REVIEW: ‘Kirby’s Return To Dreamland Deluxe’ Is A Valiant Return (Switch)

Kirby’s Return to Dreamland Deluxe is a redo of the Wii-Era side-scrolling Kirby Adventure from HAL Laboratory and Nintendo for the ever-more popular Nintendo Switch. With up to four players, drop in and drop out across a few dozen levels as the pink puffball and crew try to help their new friend Megalor fix their ship that crash-landed on Planet Popstar through an inter-dimensional hole of sorts.

It’s always important to remember that Kirby is one of Nintendo’s intentionally more child-friendly franchises. I like your Mario’s, Zelda’s, or even Pikmen, Kirby is known for simple gameplay, minimal puzzle solving, and exploration-based collectibles. You’re not bound to find much in the way of challenge in Kirby’s Return to Dreamland Deluxe if you’re accustomed to light action-platformers. What you will get, is charm and polish in spades. This is no doubt Kirby’s most stylistically straightforward 2D adventure in some time, and those who admire this classic Kirby style will no doubt find it the best-looking of its kind.

It certainly plays the best too. Kirby must adventure through levels in 8 worlds, each themed, and each laden with dozens of foes classic and new. Basically, every copy ability Kirby has ever been able to possess by swallowing enemies is here, in addition to the new Mecha and Sand abilities. There’s never a huge sense of obligation to pick one over another for a situation. All have 3 attacks, a combo between a standard, a running, and either an up or down attack, and charge.  Many, like the fire and mecha abilities, share similar properties, lighting things on fire for example.

But largely, you can play how you like with whatever copy ability you want to try and hang onto or find, as long as you don’t lose it from getting hit too many times. It keeps the game feeling like it’s up to you, when so many options are available in the first place, while also taking moments to make it clear you’ll find better pathways, collectibles, or otherwise if you make certain choices at select times. You can also absolutely choose to play through levels looking for everything or blaze through them at whatever pace you want. It’s a nice accessibility component along with the now-regular Assist Mode the game offers for younger gamers who might be struggling to get past certain sections.

The main collectible being the 120 missing ship parts also acts as currency to unlock additional challenge rooms for various copy abilities or mini-games to play and earn tickets. There’s a whole separate mini-game section of the game that you can play in multiplayer to collect these tickets and unlock masks for Kirby to wear resembling the franchise’s many friends and enemies. They don’t do anything but are fun to wear to spice up your time. The mini-games are non-essential, but all are reminiscent of classic Kirby’s Dreamland mini-games of especially my personal Gameboy Advance era and can be fun for a bit or with kids.

The adventure doesn’t end at the final boss battle. A new Megalor epilogue chapter puts you in control of Megalor as you play through a totally different kind of set of levels with combos the name of the game and upgradable abilities. It mixes up the gameplay after a fair number of hours as Kirby and gives you something to work towards finishing the game, since it only unlocks at the main game’s conclusion.

If anything is a bit irritating it’s that I didn’t always feel like the controls were as tight as possible. The joystick is hard to play with for left and right maneuvering, which is a common challenge with the Switch, but even when I used the control buttons I didn’t always feel like it registered by dashes or changes in direction. This led to a number of occasions where I used the wrong move and got hurt or died as a result. It’s honestly time to stop relying on walking versus dashing as maneuvering on the Switch, given this is a frequent challenge, and there are no other buttons that can do the same movements. The right stick is used to do different communication animations.

Kirby’s Return to Dreamland Deluxe is top-shelf 2D Kirby platforming. It’s visually as good as non-stylized Kirby gets, rife with every copy ability you can dream of, and as nice and fulfilling a platformer as any Nintendo game should ever be expected to be.

Kirby’s Return to Dreamland Deluxe is available now on Nintendo Switch.