![]() With all four buddies joined together, the action takes on an entirely new dimension. When teamed, all of Kirby’s allies will follow him around on-screen. Some of the enemies even sport radically different looks once they’ve been turned, adding some new variants into the mix for some of these classic characters depending on which player slot they’re in, an ally will also have a corresponding color scheme! It’s adorable watching all of these random Kirby villains suddenly becoming good (although, let’s be honest here, hardly anyone is truly bad in a Kirby game). Once one of these hearts makes contact, the foe it touches instantly turns to the side of the angels. Waddle Doo, Broom Hatter, Sir Kibble, and a bunch of other baddies are capable of being turned to the good side via Kirby’s Friend Hearts. I was amazed at the volume of different partners that could be culled from the game. The game allows for a maximum of three allies at a time on-screen. With a simple tap of the “X” button, Kirby can hurl a pink heart at a foe and make them part of his party. This mechanic is at the core of Star Allies, as the game is dependent on Kirby befriending his rogues and utilizing their unique skills and powers to save the day. A different, pink heart lands on the nominal hero of the game, granting him the ability to instantly make his enemies friends via lobbing Friend Hearts at them. Star Allies starts off establishing that a new threat has overcome Planet Popstar in the form of menacing purple hearts shown darting across the landscape. The title takes the maxim of accessibility and fun and merges it with some of the best presentation values the series has ever seen, along with a nice twist on the classic gameplay formula. Now, all these years later, we find ourselves playing the latest installment, Kirby Star Allies. Kirby’s Dream Land, the series’ first entry, was masterminded by Masahiro Sakurai as as an entry point for players still wet behind the ears and also for those who simply wanted a less stressful game to play. ![]() The series since its inception has never been about challenge, but rather providing an accessible and enjoyable experience. Adventure on the NES, and Super Star and Dream Land 3 on the SNES.Kirby games are tricky for some people because they go in with the wrong set of expectations. (As a side note, Nintendo Online also features three older Kirby games, if you decide to travel back in time. It may not be everyone's thing, with the multiplayer/ai friends aspect, which is fine. If this sounds fun to you, definitely go for it. There's a whole new mode that features some extremely clever puzzle design and almost feels like a whole game on its own, along with other more expected post game stuff like arenas. There's also a hefty amount of post game content, some it far more challenging than the main game, if that's your thing. But the characters are neat and made me want to go play the other games too, to get to know them better. Before playing this one, I'd only played a handful of other Kirby games and only had experience with a similarly small amount of Dream Friends. If you've only played Robobot, you may not recognize most of them, but imo that's ok. This means there is a LOT of references to prior games, be it boss fights with some of the series staples or the entire Dream Friends mechanic, which features a character from every single mainline game up to this point. Star Allies is also a celebration of the series as a whole, coming out the same year as Kirby's 25th anniversary. Star Allies is focused on multiplayer (with surprisingly good ai helpers if you're playing solo) with levels designed around having multiple people on screen, and is intentionally designed to be easier than the prior few games in the main story. ![]() Robobot is a single player adventure, with more complex platforming/puzzles. The game takes a bit of a different approach than Robobot did.
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