Kirby is a series known for not having a bad game, and I generally still think that's true. When the generally regarded worst Kirby games include a perfectly fine game with microtransactions, a reskin of Puyo Puyo, and a pinball game for the Game Boy, all of which are spinoffs, your series is in pretty good hands. But even with how consistently strong the mainline games are, there's gotta be a worst, and for me, Kirby's Dream Land 2 is the worst mainline Kirby game. And it really hurts to call it that, because it's not a bad game. It's honestly one of the Game Boy's most impressive platformers, and makes some pretty big improvements over its predecessor. On top of that, it kickstarts my beloved Dark Matter trilogy and paves the way to two of my favorite games in the series. So what's the problem? Well, let's talk about it.
Kirby Needs Color
- Kirby's Dream Land 2 is the first entry in what the fandom generally refers to as the Dark Matter trilogy. Three games all based around a singular villain, Dark Matter, and their repeated attempts to invade Popstar.
- The Dark Matter games have a pretty unique vibe compared to others in the series due to being directed by the elusive Shinichi Shimomura, who only ever directed these three games before dipping out of the public eye entirely. They're a bit slower-paced and more puzzle-heavy, with a strong emphasis on finding collectibles and allowing Kirby to mix and match single-use abilities. I like the Dark Matter games, though I believe the formula slowly improves as the trilogy goes on.
- In Dream Land 2, Dark Matter attacks the Rainbow Islands, though you don't see much of them for most of the game. With how prolific of a villain they are now, it's easy to forget that their first appearance tried to keep them as more of a secret. You'll see a shot of Dark Matter in the bad ending, but it's not until the true final boss where they fully reveal themselves.
- The Dark Matter trilogy as a whole also has this unique vibe that I find really interesting, simultaneously leaning into the cute and cuddly nature of Kirby while also balancing it out with this uncannily moody vibe. A great example of this is Kirby himself, he's more malleable in this games as many of his copy abilities tend to involve him going through full-on body transformations that would be pretty disgusting if they weren't so adorable.
- It's almost weird to say this since Kirby has a bunch of allies accompanying him in all three of these games, and yet the threat of Dark Matter has this cosmic horror level scale to it that these games also have a bit of a lonely feel to them. The incredible soundtracks also really aid with this feel, as many of the major stage themes across the Dark Matter trilogy start off happy or energetic only to veer into a more melancholic second half, with DL2's Big Forest, DL3's Ripple Field 1 and Sand Canyon 1, and 64's Shiver Star being great examples of this.
- So no matter what I say about the game design of Dream Land 2, just know that I think it's incredible from an atmospheric and musical perspective, and really paved the way for Dream Land 3 and 64 to be some of the most visually and tonally-istinct games in the entire series.
- There is, however, one issue with Dream Land 2's story in particular and that's the location. The game takes place on the Rainbow Islands and has you collect Rainbow Drops, but it's still a Game Boy game so it's all in black and white when played normally. I'm really not sure why HAL decided to give a monochrome game such a strong rainbow theming, and it's not unless you play the Super Gameboy version which paints each level a different color of the rainbow that it feels like the artistic vision for Dream Land 2 is fully realized.
- Thankfully, there is also a DX hack like there is for many Game Boy games, and honestly, this might be the best one I've ever seen. Dream Land 2 DX adds so much extra detail to the environment making it look more in line with Kirby's Adventure in terms of artstyle, while still capturing the distinct environmental colors that the Super Gameboy look had. It even makes some additional quality of life improvements like reducing lag and allowing you to turn off the animal friend themes, addressing one of my biggest issues with DL2 as you'll see soon.
A Tale Of Two Engines
- Kirby's Dream Land 2 generally controls the exact same as Kirby's Dream Land did by virtue of using the same engine, and that's for better or for worse. With the lack of a run button, Kirby isn't as fast or snappy as he was in Adventure, but on the other hand, he moves a lot more fluidly and the game has nowhere near the same amount of lag as its predecessor, even without the aforementioned DX hack.
- A lot of additions were made to keep this game more in line with Adventure. There are now copy abilities, only seven this time (though that's for a very good reason), but they are here and work great. The level count has also been upped to a mere five in DL1 to nearly 40 stages, almost rivaling Adventure in terms of length. There's a functioning autosave system, and even a proper goal game! The fact that the Game Boy is able to handle all of this absolutely makes this one of the most impressive platformers on the console.
- That being said, the larger level count does give Dream Land 2 the same issue that Adventure did where some of the levels can feel way too short. The first stage is a great example of this, only taking place across two screens and easily beatable within seconds. The only noteworthy thing about it is the fact that Parasol is weirdly enough the first copy ability you see in this game, a strange choice considering Sword, Fire, and Beam tend to be the usual go-tos in this area.
- Level 2 introduces another major mechanic in the Animal Friends. There are three Animal Friends that Kirby can ride in this game, including Rick the hamster, Coo the owl, and Kine the fish. Each of the three Animal Friends are great in their own unique terrain, and they augment each of your copy abilities in their own ways. So Fire on its own will cause you to dash forward, but combined with Rick, it'll basically turn him into a flamethrower. When you take into account all the different Ability+Animal Friend combinations, it essentially ups the copy ability count from seven to 28, giving this game so much extra replayability.
- This mechanic does have its issues though. Several important collectibles are locked behind specific copy ability combinations and figuring out which ones you need can be hard without some serious experimentation, along with having some sort of notepad to keep track of what each combination does as it's a lot harder to keep track.
- But even more notable, each animal friend comes equipped with their own unique musical theme that plays for as long as you're riding them. Since you're bound to spend most of the game on an Animal Friend, this basically means that you'll be spending most of DL2 listening to the same three music tracks. They are good music tracks, maybe even some of the game's best, but they are very overplayed. Thankfully, as I mentioned, DX does fix this by removing those tracks entirely, but that's still an imperfect solution since now you never hear the Animal Friend themes.
- Oh yeah, and one other gameplay addition is the introduction of Point Stars which you can collect in the levels to get 1ups. I like this addition, it encourages you to explore the levels more thoroughly since there are now more rewards to find beyond just fruit.
Grass Land
- As I implied, Grass Land is mostly a tutorial. The levels are quite simple and each aim to teach you something different. The first level introduces copy abilities and basic movement, the second level introduces the Animal Friends, and the third level introduces the main collectible, the Rainbow Drop.
- One thing I didn't mention about the second stage is that it has a miniboss that you must defeat to get access the Animal Friend. This is a common occurrence in Dream Land 2, and yeah, the minibosses in this game are generally pretty fun. There's a unique miniboss for each ability and while several like Captain Stitch and Blocky would become mainstays, some like Efretti and Waiu are completely unique to this game.
- Each world has a single Rainbow Drop to find. You have to figure out which level it's in as well as how to get it. In Grass Land, this is pretty easy. You pass by the Rainbow Drop's room and see that you need to break blocks above you to access it. Right after you leave the room, you see a Parasol enemy and realize that's how you get it. This is a good, well-designed puzzle that's conveyed to the player in a digestible way, and sadly, most of the Rainbow Drops are not like this. As the game goes on, it will become clear that this collectible is the worst thing about Dream Land 2.
- Thankfully, right after this stage introduces probably the best thing about Dream Land 2, the bosses. Nowadays, most fans of Kirby will vouch the bosses as being one of the series' best traits and I'd argue Dream Land 2 is the first game where they really stand out. Whispy Woods is once again the first fight, but his encounter feels more dynamic here. The first phase has him cover his mouth with a mask and use his roots to attack, only for you to knock the mask off causing him to start shooting a ton of air gusts at you.
- Beating a boss introduces another important bit of side content. When you re-enter a boss room after completing a world, you'll enter a Bonus Chance minigame where the boss launches a bunch of point stars at you to collect. Getting all of the Point Stars in this challenge will add to your completion percentage, meaning you'll need to get perfect on every Bonus Chance to get 100%. Sounds reasonable, right? Well, that's until you realize that failing at the Bonus Chance will cause the door to shut, forcing you to replay a level to get another chance, turning what's otherwise a decently fun little minigame into a bit of a time-waster.
- As you can tell, the 100% requirements really hold Dream Land 2 back in a lot of ways, and it only gets worse.
Big Forest
- Big Forest is one of my favorite worlds in Dream Land 2 for a number of reasons. It's got a cool forest setting, one of my favorite tracks in the game, and it introduces the best Animal Friend, Coo.
- Coo is just absurdly overpowered. Not only can she fly around very easily, but most of her copy abilities feel like extreme versions of their originals. Coo+Fire turns into a devastating divebomb, Coo+Parasol is basically Tornado with all the i-frames that come with it, and Coo+Cutter in particular allows you to practically fill the screen with projectiles.
- To accommodate for Coo, the first two levels in Big Forest have more open and vertical level design to fly around in, helping give this world its own unique flavor compared to all the others.
- However, the Rainbow Drop in this world is the first of several pretty poorly-placed ones. You can find the Rainbow Drop right at the start of Stage 2, but you need Needle to break it. When do you get Needle? Well, at the end of the stage, of course, which means you will 100% need to backtrack and replay the level again. How fun.
- Stage 3 is my favorite level so far, as it goes full-on vertical by having you climb up and down a giant tree. It's a solid change of pace, though it suffers from a few instances of cheapness where the game just drops enemies onto your head while you're going upwards. It's not the worst thing ever, but it's an omen for how some of the later levels will play out.
- The boss, Nruff & Nelly, is basically an analog to the Lololo & Lalala fight. It takes place on three separate plains, and Nruff will run along the screen forcing you to catch him. It's a lot better than the Lololo/Lalala fight for a number of reasons, though. The platforms are semisolid making the battlefield easier to navigate, Nruff has more interesting attacks like tossing bombs at you and sending Nellies to run across the screen, and the battlefield as a whole is so small that you won't be aimlessly running around. I actually had quite a bit of fun with this fight.
Ripple Field
- Kirby's Dream Land didn't have much swimming in it, but that game did not have the best swimming controls for base Kirby. It felt a lot slower than in Adventure, and Dream Land 2 having a dedicated water world does make these issues a bit more apparent.
- That being said, Ripple Field does have its strengths. Stage 1 brings back the fun bomb coconuts mechanic and lets you block them with a Parasol once again, along with introducing the Stone ability and letting you mess around with it.
- Stage 2 introduces Kine, easily the worst Animal Friend. Being a fish, he does have better movement in the water than Kirby and can swim through currents. However, he's also pitiful on land and is often the source of some of the game's worst Rainbow Drop puzzles. This stage also introduces dark rooms that only Kine+Spark can light, and that will also be the bane of your existence soon.
- Stage 3 is actually the most fun level in Ripple Field because of its stronger focus on currents pushing you around. This is very much going to be a Kirby mainstay, as HAL seems to love using currents to facilitate more fast-paced water stages which I'm all here for.
- However, it's once again held back by the Rainbow Drop. This one requires some real order-of-operations. You need to get Kine, bring him to a dark room off the beaten path and use Spark to light up a door. In that door is the Rainbow Drop Chamber, but you'll need to leave and come back with Kine+Stone to actually get the Rainbow Drop. This one can actually be gotten without backtracking if you know where the hidden door is, but that just makes it a beginner's trap.
- The boss, Sweet Stuff, introduces another weird trait that just the Dark Matter games have, underwater boss fights. This one's actually really fun though, it takes place on a scrolling battlefield and you have to dodge Sweet Stuff's lasers while knocking enemies back at him. Though of course, you can also use Kine to pretty much trivialize the fight.
Iceberg
- As the opening animation displays, Iceberg is the first stage where you'll have to actively choose between Animal Friends, which marks a boost in complexity in terms of the puzzles, for better or for worse.
- Level 1 is actually a really fun stage all around. It lets you get to grips with the game's slippery ice physics, though you can also get Rick to bypass that entirely. You finally get to use the Ice ability which is always fun, and the stage ends with an incredibly fun downward section where you can use Rick+Stone to roll down a series of hills.
- Level 2 is also quite good. The first section introduces some really strong wind that pushes you forward, so you'll have to do some genuinely tough platforming across pits if you want to hang onto Rick. Soon after, you'll pretty much be forced to use Coo, and you get sections that utilize Coo+Parasol and Coo+Fire in some pretty creative ways, like dodging falling icicles and melting ice blocks.
- As you can probably tell by now, Level 3 is focused around Kine... and it doesn't do anything interesting with him. It's mostly just more swimming, though you will have to take him through a somewhat tricky platforming section if you want to get him to the next level.
- Level 4 is home to probably the most hated Rainbow Drop in the game, and pretty much everything within it is meticulously designed to screw you out of getting it. The stage starts with a miniboss that lends you a random friend upon its defeat. This is a trap, do not pick up anyone other than Kine no matter what you do. Instead, you'll have to bring Kine specifically through an irritating autoscroll section to the next room which has a fairly big side path.
- This side path has two tricky puzzles to figure out. First, you need to get Kine+Fire to melt some ice blocks in the way. But wait, if you melt the wrong iceblocks, you can't get Kine where he needs to go, so reset. After that, you have to take out some Star Blocks underwater. You can't break them with Kine+Fire, so you drop the ability, swallow the blocks, and enter the Rainbow Drop Chamber where you find that you need Kine+Fire to get the Rainbow Drop, meaning you'll once again have to reset.
- So to actually get the Rainbow Drop, you need to drop Fire, swallow up the Star Blocks, and then quickly pick Fire back up before it vanishes. No other Kirby games makes you do anything like this, it's absurdly precise and even now, it's just not something I find myself comfortable doing.
- Thank goodness the boss is fun, though. The Ice Dragon has a solid variety of attacks from dropping icicles from the ceiling to flying around to blowing ice breath at you, and the sheer amount of options you have to take him out makes for a really dynamic boss fight.
Red Canyon
- Red Canyon is the mountain world and its first level is pretty standard stuff. Lots of platforming around rocks and dealing with fragile platforms. This level and the following one also lends you a random Animal Friend, so most playthroughs of these stages will rarely ever be the same which is pretty cool. In my case, I got Rick and was able to mess around with his very fun Spark combo (which is basically just Beam in the other games). You'll need it for one of the Rainbow Drops too so it's nice to have a level where you can easily get Spark if you need it.
- Level 2's only notable feature is an autoscroller that will send you on different paths depending on the Animal Friend you have, a cool concept in theory, but it can be easy to force yourself to lose your Animal Friend if you enter a path meant for normal Kirby.
- Level 3 once again continues this world's trend of player freedom by actually allowing you to pick between the Animal Friends. There's not too much to this stage otherwise, though, outside of yet another vertical climb at the end.
- However, Level 3 is infamous for one of the game's most devious 100% requirements. So, if you defeat a miniboss housing an Animal Friend you already have, Gooey will pop out of the bag and increase your health. However, there is also a 1/8 chance that a female version of Gooey will pop out of the bag instead. You need to collect both Gooey and the girl blob at least once, and there is no better level for grinding them out than the level which gives Animal Friends out right at the start. It's a really annoying and obtuse bit of completion that feels completely superfluous, but I was lucky enough to get girl blob pretty quick on my playthrough.
- The one saving grace for this mechanic is the fact that you can exit out of levels whenever you want, so if you keep running into Gooey, you can easily keep restarting stages. Exiting out of stages doesn't save your collectible pickups, but it does save the copy ability and Animal Friend you picked up which can also help make getting Rainbow Drops a bit easier as well.
- Like all the other Red Canyon stages, Stage 4 doesn't really add too much in the way of new mechanics. There's this pretty neat new rocky outcrop sprite for the environment, and one section has these pipes that blow out gusts of air that push you up, but most of it has you dealing with returning mechanics like wind and currents.
- Stage 5... hoo boy, where do I start. So this is the Rainbow Drop stage, and thankfully, it's actually one of the more reasonable ones. You need Spark to get the Rainbow Drop, and the abundance of Spark enemies at the start of the stage and the fact that the blocks you need to destroy look like computer chips do a good job at telegraphing this. You can actually get the Rainbow Drop without Animal Friends with skilled play, but having Rick does make it a lot easier and between Stages 3 & 4 both giving him to you pretty handily, it's very much possible to get this Rainbow Drop in one go.
- However, the stage itself is... well, it's infamous for a reason. Honestly, most of it is fine. There's even a pretty fun and frantic vertical autoscrolling section halfway through. But the final room has you drop down a long vertical shaft, passing by Star Blocks that are modeled in the shape of a... naked woman, complete with boobs and vagina. It's so weird, why is this in a family-friendly Kirby game? Who on the team was even responsible for this? Did all the other developers just find it okay or did they not even notice? I need answers, HAL!
- Thankfully, the boss fight is once again pretty great. It's Mr Shine & Mr Bright once again, almost identical to how they were in Adventure. The only major change is a new attack called the Eclipse Laser which is basically a screen clear attack with the only safe place to avoid it being, of course, in the shade where the moon is blocking. It's a fun attack to dodge that adds a new wrinkle into an already fun boss fight.
Cloudy Park
- In terms of atmosphere, Cloudy Park is an incredibly pleasant stage with some of the prettiest music in the game. And Stage 1 is a solid start, fleshing out the air gusts mechanic that Red Canyon briefly introduced.
- Sadly, Stage 2 is pretty awful. If Iceberg was the hardest Rainbow Drop execution-wise, this one is the most tedious to figure out, requiring an absolutely irritating order of operations that plays out as follows: Bring Kine in from another level, get Ice, break the ice blocks, make a blind drop into a hidden room, enter the door on the left, fight Master Green and get Spark, enter the door on the right, fight Blocky and get Rick, use Rick+Spark to free Coo, fly to the right, fight Waiu for Cutter, fly to the left dodging all the Gordos in the way, and finally, use Coo+Cutter to get the Rainbow Drop. It's just as much of a slog as it reads.
- But hey, at least we got the Rainbow Drop out of the way, and we won't have to look for another one until the final stage of Dark Castle. So how's the rest of Cloudy Park? Ehhhh...
- Stage 3 is kinda weak too. The first half is bizarrely empty and lacking in platforming gimmicks, and the second half is really tedious as it has you dig through a combination of fragile platforms and Star Blocks. And the weirdest part is, this kinda applies to the entire rest of Cloudy Park. Stage 4 is a bit more fun as it has you fly while being pushed up by air gusts, but then it has you once again break through Star Blocks.
- Stage 5 is particularly sloppy, starting with a cramped maze entirely composed of fragile platforms, which of course leads to a lot of waiting for them to vanish. Then, you have to deal with wind pushing against you, and then the stage ends with a Pick A Door room? My god, it feels like the level design is just slowly deteriorating as I play it, what happened here? Was this game rushed?
- Stage 6 fares a little bit better, it's got a few fun current bits and a very memorable final setpiece which has you bursting out of the water into the clouds, but it also has just straight-up a giant maze in one of its rooms.
- Thankfully, the boss fights once again save me. The Kracko fight isn't quite as memorable as the one in Adventure, but it brings back the concept of having a Kracko Jr phase and a normal Kracko phase. The Kracko Jr phase is easily the more fun one though, with it hiding in the cloud you're fighting on and popping out to shoot at you from hiding.
Dark Castle
- And here we are, the final world. Dark Castle is once again incredible in terms of its atmosphere, especially in one of the colored versions. The primary usage of purple is very striking, and its melancholy theme is one of my favorite pieces of Kirby music period. The level design, however, is a different story.
- Stage 1 actually starts strong with an atmospheric exterior section that has you running across collapsing bridges, but then it's followed by a pretty massive difficulty spike in an autoscrolling section that has you frantically hopping through semi-solids to avoid getting crushed and dealing with enemies that divebomb you from off-screen. This world is going to have several of these, and they all suck.
- Most of these levels are pretty short too, usually containing two rooms and a miniboss at the end. Stage 2 brings back the falling icicles and can be decently fun, but it just ends way too soon. Stage 3 is just plain annoying, with its first room being flooded with Kabus that show up out of nowhere, and its second room being a tedious labyrinthe autoscroller with dead ends and irritating Propeller Bombs aplenty.
- But then, you get the worst and laziest bit of level design in the entire game. Stages 4-6 are all flipped versions of Stages 1-3. That's right, the entire second half of this world is repeated content!
- Stage 6 is easily the worst one in the game. It starts out by flooding you with 1ups and Point Stars, removing all the Kabus that annoyed you in Stage 3, lulling you into a false sense of security. But then, you have to go through that autoscrolling maze backwards, and you'd better hoped you memorized the layout because this time, there's no escape if you went down the wrong path. The dead ends are now off-screen, and can easily kill you if you slip up. Absolutely horrid design, there's a reason that most of Dream Land 2's critics cite this level as an example of how bad this game's level design can get.
- Stage 7 is the Rainbow Drop stage and it's once again really bad. You have to climb up a series of identical rooms, each with five doors, two of which are behind ability blocks. You're able to get pretty much every copy ability in each room, but you won't know which abilities you'll need until you pass a one-way platform and see the ability blocks. And then, you don't even know which door will take you to the Rainbow Drop. You can see the order of operations by using Kine+Spark earlier on in the stage, but it's such a slog and requires a ton of backtracking.
- So, what even happened here? Why did the level design take such a massive plummet in the last two worlds? I have two theories. One possibility is that the developers were rushed in some way, it happens. The other possibility is that 38 levels was too much for the Game Boy to handle. Red Canyon already kinda stopped introducing new mechanics, and Dark Castle had to duplicate half of its levels. Dream Land 2 was generally pretty solid when most of the worlds had 3-4 stages, it wasn't until the stage count really started to inflate when the quality started to dip. I guess we'll never know, though.
Dark Matter
- As usual, the finale starts with a fight against King Dedede, and this is a pretty interesting one too. This is the first time Dedede gets possessed by a greater antagonist, a long-lasting tradition for the Kirby series, but this take on it is quite unique. Dedede starts the fight asleep and does most of his usual moves from the previous games, but every once in a while, he'll enter a sort of rage state and all of his moves will be faster, hit harder, and leave larger blast radiuses for you to dodge, making for a really tense encounter.
- The final boss fight against Dark Matter has you fly around in the sky slashing away at them with your sword, while also trying to position yourself to hit its projectiles back at them for even more damage. With two phases, the second of which being a timed fight in freefall, along with a wide variety of attacks for each phase, this fight is a genuinely climactic challenge especially when coupled to the aforementioned King Dedede fight. It's easily the best Kirby final boss we've gotten so far, and honestly I wish the Nightmare finale in Adventure was more like it. So at the very least, Kirby's Dream Land 2 does end on an incredibly strong note.
Side Content Galore
- Kirby's Dream Land 2 once again adds a decent amount of unlockable side modes that you get for 100%ing the game. There's no hard mode this time (though maybe that's for the best, DL2 is hard enough), but you do unlock a Sound Test, a Boss Rush, and a mode that lets you play all the Bonus Chance minigames back-to-back in an attempt to get perfect on all of them. Once again, you love to see Kirby games cram themselves with content even when it wasn't cool to yet.
- Though, one thing I want to shout out is the exceptionally elegant menu UI. Adventure's UI was incredibly basic, just a solid menu box with a list of options. In DL2, you have a more traditional file select and most of the modes are accessed from your file box, which seamlessly moves from menu to menu. Both Dream Land 3 and 64 would also use a UI similar to this, and it feels incredibly slick, intuitive to navigate, and personable.
- In general, I think Kirby games tend to have outstanding UI design, consistently some of the most well-executed in all of gaming. They perfectly toe the line between being well-structured and having a strong sense of hierarchy, while also being visually-interesting and not falling into boring minimalism. Expect me to rave about Kirby UI a lot in the later entries, but just know that chronologically, Dream Land 2 is the first entry in the series to really impress me on this front.
Conclusion
Kirby's Dream Land 2 is a good game, and I hope I got that across. It plays well, it has a strong central mechanic that introduces experimentation and variety to each playthrough, it has the occassional really fun level, some incredible boss fights, fantastic music and visuals, and a solid dose of side content. There is a lot here to love, but the thing that Dream Land 2 has that the other games really don't are design flaws this glaring. The awful Rainbow Drop placements, the Animal Friend music overriding the stage music, the Bonus Chances locking you out if you fail, grinding for the Girl Blob, and the level design dropping off so hard in its final third. These are all small frustrations on their own, but they add up and make for a Kirby game that I just can't bring myself to replay as much as Dream Land 1, Adventure, either of the other Dark Matter games, or frankly any other mainline entry in the series.
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