Kirby’s Return To Dream Land Deluxe Switch Review
Summary: Return to Dream Land or spend your time playing minigames... either way Kirby and pals are your ticket to fun!
4.6
Dreamy Delights
My son and I love playing the original Kirby games… the whole swallowing an enemy to gain their powers is such a fun game mechanic… so when we jumped into Kirby’s Return to Dream Land Deluxe… it was a real joy to find that the gameplay is extremely familiar… it’s like playing the originals with a graphics overhaul… and that’s a good thing.
The Kirby games are clearly aimed at a younger audience but that doesn’t mean there isn’t anything for us older players to enjoy. In Kirby’s Return to Dream Land Deluxe…Kirby and friends must help find the parts of Magolor’s crashed ship. To recover all the parts you will need to travel all over Dream Land which will see you exploring desert lands, underwater landscapes and others. If you want to try something different (or just need a break from the story mode) there are a heap of mini games you can enjoy too… simply make your way to Merry Magoland and enjoy the theme park attractions. Think Mario Party and you basically have an idea of what this is like.
It is a nice option to be able to jump from storyline to party games and both make great use of multiplayer. In the mini games if you don’t have enough friends with you, attractions will automatically fill any empty spots with CPU players. Some games give you the option to play with the controller in normal configuration or as via motion control. While the motion control works fine for games like the ninja star game or the samurai strike game… the shooting gallery style game can be a bit trickier… or at least I found that the targeting drifted to a point of basically being unplayable, fairly quickly. But otherwise the mini games provide a lot of fun and there is a good bit of variety in their styles too.
For the completionists out there, you can complete challenges in the mini games to unlock items such as masks that you can use to decorate your character. They don’t really do anything functional but they are a bit of fun and give motivation to complete tasks. But the main story mode is still where the core of the game is and as mentioned earlier, it is arguably aimed towards the younger fan base. This might be why my son was compelled to say that the only issue he really had was that the boss battles are pretty easy. I don’t disagree with him… they are very easy… but I also don’t have an issue with that… I’m too old now to want to have to hone my boss battle technique in order to defeat each one… I’m quite happy to simply whack away at them until they are defeated and then move on.
Ultimately though… the game is a lot of fun and that’s really what it’s all about. It’s nothing serious, it’s not ground breaking (well ok… there is one mini game that is almost exactly that… but whatever). If you are after a huge challenge… you might find some in the extra challenges for the mini games… but the main storyline will likely leave you wanting. If however you just want a game to be able to pick up and enjoy and maybe get the odd grin out of for sheer cuteness or silly fun, then this is a great choice! Grab a copy and suck it up!
About the Author
Chris O'Connor Father of four, husband of one and all round oddity. Gaming at home since about 1982 with a Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Moving on to the more traditional PC genre in the years that followed with the classic Jump Joe and Alley Cat. CGA, EGA, VGA and beyond PC's have been central to my gaming but I've also enjoyed consoles and hand helds along the way (who remembers the Atari Lynx?). Would have been actor/film maker, jack of many trades master of none.
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