Kirby Star Allies is a sidescroller platformer in the long-running Kirby series. If you’ve played a Kirby game before, then you’ll be right at home. Even if you haven’t, then the controls are easy to pick up. The game has the typical Kirby abilities where Kirby can suck up enemies and then spit them back out to attack others. However, the unique point is that Kirby can also swallow those enemies to absorb and use their abilities. This gives Kirby completely different movesets for each ability such as slashes for Sword, blowing fire and ice for Fire and Ice abilities. There is a large variety of abilities including less common ones like the Paintbrush and Cleaner. While most enemies have abilities to be absorbed, it’s not all of them though. Kirby can also jump and float indefinitely, so it’s harder to die via the bottomless pits than in other platformers.
The new gameplay gimmick for Star Allies is the Allies part of the game. This plays into the co-op function of the game. Kirby can throw hearts into enemies to convert them into allies, who will then go through the level with you. If you play by yourself, then CPU will control the up to three other allies. No part of the game will be locked away if you play single player, which is great. It gets chaotic with four characters on the screen using their abilities, and you can easily lose sight of where Kirby is during boss battles due to all the effects going on.
Like absorbing abilities, most enemies can be made into allies, including certain bosses. The story villains can never be made into allies, which makes sense. There are also special allies which are guest characters from previous games, and they’re a lot more powerful. The other cool thing with allies is that you can combine two abilities together. For example, you can have Kriby with the Fire ability and then combine it with an ally’s Sword ability to give them a flaming sword. These combinations can change movesets and give them higher offensive power.
The bulk of the game is the story mode, where evil stars have arrived in Kirby’s world, infecting its inhabitants. On the other hand, Kirby receives a friend star that allows Kirby to befriend enemies. Kirby travels the world to save the others, and given the lower age of its target audience, the story is simple with barely any twists and turns. This is also reflected in the game’s graphics, which is a colorful affair, allowing the game to feel cheerful as a result. This is a game where you play to chill and relax, rather than be challenged.
The story is structured into a series of levels that are selected via hub worlds. The levels aren’t too long; most can be finished within ten minutes. There’s no timer in the levels, so you can go through them at your own pace. Each level has puzzle pieces to collect that are semi-hidden, these are used to unlock artwork in the main menu. The game is on the easier side; you’ll rack up a lot of spare lives. Kirby and allies have a health bar, and with the addition of the CPU characters, the game is made even easier. Most bosses can be defeated with barely any challenge, given four characters are there to whack it.
The secrets in each level are easy to find, since most of them are obvious. There are frequent puzzles, most of which will require a combination of various abilities. However, these all have their difficulty dialed down given that the required abilities are always within reach, so there’s little risk of missing any content. Despite the simplicity of the puzzles, they’re fun to solve nonetheless. The CPU characters are clever enough to quickly know what they are required to do to help solve the puzzle, to avoid most of the frustration that may come with relying on other characters.
A slight annoyance with the levels is that they are further broken up into smaller sections, that are separated with short loading screens. While these loading screens are short and act as checkpoints, they are still annoying due to how frequent they are and how it breaks the pacing. The story mode doesn’t take long to finish either, only around six to eight hours. Despite how short the levels normally are, the final boss is much longer, and it is one of the more epic showdowns in the Kirby series.
After completing the story, some new levels and several new modes are unlocked. There are two minigames, which are fun for maybe a try or two, they are very simple so shouldn’t keep you busy for long. The more interesting unlocks are the three new modes. One is a time trial, where you don’t play as Kirby, but rather pick an ability and go through the levels as fast as you can using that ability. It’s separated into multiple stages, and the levels are slightly modified from the story levels. The second mode is a boss rush, which is self-explanatory.
The third and final mode, known as Heroes in Another Dimension, is the best post-story content the game has to offer. It’s four new levels, which takes around 20 minutes each. The difficulty is higher than the story, but still not too hard. There are hearts within each of the levels, most of them you need to solve a puzzle (usually against the time). This culminates into a final level which is beating the main bosses again. These final bosses are much tougher than the ones before it and can get extremely chaotic. It’s a fantastic bonus inclusion (that was unfortunately only added later via DLC rather than being available upon release).
Overall, Kirby Star Allies is a fun Kirby game, so you know what you’re getting into. It doesn’t have any massively innovative gameplay or changes. Rather, the inclusion of CPU characters just makes the game way too easy. Being able to combine the abilities is fun and interesting. The story is short, but there is some post-story content that helps keeps your interest, so it’ll provide at least 10-12 hours of content, more if you want to do everything.
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