#anyway yea maybe i'll post a more coherent review later

[inexplicably-spookified]

quick lil kirby and the forgotten land ramble/thoughts (contains a lot of very spoilery spoilers)

first of, pros:

- absolutely a good game, like- really, really good, excellent transition to 3D

- enjoyed the level design overall and the main game's length is satisfactory! i sped through it over the course of fri-sat-sun, ignoring most bonus content and i'm yet to check out postgame stuff, there's like. a lot to do in this game lmao. that was an issue in star allies so i'm glad it's been resolved!

- combat/copy abilities transferred over well imo, and i had fun with drill and gun kirb ranger

- mouthful mode's a fun gimmick and it still cracks me up

- elfin didn't betray us!! i really liked the build up, too, with the lab tour and reveal that he was a split off from the ULTIMATE LIFE FORM(tm)

- holy SHIT fecto elfillis was a cool design and even cooler fight, and the fucking CHASE sequence in the lab was creepy as hell, glad kirby's keeping up its eldritch horror final boss reputation

- VOICE ACTING

- ACTUAL, ENGLISH VOICE ACTING???

- kirby committing vehicular manslaughter in the finale was really funny, fitting end 10/10

- waddle dee band my beloved

- waddle dees in this game were super cute overall, i liked the touch of them not all being the same exact colour and i enjoyed the town and seeing all the dees just kinda vibin :]

- overall yea kirby good. good game.

though i did have some minor gripes:

- the way unlock notifications were handled is super annoying, they're not grouped, they're all announced individually and you can't skip them, you have to sit through the fucking jingle EVERY time for each one

- beast pack felt... not very memorable, both in terms of lore and design. idk man not vibin with those guys. i feel like they weren't given much explanation as to who they are and why they're doing what they're doing, not even a bare minimum, which kinda sucked, and they didn't have very interesting designs to make up for that. also why'd they give the leopard tiddies and an hourglass figure.

lion dude was cool though i guess, especially his second phase

- kinda missed the pause screen lore, i wish they'd kept it, it was a really nice way of at least giving some interesting flavour text - capsule figurine descriptions are meant to fill that, i guess, but... they're random chance and optional

- definitely less lore orientated than the previous couple games, which i can respect, i suppose, it's trying to be its own thing, but like with the pause screen text, i missed it a little bit? would've liked to at least know a little more about the planet's previous inhabitants/society

- on that note, and this is really just my personal disappointment, i'm bummed they didn't even give a nod to shiver star, given the setting is literally an expansion of that concept. would've just taken a factory inspection remix tbh. though overall it seems really disconnected from the previous games - back to basic copy abilities, only returning characters are dedede/meta knight/bandanna dee, etc etc. like, i can respect that too, but i dunno, i enjoyed how connected the previous games have been

all that being said, it definitely didn't ruin my enjoyment much - it's just me nitpicking - overall i wholeheartedly recommend it, i had a lot of fun!