Topic: Things that would have made Kirby’s Return to Dreamland better

[markyjoe1990]

Kirby’s Return to Dreamland is one of my least favorite Kirby game’s. It also maintains the problems of many older Kirby games as well. I’m going to express what I feel would’ve made the game better.

1. Don’t force the player to change powers to get energy spheres
Seriously, this is stupid. One of the things that makes Kirby great is that there’s at least one power that you’ll like and always want to use, and if you get tired of it, there’s like 20 other powers to play around with. Unfortunately, because you NEED certain powers to get energy spheres, you’ll be forced to get rid of your current power if you intend to 100% the game. You could always go back to where you last got the power, but why the heck would you want to do something tedious like that? Plus if you’re still in a level, you can’t go back and get the power again unless an enemy that you can access has it. Some will say this encourages variety, I say it restricts the player in a bad way.

2. Milky Way Wishes Styled power select on the level select hub
The game has a feature that allows you to select your power by going into Magolor’s spaceship and heading into the power rooms. The powers you had access to depend on how many energy spheres you collected. This is a nice feature, and makes it so we don’t have to go through specific levels to get our favorite powers. The problem is, it’s still tedious to always walk back to the spaceship and select a power, especially if you’re trying to 100% the game on your first play through. Why not allow us to select our power outside of the level we intend to go into by pausing the game and selecting it? Not that it matters due to point #1.

3. Make Extra Mode difficult from the start and continue to ramp it up to the end
We already beat the normal mode’s hardest moments. Why not start extra mode’s difficulty where the normal mode’s difficulty ended instead of making us go through the first 4 worlds thinking it’s the same difficulty over again, but with slightly more enemies? Sure, the boss patterns are different, some even have extra forms, and all of them have new moves, but even they aren’t really that difficult. While you’re at it, increase the damage so that it doesn’t look like I only lost a pixel. A lot of Kirby fans want to see it’s combat system be exploited for the amazing potential it has. A lot of Kirby fans want to play a difficult Kirby game, but the last time we had one of those was the first game, and the spin-offs, which for some reason are always hard as hell. Kirby games are intentionally designed to introduce someone to gaming, but those aren’t the only people playing Kirby games, Kirby has a hardcore fan base too. If this seems like too much of a difficulty spike, maybe it should just be a “Super Extra Mode”.

4. Get rid of the live system
Why do we even have this anymore? This is an obsolete system that was used mainly for arcade games to get people to throw their coins away, it has no reason to be in a console game. The game showers us with lives anyway, so all it’s doing is covering up the issue.

5. Make boss attacks much faster in extra mode
This isn’t just for the sake of increasing difficulty, it’s so that the boss fights aren’t prolonged by long tedious attacks where the boss is invincible or extremely unsafe to attack.

6. Make Extra mode selectable at the beginning of the game and rename it to “Hard Mode”
Again, this is for the hardcore fans. With the exception of a slight difficulty boost, the game is nearly the same on extra mode, and we don’t want to have to unlock it by going through the extremely easy normal mode. Newcomers will know not to touch this option because they’re new to gaming, and the intention of adding a harder difficulty is to fit the player’s skill level so they don’t get bored. Extra mode fails to do this in every way until the last few worlds, and most of the bosses. Also, why call it extra mode when there's nothing... extra about it?

7. Don’t restart the stage when Kirby dies
This isn’t Fire Emblem. The main character, or rather, the first player shouldn’t be the anchor for the rest of the team. Then again, let’s assume this scenario: The entire team consists of player one as Kirby, and the rest as King Dedede, and you’re in the dark world running away from the advancing dark wall of doom. If Kirby died at a bad spot where his inhale was needed, and the other players all got stuck, the advancing wall would crush them all, which would be unfair. Perhaps if the other characters had the ability to bypass the same obstacles as Kirby, this wouldn’t be an issue in the first place. King Dedede of all people should be able to inhale the giant iron blocks, he has the ability to inhale in all other Kirby games, why not this one? It probably wouldn’t work for Waddle Dee and Meta Knight though, but they could be given the ability to, for example, break the blocks with a charged attack.

8. Don’t spam the Sphere Doomers
Every dark world stage has one of these things in the end. You face, like, 10 times as many sphere doomers as you do normal mini bosses, and since you only have four different varieties of sphere doomer, this get repetitive quick. The dark world in general was pretty repetitive, since it was almost always “inhale blocks, then run, rinse and repeat”.

9. Put greater emphasis on combat and action, less on puzzles for 100% completion
Puzzles are not Kirby’s strong point. The copy system is one of the most in-depth combat systems in any platformer game, but instead of building the game around it and making the energy spheres obtainable if you kick loads of butt, you have to deal with boring puzzles that usually force you to abandon your favorite power for the sake of 100% completion. The puzzles get in the way of the combat, and it makes the game less fun.

10. Stop making Whispey Woods such a pointless boss
In every game, the levels before Whispey are always more difficult that Whispey himself. This is not a proper difficulty curve. This is just stupid.

11. Balance the powers
Tornado has hideous amounts of invincibility. Plasma is too safe. Stone is abusable. Ninja power is wtf. Of course, even though so many powers are way too powerful, they’re still fun, but if they were balanced, it would make winning much more satisfying.

[Fofa]

Kirby’s Return to Dreamland is one of my least favorite Kirby game’s. It also maintains the problems of many older Kirby games as well. I’m going to express what I feel would’ve made the game better.

1. Don’t force the player to change powers to get energy spheres
Seriously, this is stupid. One of the things that makes Kirby great is that there’s at least one power that you’ll like and always want to use, and if you get tired of it, there’s like 20 other powers to play around with. Unfortunately, because you NEED certain powers to get energy spheres, you’ll be forced to get rid of your current power if you intend to 100% the game. You could always go back to where you last got the power, but why the heck would you want to do something tedious like that? Plus if you’re still in a level, you can’t go back and get the power again unless an enemy that you can access has it. Some will say this encourages variety, I say it restricts the player in a bad way.

I can agree with this all the way. Enemies could be weak to a power you had to get rid of to get an energy sphere, it's annoying.

7. Don’t restart the stage when Kirby dies
This isn’t Fire Emblem. The main character, or rather, the first player shouldn’t be the anchor for the rest of the team. Then again, let’s assume this scenario: The entire team consists of player one as Kirby, and the rest as King Dedede, and you’re in the dark world running away from the advancing dark wall of doom. If Kirby died at a bad spot where his inhale was needed, and the other players all got stuck, the advancing wall would crush them all, which would be unfair. Perhaps if the other characters had the ability to bypass the same obstacles as Kirby, this wouldn’t be an issue in the first place. King Dedede of all people should be able to inhale the giant iron blocks, he has the ability to inhale in all other Kirby games, why not this one? It probably wouldn’t work for Waddle Dee and Meta Knight though, but they could be given the ability to, for example, break the blocks with a charged attack.

Agreed, especially if whoever is playing Kirby happens to be a beginner or something and thus be more likely to make critical mistakes. It also doesn't help that lives get drained if the other players have to join back in, I've had that problem when my sister was playing with me.

8. Don’t spam the Sphere Doomers
Every dark world stage has one of these things in the end. You face, like, 10 times as many sphere doomers as you do normal mini bosses, and since you only have four different varieties of sphere doomer, this get repetitive quick. The dark world in general was pretty repetitive, since it was almost always “inhale blocks, then run, rinse and repeat”.

When I beat the boss of Nutty Noon, I thought "hopefully there will be no more of those annoying bosses". Thus when I saw one in the first level of Egg Engines, I was very annoyed.

I also found the music a little lacking, especially compared to other Kirby titles. I still enjoy the game, it just has some rough spots that could've used some more time or input.