Kirby's Dream Land 2

Kirby was a character to whom I had a limited interaction as a kid. My friend on the school bus had a copy of Kirby's Dream Land that we used to play, and I once rented Kirby 64, but besides that, I had played very little of Kirby. I knew that he was adorable, and I really liked both Kirby's Dream Land and 64, but didn't have a good sense for the totality of his games. This review, thus, is written from the perspective of a relative novice to the Kirby universe, so you'll have to forgive any lack of perspective.

I picked this game up because it was on my list of Game Boy games to acquire, and it was on sale on the 3DS Virtual Console. I don't have the original cart, but the Virtual Console adaptations are generally well regarded, and I noticed no problems with it, technically speaking.

It sat on my 3DS for a while, until I finally finished Pokemon Sun and realized I was without a primary handheld game to play. I looked through everything on my 3DS, and decided to give this one a shot.

This game is truly excellent. A little research yielded the fact that most Kirby fans really like this game, and feel it is one of the best, if not the best, in the series. I really enjoyed it for a number of reasons. The music is some of the best chiptune music I've ever heard. It's adorable, and appropriately tense and action packed during some sequences of the game. The game's difficulty curves magnificently, starting with an excellent first level that teaches the basics of the game without bashing you over the head with tutorials, but maintaining an easy enough difficulty level that even my gaming-inept daughters could complete. By the time the end of the game rolls around, you realize that it's grown much more challenging, but don't notice any bizarre difficulty spikes along the way. The visual design work is fantastic, building a lot of detail into a very small black and white (or green, on the original DMG Game Boys) screen. The enemies looks great, Kirby and his allies look great, and the world is beautiful and interactive. There are tons of secrets to unlock, and a big enough variety of levels to keep you interested from level to level. The game's length was appropriate for a Game Boy game, and a save feature was used well to preserve your progress.

On the downsides, I didn't much care for the controls while flying. Having the A button jump and the up button also be used for flying made for an awkward control experience. This makes a number of boss battles and jumping/flying sections far more challenging than they should be, and make you fight against the controls rather than your enemies, which is never good. Controls when not flying were generally pretty good, however.

I'd give Kirby's Dream Land 2 a 9.1/10.

-TRO