Kirby's Return To Dream Land was my first proper Kirby game. I had played Epic Yarn and Canvas Curse prior, but they're pseudo-spinoffs with different gameplay styles. RtDL was my introduction to that 2D Kirby formula we all know and love, it was the game that made me a massive fan of this series, and to this day, it's still my favorite execution of the formula.
I'll be honest and say that a good amount of my love for this game is probably down to nostalgia. Kirby's Return To Dream Land was primarily meant to serve as a baseline for future entries to follow, introducing a gameplay engine that later entries like Triple Deluxe and Planet Robobot would proceed to expand upon with more complexity in both the gameplay and level design. But despite those improvements, RtDL is the Kirby game I tend to go back to the most. There's just something so enduring about it.
As I mentioned, Return To Dream Land marks a big refinement for the Kirby formula. It took cues from pretty much all of the prior entries in the series and consolidated their best aspects into a perfect mix. Movement is fast and snappy, but it has just enough weight that it doesn't feel unwieldy, feeling like a happy medium between the GBA games and the Dark Matter trilogy. The combat brings back the combo moves that Super Star had and amps it up to eleven with each copy ability having a moveset so robust it could probably support an entire character action game on its own. As far as 2D hack and slash gameplay goes, the modern Kirby games let you really go ham on your foes and it feels absolutely wonderful. Multiplayer is back as well, and it's probably the best it's ever been. King Dedede, Meta Knight, and Bandana Waddle Dee are now playable, with the game pretty much solidifying them as Kirby's main friends, but Players 2-4 can also switch to different colored Kirbies if they don't want to be restricted to a single ability for the entire game. The carryable items from the very first game in the series have even returned, and they're also probably at their best here. Return To Dream Land's biggest addition is the "game-specific gimmick", each entry from here on out would have a main hook that serves as the main source of variety like the mech in Robobot and the mouthful mode in Forgotten Land. RtDL's Super Abilities aren't quite as fleshed out as either, but their sections serve as fun, fast, and generally unobtrusive power trips that take the copy ability premise to its natural conclusion. And while the earlier Super Ability segments do let you just charge forward and destroy everything in your path, later stages add some timing puzzles that give the mechanic just a bit of extra depth.
As far as level design goes, I'll admit that Return To Dream Land isn't a crowning high point within the series. The first three worlds keep things fairly simple, and even the later areas don't get anywhere near as complex as the levels in games like 64, Triple Deluxe, or Forgotten Land. However, I still think most of the stages in Return To Dream Land are quite fun and memorable, with each including at least one big setpiece to help it stick out from the rest. Raisin Ruins has a few levels that take place on or inside a pyramid and have you dodge a slew of booby traps, Onion Ocean has a particularly memorable level that's entirely based around waterslides and currents pushing you forward, and White Wafers ends with a level set against a stunning aurora in the background. I also think the collectibles do a lot to make these stages more interesting, each level has a bunch of Energy Spheres to track down, some demanding you use specific copy abilities. Out of many of the modern Kirby games, I'd say RtDL is up there with Triple Deluxe in terms of having some of the most devious collectible placement which does a lot to give the game some much needed friction. This is especially apparent in the dimension substages that show up after every Super Ability section, which have you chased by a moving ethereal wall and forced to navigate obstacle courses quickly or else you'll get crushed. The boss fights are consistently fantastic, though, having complex and involved movesets while also serving as perfect targets for you to really utilize your combat skills on. Kirby bosses were always great, but RtDL really took them up a notch.
However, where Return To Dream Land really becomes something special is the fifth world, Nutty Noon. The world itself is easily my favorite in the game, boasting a beautiful dreamlike aesthetic that really appeals to me along with some of RtDL's better levels, but what really elevates it is that the game is designed to trick you into thinking Nutty Noon is the final world. It's the last of the five worlds on Planet Popstar, its last stage is a boss rush, and its end-boss is a giant version of the Sphere Doomers you've fought throughout the game, which you'll need to defeat with the Super Abilities. It's got all the makings for a great final boss, so color me surprised that upon beating him, Magolor flies Kirby and his friends off to another planet entirely to fight the dragon that stole his crown. Yep, Return To Dream Land has two new worlds and they're in a different overworld named Halcandra, which absolutely blew kid me's mind. Halcandra is the only other planet you visit in this game, but its sheer existence expanded the world of Kirby so much for me. It's probably the moment that sparked my interest in the lore of Kirby as a series.
After making through the last two worlds, you fight off against the dragon Landia. Once again, it seems like this is supposed to be the final battle, but something feels off. The music is sorrowful, and Landia doesn't really seem to be trying as hard as the Grand Doomer did. And once you defeat him, RtDL pulls out its biggest twist: Magolor steals the crown and declares his plans to take over the universe, starting with Kirby's own planet Popstar. As a kid playing this game for the first time, this moment shattered me. Most of my video game experience at the time was with Mario or LEGO games, I didn't think a guy as nice and helpful as Magolor could just... betray me like that. To lay on the shock value even further, Kirby then proceeds to chase after Magolor on Landia, leading to a really fun shmup section (which I'd eventually learn is a common trend within Kirby). After that, we get to the proper fight with Magolor, my favorite final boss to this day. The Magolor fight is a fast, frenetic, and challenging multi-phase behemoth of a final boss that tests you on pretty much everything you've learned throughout the game. I love how you get an entire segment where you hammer Magolor with your Super Abilities, only for him to come back for an even harder final phase where he proceeds to use his own Super Abilities against you. My first time playing this game, this whole final sequence took me about an hour to beat and I was left absolutely exhausted by the end, both from the difficulty and from how emotionally intense it all was. I didn't think a Kirby game of all things could leave such a huge impact, hell, I didn't think any game could leave such a huge impact.
Upon beating Kirby's Return To Dream Land, you'll get hit with another twist: Kirby games tend to have quite a lot of side content, and this one's no exception. Return To Dream Land pretty much established the formula that most Kirby games would stick to from here on out in terms of side content. Upon beating the main campaign, you'll unlock a harder Extra Mode where your health bar is cut in half, enemies are resized, the dimension wall is faster, and bosses have more aggressive attack patterns. On top of that, there's also The Arena, an incredibly addictive and replayable boss rush, and The True Arena which features the extra mode bosses instead (along with a few surprises). Of course, there's also all the Energy Spheres to find, the unlockable challenges, and the minigames, all fleshing out the main campaign even more. Good side content in Kirby games is important because playing these titles casually tends to be a pretty easy experience, but if you love this gameplay loop and want to get more out of it, you have these harder side challenges that really push Kirby's gameplay to its limits.
But even all that great side content wasn't enough, I wanted more, and that's where the challenges started. Every kid came up with some self-imposed challenges for the games they played, and Kirby's Return To Dream Land was that game for me. I tried beating it without floating, I tried beating it without abilities, I tried beating it grabbing every ability I could, I played the Arena over and over again to whittle down my time, I looked thoroughly into every abilities' moveset to make sure I had the full picture of what they did, I looked into the competitive scene to see how I could improve my skills even more, and I learned some incredible stuff in the process. Ninja has a shockwave move that can deal a ton of damage, Parasol's twirl move is insanely broken, Ice and Hammer have some very spammable aerials, Tornado makes you pretty much invincible, RtDL has a lot of fun combat tech and it was a joy getting to explore it all. I don't think there was any other game I was more invested in completely snapping in half quite like Kirby's Return To Dream Land, it was my Mario 64, my Mario Kart Wii, my Melee. Look, I love the Deluxe remake, I think it's great, I'd 100% recommend it to people over the original. But as someone who's really delved into the trenches of that original game, the fact that it tweaked the damage values so severely means I can't help but prefer the Wii original.
As far as presentation goes, Kirby's Return To Dream Land is still one of the best-looking and best-sounding Wii games. Like many Kirby games both before and after it, its usage of simplistic character designs and colorful, surreal environments allow it to look impressively sharp given the hardware. Good-looking backgrounds in Kirby are pretty common, but Return To Dream Land's stand out particularly strongly. I love how an Onion Ocean stage just randomly shows an entire Atlantis-esque underwater city in the background that you never get to visit, I love the trippy galactic imagery of the alternate dimension sequences, and I already praised White Wafer's aurora and the sunset skies of Nutty Noon. This game really makes Dream Land look... well dreamy, it probably sparked my love for these kinds of settings. The soundtrack is also one of my favorites in the series, with the combination of Jun Ishikawa's fast-paced arcadey tracks and Hirokazu Ando's sweeping orchestra pieces being pretty much perfectly calibrated. It's probably the best example of how the tone of a Kirby soundtrack darkens over time, with the earlier upbeat and catchy tracks (Cookie Country, The Adventure Begins, Woods Wayfarer, Beyond The Hill, Sandy Wilds, Snowball Scuffle, Sky Waltz, Sky Tower) giving way to tunes that are a bit moodier and more serious (Blazing Boss Battle, Exotic Pyramid, Freezing Temple, Techno Factory, Limitless Power, Another Dimension, Fly Kirby, Road To Victory, Welcome Your New Overlord), culminating in one of my favorite final boss themes of all time, CROWNED.
Overall, Return To Dream Land feels like the definitive 2D Kirby experience for me. It polished and refined the series' formula to a glowing sheen, with expressive and somewhat broken combat, tight level design, a simple but effective central gimmick, incredible boss fights, infectiously fun multiplayer, loads of side content, fantastic visuals and music, and a jaw-dropping finale that expands the lore of the franchise in some truly exciting ways. Whether it's giving myself self-imposed challenges, or playing with friends, or pushing the limit of its combat, or even playing the remake, Return To Dream Land is the kind of game that I'm still able to wring years worth of fun out of and I doubt that'll ever change.
No comments:
Post a Comment