Kirby and the Forgotten Land was a surprise hit for me in 2022. I had dabbled with and enjoyed Kirby plenty enough, but this 3D platformer absolutely sucked me in from start to finish. Well now Kirby and the Forgotten Land is back for Switch 2, and it comes with a Star-Crossed World package. The question is, is it worth the upgrade?
Kirby and the Forgotten Land
If you haven’t played it yet, Kirby and the Forgotten Land is a banger. You play Kirby, a little pink … thing that loves to eat. Kirby can suck up enemies and shoot them out, or in some cases adapt to their abilities. She is sucked into a new world filled with abandoned cities and heaps of natural creatures. Here the Waddle Dees are being captured, and she needs to save them.
If you are new to Kirby, the series is a chill platformer, and this game is no different. You run around defeating enemies, saving Waddle Dees and finding all kinds of collectables. The levels themselves aren’t that challenging; the challenge of the game comes in optional missions, which can vary from easy to surprisingly hard. This is usually due to having to beat a time and not actually the level itself.
The unique part of this game is Kirby can suck up larger objects in the world and winds up with her mouth wrapped around them as she controls them in weird and wacky ways. She can wind up wrapped around a car and drive it around; she can suck up a road cone, which she uses to smash down through items in the world.
The game is so much fun. Revisiting it, the only real change is some slight performance upgrades, but this isn’t overly noticeable since the game looked and ran fine on the original Switch.
Star-Crossed World
The major reason to be eyeing this game up is the new package, Star-Crossed World. This is basically a DLC package where a meteor has crashed into the world. This scatters a bunch of crystals around, and to save the day, Kirby has to go and collect the crystals. This basically adds 12 levels throughout the world.
These 12 new levels are all heaps of fun. There are some new mechanics but not heaps, like being able to become a gear to climb walls. You should enjoy them as you discover them, but the gear is worth mentioning, as it was such a shift from the base gear. Having to platform along the wall, jumping from spot to spot, is quirky and unique for the game, making for a nice change of pace.
The biggest issue is the game is spread throughout the current world map. This means either you have an old save where you have all the maxed-out powers already, and so it’s way too easy, or if you lost your old save, you have to replay the whole game again to play the new levels. To be fair, it had been a long time since I played the original game, so I actually enjoyed replaying these levels.
Should you check out Kirby and the Forgotten Land + Star-Crossed World?
If you haven’t played the game before, then you should play this. You can enjoy the base game which is so damn fun, with the new levels as they pop up. If you have played it before and still own it, you can pay for the upgrade. With the slight performance upgrades and the new levels, it’s well worth the cost.
Kirby and the Forgotten Land is great on it's own. Add in Star-Crossed World and it's even better!
