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Kirby and the Forgotten Land (March 25th 2022)

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1 hour ago, BowserBasher said:

Right, I'm at 96% now. All main game stuff done and just finished collecting all of Lions Souls. So I'm guessing the last lot needed now are the collection items. The capsules. The Z tournament (I got to 5 to go last time I tried it). I just got the Bling fish so that's done. Anything else I may be missing those that have 100%?

Nah, that's it. Colosseum and Capsules.

There are some capsules that you cannot get from random finds or the Gotcha Machine (Some in Vol 1 and Vol 4), if you look at the figurine collection screen, the game will tell you what you need to do to get them when you hover over them. So prioritise getting those before shoving money into the machines.

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6 hours ago, Glen-i said:

There are some capsules that you cannot get from random finds or the Gotcha Machine (Some in Vol 1 and Vol 4

Thanks, I had noticed this about Vol one. I was getting the capsules with the coins just ramming them in and mashing A, and missed what the message said (which was apparently I had them all out of the machine) as the four or five left in Vol 1 then told me what I needed to do to get them. I think I have like one left to get. I'll work on the Colosseum Z tournament.

Spoiler

I can get through the first load using the Ice ability as it's so broken. But then the Morpho Knight fight seems to force you to use the sword. Unless I can drop the ice, grab the sword then grab the ice again.

 

Edited by BowserBasher

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47 minutes ago, BowserBasher said:

Thanks, I had noticed this about Vol one. I was getting the capsules with the coins just ramming them in and mashing A, and missed what the message said (which was apparently I had them all out of the machine) as the four or five left in Vol 1 then told me what I needed to do to get them. I think I have like one left to get. I'll work on the Colosseum Z tournament. I can get through the first load using the Ice ability as it's so broken. But then the Morpho Knight fight seems to force you to use the sword. Unless I can drop the ice, grab the sword then grab the ice again.

That's spoilers, BTW. Might wanna hide that.

Anyway, I think you meant Meta Knight. You can just refuse to take the sword and wait for him to initiate the fight.

(Dunno why you wouldn't take it though, the final sword form is stupid broken. Just dodge everything, Smash style!)

Edited by Glen-i

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It is done. Thoroughly enjoyed every second of the game. My only blemish at the moment is that the Z Cup was done on Breeze mode as I was having a little trouble on Wild. I did find however, that the Sword ability is probably even more broken. So to go into the tournament I bought a Maxim tomato and the Life potion (which doubles your life) the amazing side effect of this is that using the Sword ability, as long as you have both health bars, you constantly have the beams shoot out of your sword. So as long as you don't lose that extra bar, you can just sit back and fire the beams at the opponents until you know you can get up close, then just go to town anthem and demolish them.

I hope to go back and do the tournament on Wild at some point just to see if I can, but at the moment game is 100% and I am satisfied. Easily Game of the Year fro me at the moment.

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57 minutes ago, BowserBasher said:
then just go to town anthem and demolish them.

Are you confusing this with Animal Crossing! :grin: 

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18 minutes ago, darksnowman said:

Are you confusing this with Animal Crossing! :grin: 

Stupid auto correct. Meant to be go to town on them,

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My turn!

Thoroughly lovely game! HAL have absolutely succeeded with making a transition to 3D gameplay here; in fact, I'd argue that it's the most graceful transition that any Nintendo franchise has made going from 2D to 3D, as the gameplay feels like a completely natural follow up to The Modern Kirby Trilogy (Return to Dreamland/Triple Deluxe/Planet Robobot) and Star Allies.  Even the likes of Mario 64, OoT and Metroid Prime saw substantial changes to the core gameplay & game design structure compared to their respective 2D entries; but not-so with Forgotten Land, instead feeling exactly like how you would expect a 3D Kirby game to play!

More detailed and spoilerific thoughts are listed below... be warned, the following will contain unfettered spoilers for not just Forgotten Land, but for many other games in the series too...

Spoiler

Star Allies was somewhat disappointing to me, owing to its rather slow & plodding pacing and exploration focus that resembled The Dark Matter Trilogy (KDL2, KDL3, K64) much moreso than the breakneck pacing of The Modern Kirby Trilogy.  Not that I feel that slower pacing is inherently bad or anything, I do still really like the Dark Matter Trilogy games, but Star Allies felt like an awkward in-between that wanted to be faster paced and more action orientated, but it was let down by brain-dead simple level design and a lack of meaningful exploration within its level design that made the Dark Matter Trilogy games enjoyable.

Forgotten Land absolutely learnt from Star Allies' mistakes however.  I would say that its level design certainly leans more into the exploration focused side of Kirby gameplay, much more akin to the Dark Matter Trilogy; especially when it comes to its mission structure (which is kind of like KDL3 on steroids).  But even with that exploration focus, Forgotten Land does a great job with keeping a brisk pace and is filled with the high NRG action gameplay that makes the best Kirby games so much fun to play.  And what makes this especially impressive is how these two gameplay foci manage to not come at the expense of each other! Despite the game wanting you to explore every nook & cranny, the pacing doesn't grind to a screeching halt to do so; and that's not easy to pull off from a design standpoint! It's something that many, many games fail at doing well, but not so here!

Kirby-Demos-Preview-Reel.jpg

There's time to stop and smell the roses, but always at the pace that you want

That being said, I do think that the mission structure could've been handled a bit better.  It would've been nice if there was a way to unlock the mission descriptions without having to complete the stages multiple times.  See, KDL3's missions worked well because there was always only one mission per stage; but here? There's 5 for each and every level and there is absolutely no way that you are gonna work out what they are until you've beaten the stage... and even then, you only unlock one new description each time you complete a mission; meaning that you could potentially have to complete each stage 5 times or even more, JUST to find out what you're supposed to be doing!  And while you're probably not gonna have to do each stage more than 2-3 times before beating each mission in each stage? This can start to feel a bit grindy after a while...

Of course, this only applies to those looking to achieve 100% completion, but the game actively encourages you to do so; and it's a bit of a shame that the game makes it rather obtuse to go for 100% mission completion.  Speaking of which, the post-game EX Levels are really fun! Brilliant extra addition to the game! And as far as 100% completion goes? I did let out an audible groan the moment I saw the Keychains Capsule Toys, all of a sudden PTSD ladled memories of Triple Deluxe came flooding back to me... Oh God no... But no! Clearly HAL heard my pleas from upon high and blessed us with the Gachapon machines! Thank CHRIST! These make getting 100% a much more enticing prospect than in Triple Deluxe, removing the need to endlessly grind stages for the chance of getting new item drops!

Let's talk about Kirby Lore for a moment...

kirby-and-the-forgotten-land-story08-eng

Hmm... a cute Kirby companion character, named after a suicide cult? I wonder if he'll turn out to be evil...

Amazingly enough... no he wasn't! Well... only half of him was evil.  Still, well played HAL, well played...

There's some interesting Kirby Lore shenanegans going on here, like the idea that the human race drove the planet to near extinction with the creation of Lifeform: ID-F86, but I was surprised at how self-contained it all ended up being.  Really? No links between the Forgotten Land and Shiver Star!? How did HAL not take advantage of that little trick!? It was RIGHT there for the taking!! Some nice little story touches as well, like Clawoline's real name being revealed in one of the unlockable Capsule Toys; but I feel that the lack of Pause-Screen Kirby Lore really did hurt the overall Kirby Lore Factor with this game.  Also, Leongar does kind of give me a bit of a Hijacked by Ganon vibe, as he does just kind of appear out of absolutely nowhere right at the end of the main story; though the game makes up for it with the post-game story content, as it turns out that the story ends up getting Hijacked by Ganon again with Chaos Elfilin! Good stuff!

Overall though, I felt a bit let down with the Kirby Lore this time around... Unless there's more hidden stuff that I haven't found yet, I can't say that there's anything massively profound here that has huge ramifications on the rest of the series like what other modern Kirby titles have been throwing at us; then again, it's a pretty bloody high bar to clear, I mean, the Morpho Knight butterfly trick only works once after all! Speaking of which...

Kirby-and-the-Forgotten-Land-Morpho-Knig

Presenting! The single most broken ability in all of Kirby history!!

This thing is just completely ridiculous.  I mean, Meta Knight Sword was already perhaps the single most broken thing in Kirby history, but then they go and up the ante EVEN MORE!?!? Like, come on! This thing literally cleaves through bosses like swiss cheese, killing all four mini bosses in just two hits; oh, AND IT ALSO HEALS YOU WITH EACH HIT!?!? What the hell were HAL thinking!? Why would I use anything other than this!?

This is kind of an issue with this game in general... Sword just utterly outclasses basically every other ability in the game by an order of magnitude, it's not even remotely balanced.  And it's not even like the other abilities are bad or anything (Needle and Tornado got massive buffs compared to previous Kirby titles!), but Sword is just so utterly broken that it begs the question of why you would even bother using anything else unless you're forced to do so?  Hammer? Sword is not only faster, more agile, has a projectile move, but it's also stronger than Hammer AND even activates full-on Witch Time; and that's before its final upgrade!!!

Speaking of which, the combat mechanics in this game are great! Kirby just fully embraces his Stylish Action influences and goes full-on Bayonetta by introducing a straight Witch Time knockoff and it's great! It's a bit of a shame that the movesets have been simplified somewhat compared to the more recent 2D Kirby titles, but the additional gameplay depth employed by the new dodge mechanics go a long way towards making up for this.  It's a bit of a shame though that the enemy, boss and copy ability variety is pretty low compared to the 2D games; there are literally only 4 mini-bosses throughout the game, and a mere 12 copy abilities to use.  But the game makes great use of its limitations regardless, and throws in some great EX Bosses that feel notably different from their standard counterparts to make up for it.  You do really have to forgo the use of Morpho Knight Sword (or even Meta Knight Sword for that matter) if you actually want a challenge though, as it's so broken that it's basically a built-in cheat code!

Switch_KirbyandtheForgottenLand_screen_0

Silly Kirby... Ice always sucks, and it sucks just as hard here too

In terms of the game's presentation and musical score? I think it's a bit hit and miss in some regards.  The game looks fantastic from a visual standpoint, a big step up from Kirby Star Allies, and I never really felt that the 30FPS framerate bogged down the action at all (unlike in Star Allies, which feels like absolute mollasses); but the FPS drop for distant enemies is really obvious and distracting.  I would've preferred for them to dial back the visuals in order to get rid of that jarring effect; but really, that's my only major visual complaint.  Otherwise, it's one of the best looking games on the console.  As far as the music goes? I'd say it's generally mid-tier for the series.  There's certainly some choice tracks, and I love what they did with the fake Kirby Language; as well as some genuinely creepy use of spoken English to represent the Old Race ("And here we are... and here we are...").  The use of Super Mario World style Leitmotif however isn't as successful as I would've liked however, as the overuse of the main theme does start to feel quite repetitive after a while.  The score as a whole is still very good though, and it's going to earn a place in my music library for sure; but I wouldn't say that it's really amongst the very best in the series.

Overall though, this game was a winner from start to finish.  After the somewhat lackluster Star Allies? (outside of its rather fantastic DLC that really saves the game), Forgotten Land is a great return to form for the pink blob.  It's a completely natural and effortless feeling transition into 3D gameplay and it's a brilliant handcrafted adventure of the kind that I crave so badly!  Though I probably wouldn't put it quite on the same tier as the Modern Kirby Trilogy or Superstar, it's certainly a tier above the Dark Matter Trilogy and Star Allies... so... I'd say that it's in the same tier as Kirby's Adventure/Nightmare in Dreamland (NES/GBA) and Amazing Mirror, that sounds about right to me.  I do hope that we see more 3D Kirby titles that feature more enemy & copy ability variety that double-down on the more Bayonetta-esc Stylish Action combat that we see here.  Fantastic game, very happy with it! Long live 3D Kirby! :D

Edited by Dcubed
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do I know anyone in Japan 🤔

The preview of this tweet may make it clearer for those that don't click

 

 

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The 30th anniversary music fest was today. You can rewatch it here:

 

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