Nintendo is finally making a 3d Kirby platformer! At last!

[A Black Falcon]

So, Kirby and the Forgotten Land releases soon.  To help get some excitement for the release, Nintendo released a demo of the game recently, and I finally got around to playing it... and yes, it's fantastic!  The demo has the first level, one other stage from the first world, and the first boss.  I've loved Kirby games since the original one, of course.  The 8-bit Kirby games always have been my favorites though, and that is unlikely to change.  This one is a lot of fun however, with good level designs, good controls, and tons of adorable Kirby charm.  This game has linear, somewhat isometric-ish stages, which are about a screen deep most of the time and scroll either sideways or into the screen.  So, it's a bit like Mario 3D World in that respect, which is a very good thing indeed.  Exploring the levels, looking for stuff, using the powers, and such all are fantastically fun.  I'm really looking forward to this one and definitely will get it right after release.

For negatives, really the only major one is that you don't have unlimited flight here.  Instead, as in Kirby 64, you have only limited flight, you tire out after not long and have to land.  I have always considered that to be the worst and most annoying thing about that game, so it's really unfortunate to see it here.  It makes this game much more about moving around on the ground than the mixture of ground and air movement I expect from Kirby.

And on that note, you also can't go very high, at all.  Basically you can float at about the max jump height and that's it, you can't go higher.  Kirby and the Forgotten Land may be the first 3d Kirby game, but it kind of feels like it trades a classic Kirby games' vertical component for two horizontal axes instead.  Now, you can still float,  and I get why they have this height limit, it's for game design purposes, but Kirby is the hero who can fly!  Here you can only kind of do that.  Ah well...

Oh, and power combinations aren't here.  You just get one power at once.  Instead powers can improve in strength as you upgrade them.  That's a decent idea which could add something to the game, we'll see in the full title.

Again though, other than this I like this game a lot.  If this is representative of the games' difficulty level it will be quite easy, but that's fine if it is as fun as this is. And there are a lot of hidden things to find in each level, which is great.  Most Kirby games have plenty of hidden stuff to find and this one is no exception.  Oh yeah, and the Mouthful mode powerups, such as car Kirby, traffic cone Kirby, and more, are ridiculously cute too, and add some interesting temporary powers as well.  This game is so much fun...