I have tried on 4 different occasions to try and finish this game and I always end up dropping it. Not because it’s a bad game and I find it unplayable, I just don’t want to. The music is fine, the gameplay has some good ideas but needed to be thought out more. The story goes by so quick that it feel rushed and leaving me feeling empty. I just don’t care for the characters, world and story. I was only playing to say I finished all persona games. But I don’t wanna spent time with a game just because it’s a series I love. I know a few people that can still find love in this game I just cant.

My first Soulslike, and it looks nothing like the common associates with the genre, perfect for me!

It has a good blend of action adventure combined with 3D platforming. The combat is easy enough to understand with a charge attack, parry, dodge options, all that jazz. There are also special powers from either shells or the powers you pick up from bosses, though I found myself mostly using the latter of those two. The shell mechanic is the big mechanic meant to help this game stand out. A neat idea, but I think a lot of the shells blend together too much for my taste, but that's mostly just a nitpick because the game encourages you to swap shells due to the difficulty.

The platforming is very well made. It gets creative with various mundane objects providing challenges and Kril's movement options like the floating and fork throwing used as a grappling hook. I would even call the whole gameplay great, if it wasn't for, well...

The biggest issue with the game is its performance. There are several slowdowns that happened to me (which I heard is a problem on other consoles as well), the game is sometimes hacking because of way too much going on, and there are moments when hitboxes on both Kril and enemies made no sense to me, and I don't know if it's because of glitches. Speaking of glitches, hoo boy, this game has a lot of them. I fell through the floor a few times, music cuts off, the aforementioned hitboxes, etc. These problems actually made me use the assist mode at certain points because I was getting my butt kicked in ways that didn't feel entirely my fault.

So that dragged down the gameplay for me, but I'm gonna be honest, the story made up for it for me, because... goddamn. I didn't think the cute funny crab game was gonna make me cry. It may have a lot of themes that are preachy but the way it works into Kril's arc just really got to me, and the direction that it was taken was definitely not what I was expecting. I bumped up the score to what it is because the story got to me that much.

Gonna go sit somewhere and reflect on myself for some time now.

I am a straight man, this was not a game made for me and I am aware of that fact. I watched my girlfriend play it and that was the fun part for me, watching her give very loud reactions to it and the choices made to a virtual failman babygirl make me worry for my personal future.

The arts really good, musics good but I'd prefer more variety as it does start to loop very quickly. Writings funny and enjoyable, and it's free so if you are a person who you think this would appeal to, get it idiot, fuck that twinky man, go now! the steam page is right there!!!!

ALSO SLAY THE PRINCESS MENTIONED!!!!! THEY'RE BASED!!!!!

A Metroidvania Kirby exists?? And no one told me about this?? Well it it's a metroidvania in principle but it doesn't feel like it fully commits to being a fully fledged metroidvania.

At it's very core, this is another mainline Kirby game where you'll be doing the same exact things you do in other mainline Kirby games. You go through levels, you suck and copy enemies, you fight bosses rinse and repeat till you get to the end. What the big twist is here is how the game is structured. Yes it is structured like a metroidvania, but I wouldn't exactly consider it a metroidvania. The word "structure" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here as you are presented with an open world with branching paths, a map system and the ability to unlock more of the map screen by exploring and finding pages in treasure chests. You can also find health upgrades in some of those chests. But that is the extent of metroidvania this game gets as there isn't as much reward in exploring.

You don't unlock new areas of the world by exploring and finding new upgrades or tools to further help you through previously blocked pathways. Everything is already open to you, so in that sense the real core what makes a metroidvania a metroidvania is not here.

It is more fair to compare this to a Mega Man game with an open world. Because in reality the name of the game is to get to a boss in a certain section of the world, kill the boss, and move one step closer to the final boss. What makes it more Mega Man-ie is the fact that you can do these boss fights in any order. This is pretty cool for a Kirby game because I don't think there is another mainline Kirby that has this sort of structure. If you wanna tackle the "hardest" part of the map first, you can go do that. Unfortunately, and again what takes away from this being a true metroidvania, is the fact that there's no benefit to the order you do it in. Killing bosses don't reward with a cool extra move that is only tired to killing that boss. The only reward you get is an extra key (or mirror shard) that brings you one step closer to the final boss. So unlike a Mega Man game (or even Breath of the Wild) where choosing a boss order is a type of strategy, in Kirby and the Amazing Mirror there is no absolutely no strategy.

In a sense, if you are a metroidvania fan and come into this expecting a metroidvania, you will be severely disappointed. However if your expectations are set to "Kirby's Adventure, but non-linear" you will really enjoy this game. This is still a very good Kirby title that wish fully did commit to being a full fledged metroidvania as the potential is there as we've seen in Milky Way Wishes from Kirby Super Star.

I mean this is me just rambling but could you imagine if this game gave you the reward of unlocking permanent copy abilities by exploring and defeating optional bosses around the map? Honestly could have been one of the best Kirby games of all time.

It's been a journey of give and take: whenever I was really in the flow, it always managed to find a way to snap me out; and whenever I was losing my grip, it always found a way to yank me back in. Every great aspect of the game had its evil antagonistic clone that wasn't *equally* bad, but powerful enough to hurt the game's stronger points. Each great and charming character obscured by a slurry of aggravating witnesses, with humour that at a moment's notice can swing between genuinely funny and aggravating to even mash through. The great drama, spectable and flow of the trials broken by how abruptly they can grind to a halt when they demand the use of details from earlier conversations that have absolutely no record in the moment. And the compelling stories, themes and character arcs numbed by all my problems dragging me out of the experience as they grew harder to ignore.

I'm happy to concede that some of this stems from my own personal problems. I'm not incredibly attentive and my memory isn't very good, so a lot of the details I forgot might have been easier to keep track of for others. For similar reasons I felt like I had to push through most of the cases in one day, which naturally led to a lot of fatigue especially in the longer cases. Problems that started out feeling small but only got larger and more gnashing as I pushed through, to the point where even as I was watching the (probably really good) climax to the trilogy, I couldn't shake my resulting lack of investment and the feeling that I only finished it up out of obligation more than anything else. All that said, I did have more fun with the games than I'm probably letting on - I think the fact that I cleared three of them despite my brain's impressive resistance to everything these games expect from you speaks for itself.

I was a bit hesistant to post this considering most of it is dedicated to me talking about how challenging I found the silly lawyer games on a highly personal level but I don't think it holds any less 'merit' just because of that. We can try to ignore and talk around it but ultimately our own personalities and preferences are going to affect how we view and engage with anything, and that goes as much for my highly-personal musings as much as somebody else's ostensibly 'objective' review. Besides, I think stupid people deserve a voice as well <3