A broken mirror is the least of Kirby's problems....
While I've played my
fair share of Kirby games I wouldn't go as far as to call myself a fan, however, the first Kirby game on the Gameboy Advance, Nightmare in Dreamland, is one fantastic game so I had high
expectations for
Kirby & the Amazing Mirror. Sadly, the game pretty much
fell short in every way.
A Dark MetaKnight has appeared and divided Kirby into four Kirbys, so now they team up to figure out what's wrong. What's wrong is that MetaKnight has
destroyed the eponymous Amazing Mirror, so they have to collect every shard and right what's wrong. The game looks and plays a lot like Nightmare in Dreamland, which is a good thing, since I've always considered that game to be one of the
best looking games on the system. That said, this isn't just another 2-D platformer, oh no, this is a Metroidvania, a series of large zones interconnected between each other. I love Metroidvanias, so surely this game would be great, right? Well.... it gets a lot of things
wrong.....
The first thing that you'll notice upon starting the game is that there are three other Kirbies around you, but they are
dumb and controlled by the AI. As you go through the game you'll be able to occasionally come in contact with them, albeit they aren't much help, or you can summon them by calling them on the phone, which is only ever useful to clear a few obstacles or to get yourself a quick heal during boss battles. Bosses aren't particularly tough, but they were made with 4 players in mind, so they are a bit of damage sponges.
Boring damage sponges at that. Your allies aren't particularly useful, but hey! One of them might drop in wielding a power which you can then steal from them as soon as they get hit.
Kirby's abilities remain the same, suck in enemies and eat them to
steal their powers. I'm pretty sure that Super Jump was the only power that got the axe, but now we have Cupid, Missile, Magic(Just a one-time random support spell), Chef and Smash, which is Smash Bros.-lite moveset for Kirby. Sword, Fighter and Hammer have
movesets now, so different directions on the digital pad + B produces different effects. There are three new minigames you can play with Players or the CPU, and they are pretty
decent. There is no bonus Meta Knight mode to unlock, but beating the game unlocks the Master Sword, a power that can destroy any block and has
different moves from the basic Sword.
So now onto what
doesn't work... Well, anything that's Metroidvania like.
Where should I start from? The map of each area, provided you can
actually find it, is pretty much
useless. Some "roads" are arrowed, but even then sometimes you
might be able to return from where you came from, other times the door behind you just disappears because
screw you, this wasn't the exit you wanted to take but the game doesn't care, it's the
long way back for you. There are
not enough transporters in the game, getting
anywhere takes too much time. Oh, and sometimes you need a specific power up to get to alternate routes or chests, which is usually either the hammer, missile or fire dash, so you have to remember what power you need, where the room is and where to get the damned power in the first place. And pray to god that you don't lose the power on the way, because if you get hit you lose your power and if you can't catch it in time it's gone for good. Imagine if this was Symphony of the Night and getting hit could cost you the Double Jump or your Mist Form?
Unbelievable. Word of advise" A+B+START+SELECT is how you Reset in the game, because there's no other way to return to the main menu in case you wanted to try a new
color or somethin'.
Alternate colors for Kirby and extra hit points are the only
real rewards in the game, but most chests you'll find either have
worthless lives, worthless because the life counter resets every time you start the game or healing items you use on the spot. And there's no way to tell what each chest has, sometimes you'll go through hoops in order to get to a chest that only contained a healing items, while others you might find a new color for Kirby on a chest lying just in front of you.
It's really dumb. The game has 9 main zones, and each Zone has a Boss as well as multiple "Goal" zones. Goal Zones are zones that force you into a minigame to earn worthless lives and then pop you back into the game nexus. Hopefully you had the map and could avoid the Goal, otherwise you might have to walk a long way back to the area you were exploring because if you enter a Goal you can't go back to the room that came
before.
It sucks.
Kirby & the Amazing Mirror was
disappointing to say the least. I've been meaning to play this game for years now, but it wound up being a horrible Metroidvania and one of the worst Kirby games I've ever played. That said, I
hope the ability to change Kirby's colors
returns in future games.
5.0 out of 10
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