Kirby and the Forgotten Land Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Star-Crossed World (Switch 2)

 

It's Kirby... in 3D!

Well, the games don't really rain over the Switch 2 at the moment so I decided to get Kirby and the Forgotten Lands since I didn't get it for the original Switch and everyone was raving about this game when it came out. I also tried to play the NES games and such that I have for the Wii U, but I got stuck there and then the game come out. Kirby is minding his own business when a vortex appear above Popstar and drag him and the waddle-dees into it. He appears on a new world which looks a lot like our earth where he meet a flying critter called Elfilin that tags along on the adventure as the waddle-dees get kidnapped by some beasts.

Rescuing the waddle-dees allows them to gather in this town area where they set up a smith, shops and so on depending on how many you rescue. You fight through several different worlds collecting blue-prints to upgrade your copy-abilities that you collected from the enemies as well as gold and stars that you need for the upgrade. Each level have several objectives that gives you more waddle-dees and if you are thorough you can pretty much get them in one go. At the end of the levels there are bosses and they also have objectives, but they tend to be more of the variety use this ability to do this which means repalying the bosses a bunch of times. 

I'm not that thorough but I got something like 250 waddle-dees at the end out of 300 I guess. In the final stages Elfilin gets kidnapped by a brainwashed King Dedede and after Kirby beats him up ends up in a laboratory where a giant lionman have taken Elfilin in order to merge it with an dimensional hopping entity that the assumed humans captured and then experimented on to leave the planet. So the entity have controlled all the beasts and use waddle-dees to power the whole laboratory for some reason. Still, 4 or something bossfights later Kirby absorbs a truck and like Optimus Prime blasts right into this lovecraftian entity. F***ING AWESOME!

Dramatic Reenactment!

Credits roll and then you get the vision of the lionman trapped in some dimensional rift. You get back and then I finished up the new added stuff for the Switch 2 version, saving the starries to send out an evil space heart, but it fails and I fight the boss again much harder this time. This fight made me lower the difficulty to just be over it. The starries are on some of the levels that changes the level a bit with different plattforming. Anyway, credits roll and then I go and do the lionman quest. In yet another dimension you have to run through gauntles of all levels in each stage to gather the soul fragments of the lionman. Lucky enough Elfilin tells you if you get all the souls in each part so you can find them before going forward and lock you out of the stage so I did all that in one go. After gathering all souls you get a figure and then fight lionman again and the entity that possessed him again and then credits roll for a third time. 

It was a fun game. If I want I can 100 % it, but some of the challenges just feels to much to gather the waddle-dees (the starries I believe would be easier since there is no bosses to fight). There's also figurines to gather but I'm rather tired of those things after Minish Cap. Especially since I gathered most of the rewards is more figurines. That or I can probably gamble on the figurines machines. 

Super Smash Bros. for Wii U (Wii U)

Happy Together!

So not only have I've been dusting off my old reliable Wii U, I also went through reading this old blog and realised that when I wrote about Smash Bros for 3DS I wrote that I would play the Wii U version, but I never wrote about it, mostly because as noted, I was a bit burned out by the series, and it has actually not been helped with Ultimate. So why didn't I play that instead? Well, I mostly played the Wii U version because it was the last game in the series as of yet to have trophies. And you couldn't transfer data between the version, what a huge hassle.

Cause what is there otherwise to talk about? It's a fighting game and works as much every other Smash game. Didn't help the Wii U that much, but introduced DLC where we finally got Roy back in the fold. As well as Mewtwo that you could get for free if you bought both games and registered it on some Club Nintendo site or such, unfortunately I bought the 3DS version in a Swedish shop meaning it didn't have the code so I had to buy it on the side. Well everything is bought online today so no problem with that anymore.

So I played through Classic Mode with every character, and some on All-Star Mode, but with this many characters it's a real pain getting through it. Also, All-Star mode is fine since it's pretty much the same as it always been, but Classic mode, what a downgrade from the original (now this might be just me playing it on easy since I want to get through it) but I recall Classic mode have different phases with metal Mario, large and small versions and such spicing up the gameplay, here it's just move around the board and choose a group of enemies. And why isn't there any Adventure mode like in Melee or Brawl? At least the 3DS had the great cave offensive or whatever it was called. So nothing special about, works like everyone else and if you have a couple of friends it's a great time, maybe not so much playing alone.

So why is trophies so important? Because it introduced me to a much larger world of games. In Melee you could get trophies from games that wasn't out yet and games that never was released in Europe or the US. The stickers in Ultimate doesn't tell me anything about the games they come from. I learned about Earthbound from the trophies, got me interested in Metal Gear before the Twin Snakes come out and something called the Famicom Detective Club... wait, that came out on the Switch some time ago. And I got it, might be a fun playthrough.

Kirby's Dream Land

Kirby looks a bit pale

Kirby is one of the Nintendo-series I never actually played as a child... or even was interested in playing. Didn't have much for him in Super Smash Bros either. But when you have a sale on most Kirby games on the 3DS and some cash to spare, why not try some out? So I got the Game Boy-game and played from start to finish. And it's not that big of a game with just 5 stages. Beating it unlocks a code for a hard mode so you get to play the game again, but harder. And I've had enough trouble getting why Kirby got so big. I find the game rather... boring. You go from A to B, fight a boss at the end and go to the next stage. Enemies are just obstacles that depletes your life and one of the more prominent features of Kirby is the ability to copy his enemies attacks to use and it isn't here. So why did it stand out so much to still to this day get new games released? 

Mech-suits? I can see that being interesting.

Maybe the story? *Starts reading the manual*. King Dedeede stole all the food and Kirby is out to get it back so that the people doesn't starve. That's it? You are stopping starvation? Is it a varied gameplay? No since it basically is dodge attacks, inhale enemies and shot them at other enemies. There isn't that many ways to play this game I feel. The copy ability might have extended gameplay to test the different abilities, but there's nothing here. So why did this become a classic? I don't know, but it might be since it was HAL Laboratories own creation they pushed him into relevance. One of the bossess become their own spin-off series, the Adventure of Lolo (which I've actually played the second game of). Or maybe the second game was so fantastic that it redefined Kirby into the superstar we know him of today. Well, I got that game as well so when I come round to it we will see.