(review originally posted on GGapp.io)
WarioWare: Get It Together!
Played on:
Nintendo Switch
“WarioWare: Get It Together!” is centered on a group of wacky friends attempting to get out of a buggy video game that has gone full “Tron” and trapped them inside its world. In order to achieve this, they must partake in a series of fast-paced minute-long mini-game referred to as “microgames”. The big difference between this entry and past installments is the use of a group of on-screen avatars with distinct movesets to complete the challenges presented. This shift in how you operate each minigame based on your character adds a layer of depth to what has effectively been a formula only really changed by input method since the series debut in 2003....at least in theory. The use of cheap in-game currency to buy continues effectively breaks the game's story mode difficulty in half. No punishment for doing poorly means you never feel the need to learn how each character operates. A questionable design decision for a game with an arcadey structure where learning the intricacies of the gameplay loop largely is the appeal. This isn't necessarily a problem in itself theoretically, the game likely intended story mode to train players for the weekly microgame challenge gauntlets that are part of the online component of the game but I think it makes the game's appeal largely an "in the moment" affair. Outside of story mode and online multiplayer there is technically a set of bonus objectives in the form of an achievement and treasure system tied into the game's money system. These seem grindy and too repetitive to evoke the strong points of past games 100% runs. the only other substantial mode If you are picking this game up down the line (perhaps even in a post Switch world where online servers have gone down) all you would be left with is a easy single player and a ok multiplayer component on a system with a glut of ok to amazing games that are arguably better targeted to any party game niche you may need.

Casual group? Jackbox Game packs are far less likely to be dissorienting to them due to the controls being largely regulated to smart devices.

Hardcore group? The likes of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Kirby Star Allies, Splatoon 2 , and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (plus a metric ton of multiplayer indie games I am no doubt forgetting) is likely to offer a much more comprehensive and customizable multiplayer experience to the needs of your group.

Despite this lack of content what is there on a gameplay and presentation level is fun and competently put together. The Warioware crew is full of charming characters that have vibrant personalities on display in the game's cutscenes and the absurdist visual gags that are the basis of the microgames present are charming on a first time playthrough.

Overall, "WarioWare Get It Together" is a fun game filled with charm but lacking in substance. If you are going into the series as a newcomer with the expectation of it being a fun afternoon with a loved one you will find that here but be mindful that the impermant online component is likely to be where the majority of the content is.

Score:
3/5 (6/10)

(Review originally posted on ggapp.io)
Played On: Nintendo Switch

New Pokemon Snap has been a title I've wanted ever since I played the Wii Virtual Console re-release of the Nintendo 64 game in elementary school. Sadly, I feel that the attempts to modernize the game to meet current commercial standards have robbed the game of a lot of the original's charm. The core mechanics of going through what effectively amounts to an on-rails shooter centered on environmental puzzles and experimentation is satisfying but the choice to gate progress around repetitive replays of the level to grind up course experience is such a baffling decision. It takes what should be fun, snappy arcade gameplay centered on environmental interactions and reduces it to JRPG style grinding where you take 100s of pictures of Pidgeot. I quit playing because of that and regret my purchase.

(originally posted on ggapp.io)
Played on:
Playstation 2 (USA original release)
PS3 (2.5 HD Remix/ Kingdom Hearts 2: Final Mix)

I have immense amounts of nostalgia for this game and could probably never give a 100% objective review. The Disney worlds are indeed shit narrative filler but holy shit that combat has aged like a fine wine and the Roxas subplot is genuinely tragic and centering the tutorial around it was a bold artistic choice I respect. It's worth mentioning if you are looking to play this in 2021 I highly recommend opting for the newer release on PS3/PS4/Epic Game Store as that contains significantly more post-game/second runthrough content and better balanced game overall.

Note: played on Nintendo Switch Online.

Cold take but Earthbound might be one of the best JRPGs ever made. There isn't really a dull moment and every setpiece felt deliberate and handcrafted. NPC dialogue actually makes you care about the townsfolk you are trying to protect. Porky is a suprisingingly complex villian being a victim of child abuse. The music and sound design don't miss a beat. Out of all the JRPGs that try to have an anti-nihilism/anti-misanthropic worldview stance this is the only one to really earn the emotional moments that are centered around paying off these things.

*play-time discrepancy may occur due to the emulator fast forward option being used a bit towards the late game, particularly in chapters 7 + 8. Any mechanics or features that may not function as a quirk of the VBA-M 2.1.3 RALibretro emulator core won't be covered.

Mother 3 is what happens when you take a rock-solid foundation for a JRPG and built on it in basically every way. Any thematic ground covered by the first two games storylines is doubled down on here, story is gut-wrenching, music slaps, graphics are expressive as hell and unlike many JRPGs the difficulty curve is fairly well managed to make for an engaging battle system throughout the experience. If this is the compromised vision I can't help but wonder what we might've gotten had development gone without a hitch given the apparently dropped plot points with one of the party members. I've carefully avoided spoilers in this review here since this is a game best played blind. A potato can run this game in 2022 and Nintendo's higher-ups have known about the Tomato fan translation for years and have done nothing to stop it. The only people that I can't really recommend this game to our people of Romani descent due to the very iffy presentations of a certain group of characters in the game.

This falls for the trap so many low and mid-budget fighting games fall into of focusing on a core gameplay system as a determinant to everything else. The presentation is so bland here (though slightly improved by the voice-over update) and the character animations feel a tad soulless. The fighter lines in arcade mode are just lines ripped straight from the show scripts. This also has fewer gameplay features than a small indie game by the same devs (Slap City) of all things. A very disappointing game overall even If I find the core gameplay to arguably be better than several installments of Super Smash Bros. or other higher-budget attempts at the platform fighter genre.

Note: MegaMan Legacy Collection Volume 1 for Nintendo Switch was used for this review. Some amount of rewind and saving was used that was not present in the original NES/Famicom release

"MegaMan" is an action platformer published by Capcom for the Nintendo Entertainment System in which you use a variety of ammo-limited weapons and gadgets earned by beating bosses to take the fight to evil scientist Doctor Albert Wiley. If I were to describe the hook of the MegaMan series to a casual player who is perhaps a tad younger and wanting to see if the series is for them I'd say the mainline series has three defining characteristics on the macro level:

1) Percision-based platforming with ranged weaponry.

2) Boss prep strategy/non-linearity in the early game.

3) weapon experimentation/light exploration (not exploration in the sense of a Metroidvania but more that you are rewarded for getting to hard to reach places usually in the form of extra lives or ammo).
Since this is my first time covering an entry in this franchise I'd also like to highlight a general shortcoming I find has come up when playing these games in the past. Mainly that I generally find Classic MegaMan bosses to be a tad plain to fight. The fights tend to amount to several "skill checks" in the form of:

1) Managing your HP/lives during the stage to ensure you have resources to burn on learning the pattern and fishing for weaknesses. (I generally like this part since it leans on the strength of the platforming by rewarding thorough and complete execution)

2) Executing on said pattern. This frequently turns into replaying a stage until you internalize the boss patterns to the point of muscle memory. I find this pretty tedious even if I can understand it as a quirk of this era of game design. I might be more open to this if the timings on certain bosses like FireMan and Yellow Devil weren't so strict.


With that context out of the way, I will say I find the original MegaMan to be a respectable prototype to the franchise highs of MegaMan 2 + 3. I'd certainly go back to it more than comparable entries in other franchises like say Super Mario Brothers or the original Legend Of Zelda though it still certainly has its antiquated elements. The art style for example feels slightly off here compared to the rest of the NES entries (mainly in the form of the color pallet feeling slightly off but this could 100% be all in my head). The game also features a rather superfluous scoring system as a quirk of the game releasing in an era where arcade gaming was still the most dominant form of the medium and console games were trying to sell themselves as the home version of that experience. Perhaps the most egregious of these outdated aspects is the non-linear aspects of the design lacking polish in certain regards.

In theory, you are meant to be able to tackle robot master stages in any order you want but in practice, you basically always have to go Gutsman first or second if you want to play optimally since the OP platforming gadget known as the magnet beam (which is basically required to finish the gun platform parts of Iceman's stage and literally required for Wiley Castle stage 1) can only be unlocked by using his weapon at the halfway point of Elecman's stage. Even putting that flaw aside Cutman being slightly weak to the default gun also means you are overwhelmingly pressured to pick him first by the game.

These misgivings aside though I generally find the game to be a satisfying and breezy experience held together by the rest of the level design being fair building on the design philosophy of introducing a platforming stage gimmick(s) and remixing them across several contexts. Spike free-falling and block platform segments have become a franchise staple and retro game meme for a good reason. Combine that with some solid music and an art direction ahead of many of its contemporaries and you have one of the NES's strongest first outings.

NOTE:
Original hardware and various nightly builds of PCSX2 from 10-1-22 to 10-8-22 were used as the baseline of the experience.

Katamari Damacay is a game with a rather simple premise: roll up as much shit as possible to grow your ball like object to a certain size in a given time limit. It is through this simple game-play loop that Katamari portrays a brilliant satire of capitalist excess as the player is forced to optimize everything to the enth degree to please a never happy authority figure that berates you regardless of how well you do. The "flow state" of 100%ing Katamari (an all comets run) almost feels like a fun version of the daily grind as you chip away at tasks repeatedly until you optimize your route down to the moment you make a sharp turn at a certain size. This flow state is further aided by sound design that does a great job of signaling concepts to the player in a few seconds. How do you know you got the object you are trying to pick up without checking the corner of the screen and risking a mistake? Listen for a sound effect related to the object like the boing of a ball or a girl screaming. Combing this with a relaxing happy go lucky J-POP soundtrack, sharp dialogue, and some surrealist low poly visuals makes for a very memorable experience. For as much as I enjoyed my experience with Katamari Damacay I do want to warn newbies of some first installment syndrome. Sometimes it can be hard to intuit when you can pick something up, pass through a tight corridor or can scale a wall and that can unfairly knock you out of the flow state of the game. That being said, if you own a PS2, Switch, or PS3* this is a must play. Very few "arcadey" score attack style games manage to have this level of moment to moment satisfaction from the learning curve and even fewer manage to have a deeper point while doing so.

Goes by the title "Katamari Damacay Reroll" on Nintendo Switch

*Katamari Damacay was released as a PS2 Classic on the PlayStation Store. Be weary this option might no longer be an option if you are reading this years later.

WARNING WALL OF TEXT INCOMING -
This is likely to be my longest review yet since it is going to go over quite a bit including:

1) My original review of the initial 2017 PS4 release from GGAPP.io for context/archival purposes.

2) A basic overview of how I feel Persona 5 Royal handles its themes.

3) An overview of general series mechanics and how I feel about them both as artistic/literary tools and as a form of entertainment.

4) Miscellaneous observations about JRPGs as a genre I feel Persona 5 best gives me the contextual opportunity to talk about in a public forum.

ORIGINAL PERSONA 5 REVIEW FROM GGAPP.IO

“Played on:
Playstation 4 (Regular Version)

Some cognitive dissonance with themes of the games (especially in regards to social links since that was handed off to a b-team) and Okamura's dungeon being a slog means I probably never finish this but out of the 100s of games released in the era of Trump and global rightwing populism resurgence, this is the only one that feels like it tackled the issues without kiddy gloves on. Worth a playthrough at least. Don't bother with the non-confidant sidequests though.”

SUMMARY
Persona is an anthology series of turn based Japanese role playing games centered around a crew of high schoolers coming of age in contemporary Japanese society with a tarot card/psychology motif. The plot of this entry largely revolves around a wrongly convicted high schooler on parole coming across a magical world of the collective unconscious and using it to fix injustices in Japanese society with a band of like minded individuals.

The main hook of Persona over its competitors in the genre is a calendar system used to interact with your party members and a host of non-playable characters outside of dungeons for additional narrative context, world building, and dungeon resources. Persona 5 specifically adds several interesting ripples to the basic formula first setup in the third entry. Most notably a revamp of the dungeon design to include flashier setpieces, a basic stealth mechanic to fit into the game’s heist motif, gun attacks, an upgradeable attack chaining system, status ailment chaining, and a revamp of creature acquisition to make it slightly more inline with the first two games.



GAMEPLAY & DIFFICULTY BALANCE
If this sounds like a lot to keep track of for as a casual player you would be correct and I suspect this is why I struggled upon playing to a certain point in my original run as I mention in that initial review. I am happy to say that the rebalance of the Okumura dungeon (Haru’s elemental attacks can kill the strongest enemies that you encounter in the dungeon and technical damage is more clearly explained during the Kamoshida tutorial) did wonders to the mid to late game portion of the story. Pretty much the only part of the game I found to be particularly unfair to the player this time around is the first phase of the true final boss (which given the narrative and design context is fine I just don’t have an issue admitting I lowered the difficulty to safe from normal for that fight).

That being said, the game is no walk in the park either. I’d say the game’s combat is very deliberately designed to make you pull every lever at your disposal ranging from elemental weaknesses to party member attributes. Kanesiro’s dungeon for example forces you to learn the importance of debuffs and status healing items in order to fight his pig robot without bleeding the additional SP and HP you’ll need to survive the direct fight with the head honcho and his enforcers. This might be one of the most satisfying turn-based systems I've seen in that specific regard. I can firmly say the battle system,while perhaps a tad repetitive during field battles for a 100ish hour affair (honestly though this is a statement I can attach to much of the genre and the stealth mechanic at least alleviates this slightly), gets the job done. I wish I could say the same for the calendar system though which I found to cause the game to suffer from story pacing problems.

TAKE YOUR TIME
As mentioned previously the Persona games are known for their time management mechanics. The protagonist can perform several activities in the real world that aid him in his vigilante work as a Phantom Thief. Persona 5 operates off a system in which you can largely do two social activities per day with dungeon exploration needing to take up at least the first slot if you chose to enter that day. When in the overworld you can either earn money for shopping via a part time job, build friendships with locals for combat buffs, craft items, or increase stats. Every story arc has a deadline of X amount of days to complete a dungeon before getting a game over screen. If you finish ahead of time you have a ton of spare days to do as you wish. If you are a skilled player that has prepared accordingly you will likely complete a dungeon in two time slots (dungeon bosses are almost always a second day).This causes two issues:a trivialized confidant time slot economy and repetitive dialogue. First of those is rather simple; it removes a lot of potential for interesting choices in the confidant system as the litany of time slots opened up by one day dungeon clears means you can easily get the social stats and rank up events for every confidant rather easily in a single playthrough (an issue exacerbated by Royale’s extra stat boosting events and extra semester of calendar days).

Often times during these dungeon arcs you will get messages and party meet ups pestering you to go to the dungeon on days where you haven’t finished the mission yet, in the event the player has finished these events effectively become victory laps where the other Phantom Thieves talk about how you dodged a bullet with that last target. Due to how the game flags story progress this means you could end up with large stretches of time where you are just button mashing through phone conversations that repeat the same plot points you just saw while you wait to gain control of your character for social activities. These events really do not add much characterization to any of your party members and do not respect the players time. These sequences could be cut and nothing is lost.

Perhaps the most annoying aspect of this is the fact it really doesn’t even feel necessary design wise outside the first arc. If a player has beaten Kamoshida chances are they comprehend the objective deadlines and don’t need to be treated like a kid playing his or her first JRPG for the rest of the game. This also extends to the various cutscenes that point out obvious puzzles inside dungeons. Yes, I realize the irony in an entire long ass paragraph for what effectively amounts to “Bro, get a better editor for your script!” but I felt it needed to be said. Especially when Persona 5 otherwise takes great strides with respecting the player in other aspects it just becomes a flaw made more glaring.

“LOOKING COOL JOKER!”
The game’s presentation has an incredibly snazzy graphical & audio design with a vivid pop art flair that does a great job of capturing the game's “rage against the machine” attitude. Unlike other flashy user interfaces this also mostly aids the game’s conveyance of information. I never really questioned why something was or wasn’t visible or under a certain category cough smash bros “games & more” cough. Plenty of quality of life shortcuts also are provided that are meant to reduce downtime during gameplay. You will automatically be prompted to upgrade gear when you find a better piece of equipment in a dungeon chest or shop for example and fast travel drastically cuts down on the tedium that might otherwise exist during the overworld time slots.

I AM THOU THOU ART I
Overall I’d say my biggest gripes with the game’s otherwise well thought out presentation come down to two aspects: the fusion system’s stylistic execution and the lack of soundtrack variety.

The velvet room gives you the ability to combine and edit various monsters under the protagonist’s control for extra strategic options and firepower. (There is more to it than that for analytical purposes this is all you really need to know.). This seems like a slam dunk of a mechanic right? Give the player a ton of levers to pull to create a party of creatures synergized for the needs of the moment. The problem lies in the way the player interacts through this menu system and lack of player intuitiveness in fusion results.

Simply put there isn’t really a great way to just work out what creates a given Persona without remembering a bunch of mythological creature names from the fuse by result screen. A problem further exacerbated by the eclectic origin of the monster designs. Since most of the creatures are pulling from real life cultures directly you end up in a scenario where most of the creatures don’t have an easy to infer crafting recipe to follow. How does a water yokai (Genbu) mixed with a jewish demon in a jar (Agathion) logically create an Irish ghost horse thing (Kelpie)? This is a type of clunkiness present in a lot of this system that can be directly tied to the choice to use super faithful mythological designs. Looking at other monster battling JRPGs it is usually easy to infer gameplay consequences of your party choices via the character design. What niche does Squirtle usually occupy in Pokemon Blue Version? Well given the blue coloring, turtle shape, and hard shell we can probably infer it’ll be a defensive water type by the end of its evolutionary line even if I haven’t seen a picture of Blastoise in my life. This character design choice basically heavily incentivizes you to brute force the entire system by just fusing stuff without much thought in a guideless run (or in a worse case scenario making you just skip the fusion process all together and opt to just use weaker negotiation encounters). This is honestly a shame given how I can see this system synergizing well with confidants to create a highly replayable game if the kinks with both systems were given more attention. Imagine a version of this game where you had to face bosses in radically different ways based on how you allocated your time before the end of each arc. It would’ve added an additional layer of replayability and playthrough individuality to the whole affair. This is without even going into how it makes the optional crafting focused strength arcana confidant that serves as a chekov’s gun for late game plot points into a slog that isn’t worth your time.

TAKE OVER
On a more surface level note the game suffers from a dismal track variety that is only exacerbated by changes in Royale that reduce the prominence of several tracks in favor of more instances of the song “Take Over”. When you are in battle you are going to hear that particular song a lot and it can get very grating after a while. This can be rectified somewhat with the game’s costumes for the previous protagonists that play past series battle themes but this comes at the cost of player expression as those custom’s must be equipped for the themes to play. These themes also inherently clash with the presentational cohesion Persona 5 strives for by virtue of being composed for games with different narrative themes, stylistic choices, and tones so they aren’t a perfect solution to the issue of battle track variety. This is rather unfortunate as what is here is generally pretty well made and catchy. I just wish there was more of it and what is there is stretched for 70 hours of play.

WINGS OF REBELLION
Persona 5 is kinda a fascinating mess on a thematic storytelling level. I don’t wanna dwell on this point too much as many have already beaten this concept like the dead horse it is but it bears mentioning. For 75% of its runtime Persona 5 focuses heavily on how nihilism combines with ends justify the means moral justifications to create self propagating cycles of internalized persecution. Every palace leader is basically someone that sacrificed everything for their desires in a broken system. Kamoshida gave into his vices to keep his reputation as a volleyball coach and thus his ego from his days as an olympian intact, Madarame needed to have every artistic success in his own name (regardless of how) to avoid being a starving artist, Kaneshiro constantly projected strength and hoarded wealth to avoid being branded a weakling by society. I could go on and on but you see my point. During the final two dungeons this sorta awkwardly shifts into an anti-populism message where the likes of Yaldabaoth and Doctor Maruki are presented as naive at best micromanaging narcistits for wanting to make society better. I guess according to Persona 5 if you legitimately want fundamental changes to make the world better fuck you. I play games to avoid shallow conservative and neoliberal dominated political discourse for a few hours Atlus.If you are gonna have overt political messaging in your games don’t be so milquetoast about it. It’s worth mentioning This is just one aspect. I could go whole hog on the games anti-populism message contradicting its treatment of female characters and LGBTQ+ issues in a right leaning populist way but there are several video essayists and journalists that have covered that topic from a far more informed angle then I can offer as a straight dude (links in bottom of review). The long and short of my point though? Persona 5 narrative addresses a systemic issue and offers no solution which gives off the vibe of Katsura Hashino and company being rather passive storytellers for 70+ hours.


If the game hadn’t done such a good job making the core party of phantom thieves into such a memorable cast with this motif of political corruption I might not care about this point much and would just chalk it up as another JRPG targeted at teenagers with vaguely anti-nihilism message but the fact the game comes this close to doing something different and chooses not to is frankly a little annoying. Especially when Persona 3 + 4 largely nail the deeper writing side of this memorable JRPG equation but fuck up in the gameplay areas Persona 5 largley excels in. It feels like we were a few writing tweaks and playtests away from the definitive game in the series and honestly that makes said flaws stick out more. I hope P-Studio learns the right lessons from this game and makes the next game the series’s magnum opus.


PLUGS FOR FURTHER READING
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzdylKgPjNI
https://www.polygon.com/2020/3/31/21199516/persona-5-royal-edits-changed-scene-ryuji-homophobia-controversy

Not gonna lie this was a slog to get as far as I did (every main story mission sans final boss). Combat tries to be a spectacle driven muso action game like Hyrule Warriors or Dynasty Warriors and an action RPG like Kingdom Hearts 2 at the same time. It lacks any standout setpieces like the latter or the sense of combat fluidity of the former. The one time the games tries to have a distinct setpiece with a mirror match it just actively shows how shallow the mechanics are as your best solution is to just spam physical Persona attacks. Certainly a riveting solution for a challenge near the back half of the game! Only times I felt engaged in the combat were bosses (use baton passes to increase your DPS),the penultimate fights with the angelic creatures (only time debuffs came in handy). The lack of calendar systems means there is very little reason to not constantly leave dungeons for free HP and SP refills which trivializes the cooking mechanic outside of free bond point events. The environmental moves make for decent crowd control options and give the game some of Persona 5's sense of spectacle I otherwise find lacking in the title. Objectives in dungeons settle into a pattern way too quickly. Investigate a target by just talking to random NPCs. Fight trash mobs/mini bosses or hack into places to take down 3-4 jail keeps and reach the boss. Having a formula isn't a problem in itself but it needs to be executed well on a strong foundation. Something Persona 5 Strikers frankly lacks.

Writing is sorta OK for the lighthearted zero stakes affair its trying to be but like most Persona spin offs the characters end up slightly flanderized. The new additions to the cast are very one note but serviceable for the story they wanted to tell. Character designs and graphics took a notable hit due to the fact this is a lower budget spin off. The original music and sound design fits the world of Persona 5 well which makes the emphasis on remixes so disappointing. You are gonna be tired of hearing "Last Surprise" by the end of the game.

Overall a very disappointing experience I'd have probably been more annoyed if I hadn't used some random Amazon credit I had lying around to knock down the overall price. If you want a good action RPG or muso experience on Switch you have far better options available including several mainline and spin off Zelda games, and countless indie games you can likely get for a fraction of the price.

Introduction
Honestly I've never gravitated towards Kirby as a game franchise. The niche it occupies as a beginner's platformer series is important for the industry at large but that also tends to make the games really simplistic for anyone with experience in the genre. Most 100% runs that tend to be intended as a way to add challenge for more experienced players also tend to necessitate back tracking with specific powers to complete puzzles. This can get tedious quick as often your opportunities to pick up needed powers for a collectable are few and far between. As someone that has the fast paced and difficult Crash Bandicoot as one of his first exposures to video games this "easy unless you slow down" design always turned me off as a platformer design foundation. I'm happy to say that I think Kirby And The Forgotten Land has tweaked the formula just enough for the puffball to click with me without sacrificing the creative intent of a more casual platformer. In fact, Kirby's 3D Switch outing might dethrone Super Mario Galaxy for the best platformer made by a Nintendo developer.

Story
Kirby isn't know for having a complicated story given its targeted towards kids and this game is no different. Kirby and company end up in a weird alternate dimension where the waddle dees get kidnapped by a mysterious crew of animals. Its up to Kirby to save the day. Simple but it works as baseline motivation and context for the gameplay. I do like having the collectables being depicted as saving waddle dees as it gives you a much more personal motive to take down the "main villain" Leongard . I'm surprised more platformers don't go this route for justifying there collectibles. Outside of that loose narrative thread contextualizing the gameplay of the levels you mainly have quick boss introduction and defeat cutscenes as your main form of story progression. These have some decent cinematic flare to them (truck kirby vs the actual main villain is especially a great sendoff for the main story) and give you a nice bit of characterization for the wacky cast of characters (shout out to incel armadillo). These characters are further fleshed out with hub world dialogue as well as backstory tidbits from figurines that serve as a secondary collectables. As it turns out Kirby apparently has deep lore and some light social commentary on the destructive tendencies of industrialized society going on under the surface if your willing to do some research. It's cool to have that extra layer to things for those willing to explore a bit more.

Gameplay
Kirby is a series best know for two things: a floating based movement option and getting a variety of powers via consumption. The first of these has always been a bit of a sticking point with me in the 2D games. Again, I get why its there but in most cases I feel like it neuters what devs can do with level design. I honestly think this ability works way better here since the cool down effect from excessive floating largely prevents you from just gliding over everything and ignoring copy abilities outside of forced combat encounters. Combine that with the new mouthful items taking away the ability in exchange for different skills in certain instances and you have way more opportunities for interesting level design. There is a section where you dodge around meteors, an auto runner section with some light puzzle elements, and even a outrun style racing level. The amount of variety on display here is really incredible and speaks to how versatile Kirby is as a character. Combine that much more careful copy ability placement and a lot of issues I had were addressed pretty well. Its now a ton of fun to go hunting for the various collectable in each stage. The fact you also effectively have two copy abilities on hand most of the time due to mouth full mode also means you get some really creative puzzles that wouldn't have been possible in prior games. combine this with the money system feeding into power ups for you copy abilities and the backtracking isn't as big of a pill to swallow. This rambling is all to say Kirby And The Forgotten Land did a lot to remove some points of friction for me with this IP that allowed to sit down and fully get the most out of the rock solid conceptual bedrock that has been present since Kirby's Adventure on the Nintendo Entertainment System.

Graphics
KIRBY AND HIS WORLD IS SOOO ADORABLE. YES I'M A GROWN ASS MAN BUT I'M NOT MADE OF FUCKING STONE.

Music
Some nice jazzy remixes of King Dedede's theme and Meta Knight's Revenge aside I kinda find quite a bit of the music here forgettable (including the opening and ending theme), It works for the atmosphere the game wants in each level but I couldn't hum anything from the game if you held a gun to my head. Controversial statement I realize.

Conclusion
If you have been reluctant to give this series a try due to its reputation as being a bit too easy for older players I highly recommend giving this a shot. There's currently a free demo on the Nintendo E-Shop at the time of writing. If you are on the fence I recommend giving that a shot as it gives you a good vertical slice of what the game is like.