Kirby and The Forgotten Land: Reimagining a Franchise

 Kirby and The Forgotten Land: Reimagining a Franchise

Kirby and the Forgotten Land is the latest installment in Nintendo's fan favorite franchise "Kirby". The adventures of everyone's favorite little pink ball has made its first jump into the realm of 3D. For the first time in the franchise's near 30 year history, he is now in the 3D perspective, as the series has almost always been 2D platformers, with Kirby's only brushes with 3D being in spin off's like Kirby's Air Ride a racing game on the Nintendo Gamecube. The simple change of perspective completely reinvents Kirby and possibly the future of the franchise, while still keeping the backbone of every Kirby game.

Story

Like most Kirby games, the story is very minor and not shoved in your face with walls of text or cutscenes, however, as is tradition in Kirby games there is a story hidden underneath for those that look deeper.

At the beginning of the game Kirby and all the Waddle Dees and other citizens of their star shaped planet "Planet Popstar" also known as "Dreamland" are sucked into a dimensional vortex and they land in a abandoned world overcome by nature, "The Forgotten Land", a normal human looking civilization that has gone through some sort of apocalypse allowing nature to reclaim.

Later on in the game before the final boss, much of this new world is revealed to you, as you discover an ancient being called "the ultimate life form" once gifted the inhabitants the ability to use portals to a "world of dreams" when the being is back to its full strength it attempts to combine planet pop star and the forgotten world by colliding them, from there you must defeat the being and stop this collision from happening at all.

Gameplay

Traditionally, Kirby games are 2D platformers with the game not often getting challenging until the end of the game, usually very laid back adventures. Forgotten Land keeps this identity of a laid back fun adventure, however now we are behind Kirby's back instead of viewing him from the side of the two dimensional plain. Running and Jumping through levels utilizing Kirby's classic abilities of floating to cross large gaps as well as inhale his enemies and steal their super powers, Kirby's iconic "copy ability" which is what gives the franchise it's identity.

However, the game now being in the 3D perspective, gives HAL Laboratories (the team at Nintendo who creates Kirby games) the opportunity to completely reinvent their approach to level design and challenge within a Kirby game, as well as giving the opportunity to change and remix classic copy abilities to make them feel almost like they are new abilities, combining the copy abilities with the reinvented flow of level design makes for completely new approaches to puzzle design that makes puzzles and platforming challenges much more fun to complete than they ever have in the past.

What truly gives this franchise a brand new fresh feeling is the upgrade system. All past Kirby games have had copy abilities yes, however they remain the same throughout the entire game every time you pick them up. Forgotten Land, however, brings in an entirely new gameplay mechanic into the franchise, The Waddle Dee Workshop & Ability Upgrades. Each of the roughly 20 copy abilities in the game can be given about 3 upgrades each using blueprints collected in levels handed to the Waddle Dee within the workshop, coins collected in the stage, and star pieces collected by doing ability challenge levels. These upgrades wildly diversify the gameplay, giving each ability much more depth, as each upgrade isn't just a simple damage boost, but rather complete changes that fundamentally changes how that ability is used while still using the original ability as the foundation, as well as the upgrade giving the ability a new aesthetic presentation when Kirby uses it. Some might say "what if i prefer the original version without the upgrade?" luckily, at the workshop you can swap out which version of each ability you have have active and that version, upgraded or not, will be the one that appears in levels so long as you have it selected.

The fundamental change to the copy ability system as well as the addition to a block and dodge roll system fundamentally changes how the combat of this specific Kirby game feels in comparison to any other game in the franchise.

Presentation

Like most Kirby games, forgotten land is soaked in saturated bright colors and soft textures, despite it being a broken down city the world still feels welcoming and inviting to be in, warm and friendly while also mysterious and dangerous. 

Forgotten Land manages to be the most visually stunning game in a long running series known for artistically colorful and beautiful environments. While it manages to encapsulate the Kirby aesthetic perfectly, it also brings a new feeling to the art direction all its own. Being a forgotten civilization you travel through many run down factories, abandoned malls and apartment buildings, and the desolate streets and highways of the cityscape. It manages to be so perfectly fitting for Kirby while also bringing new styles never before seen in the franchise