Pros: I love the new animal friends in this game, Nago the cat, ChuChu the octopus, and Pitch the bird. Each bring along new movement options and fun copy ability combinations. They're joined by the original three animal friends from Kirby's Dream Land 2, along with more copy abilities to shake things up further. Another friend joins the fun as this game's co-op partner, Gooey! Essentially a second Kirby, he can steal powers and ride animals all the same. He's a funny little guy. The game also has a nice crayon visual aesthetic, perhaps inspired by Yoshi's Island, it's quite nice! Was cool to see SNES squeak this one out on the last year of its life.
Cons: Sigh... It's a big step backwards after Kirby Super Star. It's slower paced in general, the movement isn't smooth either, and each copy ability goes back to the Kirby Adventure/Dream Land 2 method of one attack per ability, and no fun hats either... Also back to far fewer abilties... Yeah yeah, KDL2 ran by these same rules, but after Super Star, it was hard to go back. And the new copy ability "clean" is... it's cleaning... c'mon... Sure it has some neat animal combinations, like the Kiki's Delivery Service inspired broomstick flying move with Chuchu, but eh, it's not very cool on its own. But this game is perfectly playable, it's just not very exciting. I'm also not really into this game's gimmick of each stage having its own "mission" of sorts, where you're confronted with a little jingle at the start of some rooms, and you either succeed in accomplishing the objective, or fail, and then by the end of the stage, you get your reward or not. And if you fail, ugh... You have to replay the stage again, and I just don't really dig it, y'know? It's not very fun. Aside from some neat cameos like Samus, this isn't the form of gameplay I want out of Kirby.
What it means to me: Look, I love the animal friends, that's what puts this game on my list of favs, they're great, they're wonderful, and they have some really fun moves. It's what makes me like this game more than Kirby 64 even, which didn't have them, but still had the slow plodding gameplay from this game (yeah, I like the animals more than I like copy ability mixing, which, again, you only had one move per copy ability... still a step backwards there too...). Played this game back when it came out, and liked what I could out of it, but didn't love it.
Cons: Sigh... It's a big step backwards after Kirby Super Star. It's slower paced in general, the movement isn't smooth either, and each copy ability goes back to the Kirby Adventure/Dream Land 2 method of one attack per ability, and no fun hats either... Also back to far fewer abilties... Yeah yeah, KDL2 ran by these same rules, but after Super Star, it was hard to go back. And the new copy ability "clean" is... it's cleaning... c'mon... Sure it has some neat animal combinations, like the Kiki's Delivery Service inspired broomstick flying move with Chuchu, but eh, it's not very cool on its own. But this game is perfectly playable, it's just not very exciting. I'm also not really into this game's gimmick of each stage having its own "mission" of sorts, where you're confronted with a little jingle at the start of some rooms, and you either succeed in accomplishing the objective, or fail, and then by the end of the stage, you get your reward or not. And if you fail, ugh... You have to replay the stage again, and I just don't really dig it, y'know? It's not very fun. Aside from some neat cameos like Samus, this isn't the form of gameplay I want out of Kirby.
What it means to me: Look, I love the animal friends, that's what puts this game on my list of favs, they're great, they're wonderful, and they have some really fun moves. It's what makes me like this game more than Kirby 64 even, which didn't have them, but still had the slow plodding gameplay from this game (yeah, I like the animals more than I like copy ability mixing, which, again, you only had one move per copy ability... still a step backwards there too...). Played this game back when it came out, and liked what I could out of it, but didn't love it.