Kirby 3DS

[Jermungandr]

With all these great features, this new Kirby game is shaping up to be one of the best games in the series.

I don't know if I would go that far. I didn't dislike Returns, but I am not fond of the direction that the Kirby franchise is heading.

See, the big problem with Returns, which looks to be an issue in the new title as well, is that even though the game's design respects all the classic elements of Kirby, the abilities in the game are way OP.

Yes it's true that fans of the franchise have been craving another game with the dynamic moveset abilities presented in Super Star, and this game was created with the express desire to fill that request. However the issue is that they went way too far with it and gave each ability far to many skills.

Just about every ability in the game has a strong attack, a rapid attack, a projectile attack, and an attack that offers super armor. In short, pretty much every ability can do everything with no flaws to compensate.

Now for a guy like me who is a Kirby enthusiast, I like to play through each game utilizing only a single specific ability at least once for each ability; especially the ones that are harder to use because it's more of a challenge. But in Returns I haven't been inspired so much to do so, because since every ability can do pretty much everything, no special tactics are presented for any of the abilities to compensate for what they lack. All the challenge that usually comes from dedicating yourself to a single specific ability has disappeared.

To make things worse, unlike in Super Star where each enemy had a hidden health bar, the majority of the common enemies in Returns will go down in a single hit from any attack. And there aren't many places where you're swarmed by enemies either. This also reduces the challenge of dedicating yourself to a specific ability, as every attack is effective against every enemy.

Honestly, Squeak Squad's movesets were kind of clunky, but I feel like they did a better job of handling the Super Star style gameplay than the more recent games do, if only because they didn't go overboard.

And the fact that they are continuing this trend even in the portable games ... yeah, I feel like the series I fell in love with is basically gone. We're never going to see another game in the truly classic style again ... and that is why I wasn't as excited as I usually am when this game was first announced.