Kirby Star Allies – Friends in Strange Places

I don’t invest a lot time reviewing any of the Nintendo games I play so maybe I should do that more often. The problem is that it’s harder for me to retrieve captured footage on my Switch than it is with any of my PC games!

The last game I beat on my Switch is Kirby Star Allies, and with any Kirby game, there’s always something to love as it will often have Easter Eggs or other ways that serve as an ode to previous games.

There are a lot of similarities to this game compared to Triple Deluxe, as the graphics have not changed much, and I’m seeing things happening between the background and the foreground. The biggest change in terms of gameplay is Kirby can throw hearts at enemies and turn them into allies and have up to three of them at his side.

You can even go to a place where you can select allies of your own and some of them are even classic characters like King Dedede, Meta Knight, and even Taranza from Triple Deluxe. I also saw that I could combine different copy abilities with any of my allies to make something more powerful, like say Kirby had the sword ability and I had a Burning Leo with me, I could mix that up to create the Sizzle Sword for instance.

Another cool feature is reaching a point in a level where a certain amount of allies are required to proceed to another area or create a friend combination like a circle, bridge or star. My least favourite one was the friend bridge which was often used to guide that Key Dee to the door because that part is easy to screw up. I also didn’t like those enemies in Triple Deluxe, if I didn’t catch that time I would lose the key and would have to start the level over to try again.

Many Kirby games do not have much story to them, it only really unfolds in the beginning and toward the end. Sometimes there will be moments though, when I meet specific bosses linked toward the game’s main conflict.

But I was able to learn that there is an entity not far from Popstar that houses the Jamba Hearts that break into fragments and possess several of Kirby’s nemeses. Throughout the game I had to battle three generals from the Jambaston fortress before finally going into space to the station itself.

I almost want to say that Hyness is our main villain since he leads the three generals but in reality it’s like he used Kirby as a pawn to retrieve the Jamba Hearts so he can used to them to awaken Void Termina, who to me, seems like the Unicron of the Kirby universe.

The boss fight with Void Termina was pretty unique and fun compared to previous final boss fights in Kirby games that I have faced and defeated. Like any other final boss in a Kirby game, many of them have different forms before they are truly defeated. I was not expecting its true form to be the way it was though. It makes me ask, why would Hyness go through all that trouble when if the hearts were already there in the beginning? Why didn’t he just awaken Void Termina right away?

Anyway, it was still a fun game but I’ve played better when it comes to Kirby, it has some unique moments but the only memorable ones were toward the game’s end. Many of the stages in the game also didn’t stick with me as much. They were easily forgettable probably because there wasn’t much to them that I found unique. Like I remember in Triple Deluxe there was a stage in the second world that was like a circus with fun house mirrors where you could only see the enemies in the mirror for instance.

Ah well, it could have been better but it definitely wasn’t terrible.

👽Emily