Post by Steve Farrelly @ 11:15pm 23/03/22 | 2 Comments
Don't get us wrong, there's some really fun and great moments in Forgotten Land, but it just has too much going against it to have it really stand out in the Ninty camp.
Here's a snippet:
As far as how it plays; Kirby can jump and float, he sucks in items to use as projectiles and when he wears specific character hats, gained by sucking up special enemies, that’s when he takes on the Copy Ability of that foe. And abilities range from being a nose-cone-diving witch’s hat capable of smashing through cracked concrete, to spitting hot fire as if you were a dope MC. And while these abilities can obviously be used against enemies, they can also be used with the environment, such as lighting lanterns strewn about the place, freezing flaming logs and so on. There’s some cool ideas around all of this, and it’s easily the most thoughtful part of the game, but it’s not deep and you’re never, ever in a position where you’re stumped, or bottle-necked. It’s just so very easy.Click here for our full Kirby and the Forgotten Land review.
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Posted 07:33am 24/3/22
The game looks fine, I don't know what you're comparing it to - Switch titles in general don't look amazing.
The game's a Kirby game, they're not known for difficulty. That comes in at things like the True Arena where you're faced against harder versions of bosses with limited health.
The soundtrack is great, almost every track is unique per level and they're very, VERY far from grating.
Also, 100% completion is kind of part of the game. You're meant to play a game you paid for.
Posted 12:48pm 24/3/22
I do compare it to games, I mention the likes of Super Mario Odyssey, Luigi's Mansion 3 and Yoshi's Crafted World as benchmarks for Switch games of a similar ilk. They're obviously not like-for-like, but as Nintendo properties that lean on a design ethos, they're apt.
Kirby is fun. I say that in the review. But it's too easy. Like, alarmingly simple, to the point the concept of challenge is overshadowed by just going through the motions. I've always enjoyed Nintendo games when they're challenging, but Forgotten Land simply isn't, and it lets everything the game offers down because of this.
There are great ideas and concepts here that fall by the wayside because they're not expanded upon or aren't imbued with a greater sense of challenge.
I'll give you an example:
When you get a Copy Ability like Fire (early on) you can still use it to take down Fire enemies. A better setup would have been to have them invulnerable forcing the player to choose how to deal with them. The Copy Abilities are only in play to ostensibly push through level-specific impediments. There's no sense of risk-reward and no skill involved in combat with Copy Abilities.
The game is too easy.
It's also not as pretty as any of the aforementioned games, another reason I featured them in the review. Luigi's Mansion 3 and Yoshi, in particular, pushed the system to its apparent limits. Kirby is a later release and doesn't come close to them in terms of visuals.
It's a fun and enjoyable game with a lot to collect and plenty to do, but it's essentially just a treasure hunt and not really a challenging experience across other factors like combat (especially in boss battles).
And for the record, I played through the whole game. And as far as the soundtrack goes, that clearly comes down to preference -- for me, I found it as described.