. Besides that, you have typical lava stages tho they're visually appealing in this game, you have these beehive stages where honey stops you dead in your tracks, you have bayou stages..just all the level themes in this game are so much more unique compared to the 1st game. Honestly, the backgrounds used in these levels are better than the 1st game's as well, they made them really clean looking this time around.

As for the collectables, you still collect bananas..and KONG letters. Animal Friend tokens are gone which is nice because they could kinda be annoying at times. Instead of finding a bunch of random bonus rooms to 100% the game, this time you must collect Kremkoins and DK coins. Kremkoins are all found in bonus barrels, or sometimes secret walls. These both lead to the bonus area, which instead of being all lax and random like in DKC1, you have to play a bonus game whether it's collecting all the stars or defeating every enemy or just getting to the coin itself. This is more unified than how it was in DKC1 and I prefer it this way. The DK coins are always only in levels once, and they're usually just in the stages and not in the bonus rooms. Anyways, collecting every Kremcoin and every DK coin, and completing every level, gets you 102% in this game. I much prefer this over the bonus rooms in DKC1. They are much easier to find without a guide, tho I still had to look up some but that's better than almost all of them like in DKC1, and it's better for it.

Animal buddies are back and you have some returning ones plus some new ones. Winky and Expresso are gone but Rambi, Enguarde and Squawks are back. Rambi and Enguarde are exactly the same except they have a charge move you can perform to go super fast and kill any enemies in your path or to open up secret bonus rooms. You can now ride with Squawks and shoot nuts out of his mouth at enemies, so he's changed drastically. There's a new animal buddy called Quawks who is only used in one level and is purple, cannot fly upwards (only glide down) and cannot shoot nuts. He's not worth getting into since it's just a downgrade of Squawks, but the other two animal buddies are. Rattly the rattlesnake, is basically Winky but better. He can jump high, jump on normally dangerous enemies like Winky but you can also charge him up to perform a super jump. The other new animal buddy, Squitter the Spider is awesome and is my favorite buddy in the series. You cannot jump on enemies as him but you can shoot projectile webs out of his mouth and if you press the A button, you can shoot a different type of web and if you press A again..you can create a web platform to jump on. They use this a good amount in some of the stages and this mechanic just makes him super fun and interesting to use. Along with all this, there are also these animal buddy barrels that let you transform into just the animal buddy.

The bosses in this game are also a big improvement from 1. Gone are very easy bosses that feel like a big version of a normal enemy. Every boss in this game feels distinct (besides the zinger fight tho his fight was pretty fun) and aren't piss easy and also aren't super quick. They feel like actual bosses, with the K Rool fight being a standout. Definitely my favorite fight in the trilogy. While not too difficult, he's still really fun.

If you had gotten 15 Kremcoins per world, you could pay them to this fella named Klubba. Once you do, you can access a level from the Lost World, a secret super hard bonus world. These are definitely some of the hardest levels in the game, tho I must brag and say it only took me two tries to beat Animal Antics this time around. Going back to the difficulty, yeah this game can be quite tough. It's not like bullshit hard, just the levels themselves can have some very tough portions and honestly, I welcome it. I still died a bunch in this game but I think the difficulty curve is very nice. It doesn't start off hard at all, it gradually start's getting pretty tough by world 4.

The OST is a big upgrade from the first game I think and is honestly amazing. Some of my favorites were Mining Melancholy, In A Snow-Bound Land, LockJaw's Saga,Hot Head Bop, and Forest Interlude. That is not even mentioning the absolute fucking goated song that is Stickerbush Symphony which is honestly a top 5 song for me from any video game ever. It's that amazing and I've loved it before I even played this game. This is a top tier OST I think and may be the best SNES soundtrack of all time.

If I had any little nitpick about this game, it's the fact you have to use banana coins to save and move to other worlds freely. I forgot to mention this in the collectables section, but you also collect bananas throughout the stages, they're plentiful, but after saving once or using Funky's Flights in a world, you must pay each Kong coins to do either action again. Because coins are super easy to get, this wasn't an issue for me but if you reset the game, you lose all your coins (and lives) so I can see where it would be an annoying mechanic to some people.

This is peak Donkey Kong Country imo. Everything from 1 was perfected in this game and then some, and it easily has the best soundtrack in the entire series, which does play a big part in me loving this game. I have more nostalgia for Super Mario World but I cannot deny the fact that this is the better platformer on the Super Nintendo. Because of this, I do think this is the best SNES game I've played period. It's just a masterpiece through and through. Do yourself a favor and play it!

I'm going to get back to the Kirby marathon now but I do plan on replaying DKC3 in the near future so stay tuned for that whenever I decide to play it!