Kirby Star Allies Review

by Tony Krahn

One of the first video games I owned was Kirby's Adventure for the NES. I was 6, or 7 at the time and I loved that cartridge like only a 6, or 7 year old can. And what's not to love? A hero who can fly, who can inhale his enemies and spit them back out, or better yet, can copy their abilities! The concept would become core to who Kirby was and for good reason.

Kirby's adventure had a lot going for it; great gameplay, fun abilities, some of the best visuals and music put out by the NES, AND there were mini-games to boot! Above any of those things though was that it challenged me. Sometimes that game straight up kicked my butt. Which made my eventual "conquering" of that game all the more sweet.

SIDE NOTE: When I grew up we never "completed" games, sometimes we "beat" them, but usually we "conquered" them! As in, "I totally conquered Super Mario RPG last night! Geno is so cool!". Not sure if that's some weird, regional dialect thing, but I love it.

Conquering Kirby's Adventure and rescuing Dream Land was so satisfying, in large part because of the many deaths I suffered to get there.

And now, some 25ish years later, Kirby Star Allies is here on the Switch! Now I'll be upfront, I'm a fan of the pink puff. Bias on the table. I love me some Kirby. I married a woman who mains the dude in Smash Bros for goodness sake. So it was with great anticipation and excitement I downloaded the demo.

My family gathered around the Switch and two of my kids joined me, colorful joycons in hand as we entered Dream Land on this free trial basis. To it's credit, Dream Land makes a good first impression. Kirby has never looked as good as he does on the Switch. It controls well, the music is nice, and all those cool abilities from decades ago are back and as fun as ever!

Using the games new "Friend Heart" mechanic Kirby can make enemies into allies and have up to 4 players playing simultaneously! You can also combine abilities to come up with interesting moves. Most of these come in the form of powering up weapons with elemental types to make them stronger and solve puzzles. For example combining a "stone" ability with "ice" makes a curling stone that can slide into foes and take them out. Is Kirby Canadian? With all of these powerful friends and firepower we were going to steamroll our way through Dream Land!

And we did.

We crushed that first level without suffering so much as a scratch. Between myself, two kids (ages 7 and 5), and one NPC ally we destroyed every enemy, puzzle, secret, and boss in a matter of a couple minutes. There was no challenge to any of it.

Ah, but it's the first level. And that's just Ol' Whispy Woods! He's always a bit of a pushover. That's why the demo called this an "Easy" level and this next one "Hard". Buckle in kiddos, now we're getting serious.

Sadly, it was more of the same. The boss in the second was a 'roided out King Dedede, Kirby's Big Bad, and we breezed through him. We never came close to even losing a single character. The most damage inflicted was maybe half the health bar!

It's so easy in fact, you don't even need to play it! Have Kirby grab three allies and the NPC's will exterminate every cute and cuddly inhabitant of Dream Land so you don't have to get your little pink appendages bloodied.

I struggled to comprehend what I was experiencing. I was let down, but I still loved Kirby so my brain went into overdrive trying to justify it. It's just a demo. They want people to just get an idea of how the game plays, how it looks, the cool new mechanic. It'll be harder when it comes out.

These dudes will Eff you up!

My wallet spoke a little more clearly than my brain. Do I really want to pay $80 CAD for a game so easy it can play itself?

Something changed my mind however, actually a couple of somethings I had a hand in creating. My kids. They kept booting up that demo and replaying those two levels over and over and over. They begged me to join them and sometimes I relented and trudged through another round where no enemy could defeat my flaming sword. Is this what it's like to be Superman, I wondered? Is it boring to be untouchable?

My children have probably put for than 5 hours into those two levels! My girl gushed about the cute characters and was immediately coming up with names and back stories for them. My son relished in his new found power as adorable enemies were laid to waste. And they kept asking for more, for the full game.

I also may have been swayed by my 7 year olds approaching birthday. Two birds with one stone and all that.

So we downloaded Kirby Star Allies.

And it's... alright. It was actually better than the demo lead me to believe.

First the good stuff.

It's the best looking Kirby game to date. Everything looks crisp and colorful and the levels are a fun, if abstract, place to play in.

The music is top notch, especially as a fan of the series. Classic songs are updated, improved, and often remixed in ways that had me grinning as memories of my childhood adventures with Kirby returned. Unfortunately, an option to turn down the SFX and allow the music to shine above all the various character noises is missing.

The real meat and potatoes of any Kirby game is in the multitude of abilities available to experiment with. Star allies handles this well as Kirby and his numerous allies are fun to control and combine. Every time a new enemy shows up on screen it's fun to copy their ability, or add them to your super team, and see what abilities they have to offer. And, oh boy, are there abilities! Every ally has pages of moves you can view, upon pausing the game, reminiscent of fighting game move lists.

All those abilities are sadly wasted on the games lack of difficulty. The demo was a pretty fair representation of the amount of challenge you're facing in Star Allies. Your allies will quickly dispatch any opposition and even if something gets through your them and you neglect to defend yourself, you will only lose a fraction of your health. Not that you have to sweat any damage, Dream Land is so littered with food that you can immediately heal almost anywhere.

The only time the game can surmount any real challenge is during a couple of the boss battles. However, the majority of those can be won by brute force. You could try and dodge boss attacks, or you can shield against attacks with the press of a button to minimize damage, but I never bothered. Most of the time you can just keep pummeling the bad guy into oblivion.

It's so easy that the only reason the game has a "life" system is to justify giving the player something to collect. I completed the game with well over 100 lives and only died five times. Three of those were on good boss fights (Thanks Meta Knight and Hyness!) and the other ones were when my children distracted me during one of the games few platforming sections.

And maybe that's the goal? It's supposed to be easy because it's not for me?

I play many games co-op with my wife and kids. Sometimes the kids will boot up a game and take a crack at it without us and inevitably we'll be called in because they get "stuck". That's not an issue with Kirby Star Allies. They love trying out the new abilities, recruiting allies to their cause, and plowing through the levels. The lack of challenge, at their skill level, just makes them feel like they're awesome!

The Kirby apologists claim that the real challenge is getting 100% on the game and the harder stuff is unlocked after the main campaign. Which is... sort of true, but what a weak argument! Star Allies has a boss rush mode where you can scale the difficulty level, a feature that should have been included in the main game! There's also a mini-campaign, comprised of five levels, where Kirby is replaced by any of the allies from the game. A couple of mini-games pad out the offering, but they didn't hold my interest for long.

I recently got an SNES Classic and I booted up Kirby Super Star. I wanted to see if what the fanboy's were heralding was true. Have Kirby games always been such a walk in the park? Surely, they've always been easier than the Mario vein of platformers, but I remember Kirby needing a bit more grit to get things done.

Sure enough, I started dying. The food is more scarce, the enemies do more damage. Dyna Blade (below) rocked my world. Kirby could only take a couple hits before that catchy death jingle played. I had to up my game and learn the enemies patterns. I had to strategically pick what ability I was going to bring into battle. It was a challenge!

My son asked if he could play and I handed him a controller. Most of Kirby Super Star can be played co-op and, like Kirby Star Allies, you can use one your enemies as an ally. We then proceeded to play almost the entire game. There would be sections, usually boss fights, where we would lose and have to continue, but when we got through it something amazing happened. My son jumped up, there was fist pumping, there were high fives, the satisfaction of "conquering" the game was sweeter BECAUSE of the challenge.

Overall Kirby Star Allies is... just okay. It would have been drastically better if it had taken some cues from it's 8, or 16 bit days and given Kirby's opposition some teeth. If you're looking for your next platforming challenge this is not it.

However, if you've got a brood of up and coming gamers at home and are looking for something to play with them, this game might be just the thing.