Kirby and the Forgotten Land came to me in a time of need. During that week, like so many others, I had taken the time to purchase the incredible Elden Ring. Emboldened by my friends and their tales of fantastical adventure, I decided to jump in – BLIND – and carve my own path through The Lands Between.
No more than 4 hours later, I was at my local game store shamefully invoking their unsatisfied return policy – made all the more shameful due to the rapport I had built with those staff members. But then a beacon saw to soothe my aching ego, and instead of store credit I made the bold choice to instead swap my interactive experience for something a little closer to my heart.
A delightfully pink, cheerful, innocent, food-loving orb was also on the shelf that fated week, and so I traded tickets to The Lands Between for an express train to The Forgotten Lands. Same thing, right?
Meet your new cosmic friends, the Starries
Elden Ring it aint, but what Kirby lacks in nut-crushing difficulty is instead made up in spades of fiendishly clever hidden objectives and industrial-strength whimsy. It’s the pink gobbler gremlin at his best, and in true Nintendo fashion it wrung every ounce of pretty-making power out of the then-aging Nintendo Switch. It had some clear constraints that were maddening to behold (such as the 30fps cap, and the diabolically low draw distance) but it was so freaking fun to play I couldn’t help but crush through both the game AND its endgame in rapid succession. All I wanted from the game was more of it, and perhaps with the silly locks removed.
So Kirby and the Forgotten Land – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Star-Crossed World makes itself known as one of the next-gen system celebrations of past bangers, unshackled from what the Switch 1 struggled to muster. I didn’t know what to expect with these throw-in expansion doovers, but it was a far cry better than just getting a slightly prettier game for an inflated price – and in this case, it’s everything I ever dreamed of.
Slotting alongside the originals’ existing post-game content, Star-Crossed World adds a little over ten ‘new’ levels to the game, with some unique mechanics to be found and enjoyed within them. The explanation of this is that a rather worrying meteor has crash landed onto the world of Kirby, and brings with it a portent of certain doom unless Kirby and Co rescue the goober macguffins to seal away its darkness.
I say ‘new’ because these levels are existing ones from Forgotten Land, just with a huge infusion of space crystal nifties to make the experience fresh and interesting. Within these levels, you get to tangle with upgraded enemies, fiddle about with new Mouthful Forms and rescue the cosmic version of Waddle-Dees (known as Starries) to stop the malevolent dark-heart meteor from destroying reality as we know it.
A healthy portion of this cleverness comes from the method in which levels are recycled. Being that Kirby and the Forgotten World was presented as a pseudo fixed-camera game, you’ll often set off in a familiar direction before the viewpoint shifts and gives you an entirely new perspective on these brilliant spaces – turning the landscape into a whole new playground to inhabit. It’s a bloody smart way to do things, and pairs beautifully with the focus on manifesting new geometry to traverse through special space flowers.
I’d play an entire game centred around cog-mode Kirby
It is all familiar, but dazzlingly new in execution. A distinct favourite was stepping into a water level that I briefly remembered was a bit of a pain in the arse because you spent most of it floating on the surface of it all, like some pink bulbous beach ball. But nope, slapping one of the space posies saw the very seas begin to part in biblical fashion, inviting me to instead flit around the seabed in a space filled with coral and rockpools. This is the thick, creamy syrup that floats atop the delicious base of the original Kirby and the Forgotten Land – and it’s well good.
There are also some new mechanics to enjoy, even if they are entirely relegated to the game’s ‘Mouthful Mode’ system. Immediately you are given a Spring form, allowing you to bound vertically upwards and slam down like the Cone form. Another is the Kirby Gear, which tickled me greatly with its neato gimmick of rolling on walls and opening up all manner of secret spaces. Really the only disappointing thing to be said about the Star-Crossed World expansion of mechanics is that there are no new Copy transformations to be seen at all, nor any improvements to the existing ones. Sure, the breadth of copy abilities already in the game is quite staggering – but not even one space-themed one for the sake of the cosmic peril we are stopping? For shame. BIG BANG Kirby was right there.
It’s crazy that this isn’t even the first bit of biblical imagery I have seen in a Kirby game
Of course the additional power of the Switch 2 hardware is put to work righting all of the past wrongs of this poor game. The initial release was a highly stylised game, done so to balance what the Switch 1 could do while also delivering great landscapes for Kirby’s grand adventure – but seeing a cartoonishly low frame on background NPCs for the sake of not stressing that hardware was a hard knock. Even the 30fps, while palatable, just felt like a bummer when you consider how great some of the moments with the game are presented. It was a tale of epic proportions – but shrunk down and carefully tethered in more than a few places for the sake of compromise.
All of this is blissfully gone thanks to Star-Crossed World, which also seems to enjoy the newfound grunt by dialing up spectacular texture effects and particles to really sell the ‘space infused’ areas of the world, all glittering and specular in comparison to the regular world. Everything tinged with cosmic newness stands out proper, without overshadowing the world – mostly drawing a great comparison between new and old. It helps that a lot of these effects are summoned by the player, because you get to drink in the prettiness each time you command it to be so.
Kirby and the Forgotten Land is still a great platformer all these years later – and what is offered within Star-Crossed World is equal parts visual improvements and fun new content to explore. I left my original experience with the Forgotten Land wishing there was more to play and dreaming of a world where it wasn’t struggling to do its thing on the OG Switch – and that is what Star-Crossed World delivers. Definitely a high recommendation for people perhaps eyeing Kirby’s 3D world outing for the first time, or hungry to jump back in and appreciate how clever it is all over again, just now a great deal snazzier to behold.
While this piece speaks specifically to the updates and improvements of Kirby and the Forgotten Land – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Star-Crossed World, for those wishing to know more about the base game please check out the full review for Kirby And The Forgotten Land by the immaculate Kieron Verbrugge: Kirby And The Forgotten Land Review
