Kirby’s Return to Dreamland Review

While Kirby’s last couple of titles on Wii and DS have shirked the pink puffball’s iconic copy ability, Kirby’s Return to Dreamland is a return to form with abilities old and new. Across a variety of stages, you can team up with friends to explore planet Popstar and collect fragments of an airship for a new friend. The platformer gameplay is solid, the abilities are put to great use, and the game looks fantastic, making this the first truly quality Wii game in a long time.

Kirby, King Dedede, a Waddle Dee, and Meta Knight are out for a leisurely afternoon when they spot an airship crashing to planet Popstar. The group investigates the remains of the ship to find an alien creature who calls himself Magolor. With his ship in pieces scattered all across Popstar, Kirby and friends offer to help him put it back together. The story is told via adorable little cutscenes that generally avoid dialogue as much as possible, instead relying on simple visual cues to tell the story. Given how simple the plot is, this method works rather well and manages to make the bare-boned story charming in its own way.

Team up with friends to take on bosses old and new.

This truly is classic Kirby gameplay: on land, under water, and occasionally in the air you’ll explore side-scrolling platformer stages rife with all manner of enemies that Kirby can gobble up to copy their abilities. If you have any familiarity with Kirby games you’ll feel right at home here, while new players can easily jump into the simple premise of the game. Furthermore, the game is generally lax on difficulty–veteran gamers might be a little disappointed to be able to speed through the entire game with only the occasional challenge, but the general ease of the game might be welcoming to newcomers. Lives are easy to come by, and dying only brings you back to the last checkpoint you passed, giving you plenty of opportunities to conquer whatever task is before you. Even so, the game never feels excessively easy and any player should be able to appreciate the classic approach to platforming mixed with the whimsical tone of Kirby.

What really makes this classic Kirby is the range of abilities. Several old abilities such as sword, fire, and bomb reappear in KRtD, but the new abilities prove themselves to be every bit as useful and entertaining as the classics. Some abilities favor range attacks while others require more direct approaches–the room for experimentation here means it’s up to the player how best to tackle a stage or boss fight. The best feature, though, is that you can use each ability in varied ways. For example, the new spear ability allows you to thrust forward with rapid strikes, but you can also toss the spear for more range or even spin the spear in the air to fly like a helicopter. Not only do you have multiple abilities to choose from, but you can use each ability in a variety of ways which gives the player even more choices in how to play. This is a great way to spice up the game, particularly with abilities that usually have only one or two uses such as stone or bomb.

These Waddle Dees don't stand a chance against the Ultra Sword.

In addition to all of the regular abilities you can use at any time, KRtD introduces super abilities that allow you to wreak devastation on all enemies unlucky enough to be on the screen. For example, the Ultra Sword allows Kirby to unsheathe a massive blade that cuts through anything in range, while the Flare Beam allows you to control a massive ball of energy that can crash into enemies and obstacles alike. There’s something incredibly satisfying and exciting about being able to utterly demolish everything in your path, plus each of these super abilities is accompanied by impressive, flashy visuals that show off how powerful these attacks are. Unfortunately these super abilities are all temporary; being able to keep them indefinitely might have been a little game breaking, but there are always a few secrets you can unearth if you use your time with a super ability wisely.

The game also features drop-in, drop-out multiplayer where the extra players can control Meta Knight, King Dedede, and the Waddle Dee or another Kirby. Having multiple players in the game generally makes this relatively easy game even easier, but it adds a significant degree of chaos as you try to coordinate your attacks. Since you can’t actually damage each other, the chaos stems from having so much on screen at once–narrow passages become particularly wild in this regard. The multiplayer is really meant as a kind of party game option–it’s fun to get some friends together to play, but you can always do everything solo as well.

Many hands make light work; play with friends to breeze through tricky areas.

In order to give the game a little replay value, each stage has hidden energy spheres that you can collect to unlock bonus features including mini-games, challenge rooms, and free copy abilities. Though most energy spheres are easy to find, they provide an excellent impetus to use copy abilities in unusual ways, such as striking a distant switch with the whip. The mini-games you unlock don’t have much depth to them, but they’re fun enough to play once or twice with friends. The challenge rooms, however, truly put your Kirby skills to the test–anyone looking for a tougher challenge need only look to these rooms.

With a sideways Wii remote and limited motion controls, KRtD is incredibly easy to pick up and play; the only difficulty might be remembering all of the uses of each copy ability, but those are listed on the pause menu. Visually, this game is stunning. It’s bright and colorful and cute as one would expect from a Kirby game, but from a technical standpoint the visual effects put the Wii to great use. Expansive desert scenes in the background or massive stars falling on your head look amazing–quite frankly, more impressive than you might initially assume from this game. The emphasis might be on gameplay, but that doesn’t mean the game can’t look good doing it. The soundtrack is also great, with noticeably cheery and upbeat songs to accompany you as you traverse planet Popstar.

Few things are as deadly as a tower of Kirbys.

The one major downside to the game might be that it is overall somewhat short. You can finish the game in around seven hours–not a terrible length by any means, but the game is so fun it’s a shame that it isn’t longer. You can, however, replay the game in Extra mode, essentially a hard mode that reduces your health, makes enemies tougher, and gives bosses some new moves. It is quite a challenge to take on the improved bosses, but since the stages themselves are exactly the same, it’s not that compelling to replay everything just for the bosses. Extra mode is a nice option but will likely only be played by the most die-hard players.

Kirby’s Return to Dreamland brings back everything that made the pink puffball great and manages to make it feel fresh. The varied abilities are great fun to experiment with, while the super abilities allow you to crush everything in your path. Though the game can feel a bit easy and short, playing with a friend gives the experience a more party-game feel, where the enjoyment of the players is more important than the progression of the level. Even without the current drought of quality Wii games, Kirby’s Return to Dreamland would be a shame to miss.

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