Back in the day, I´ve got to play Kirby’s Return to DreamLand through the Nintendo Wii, I absolutely loved it, it was my first time getting into Kirby for real and my reason to keep playing Kirby games. When I saw a remastered version was coming to the Nintendo Switch I´ve gotta admit I felt happy for it because, again, I have no other way to play this game, plus they are adding new features so why not huh.
My impression while playing this game is that they actually did a good remaster and not just a cash-grab, while playing I saw a huge improvement from the Wii version, I feel like there are more environment effects through the stages, I might be wrong but either way everything feels upgraded graphically speaking, the textures are way more detailed than before and that goes to both shadows and lighting as well. What I´m trying to say is that you can see there is some love behind this remastered version, they didn´t just upgraded the resolution to 1080p as you could do in a Dolphin emulator, there is more work behind it.
I doubt someone doesn´t know about Kirby but in case you don´t know, Kirby absorbs its enemies, getting powers and skills like using a sword, or using fire skills, etc, all you have to do is absorbing your enemy, this is what you are going to do through the whole game, it´s a platformer game, so it implies that you´ll need many skills or powers in order to progress through the stages. However, the interesting about this game are the special powers or skills, there are special enemies which you can absorb and then make you powerful, for example, your sword can get bigger than normal.
Kirby’s Return to DreamLand Deluxe is a really simple game and I´m not saying that as a negative thing, I mean, it´s a game for children so I´m not expecting it to be that hard or something but it is what it is, it really is an easy game, there are no secret routes through the stage or something, it´s just a straight way everytime, it´s not hard to get power ups and it´s hard to even find an enemy that will make things complicated, I don´t consider it a bad thing per se, but it´s true there are no incentives, I mean, Kirby is so powerful and some power ups are that powerful that you can complete one level by just spamming one button, it doesn´t happen anytime but I think you see the point.
In this deluxe remastered, there is an extra mode where the difficulty of the game is increased by lowering your HP, I don´t know if this mode was on the Wii version as well because I don´t remember but I think it´s good to game modes like that to exist, I will play it that way if I play the game with some friend, I already completed the game by myself and it would be boring to complete it again but with less HP, but I appreciate the effort.
I expected nothing from the epilogue and it´s easily one of the things I loved the most from this remastered, in case you don´t know, the epilogue is exclusive for the Nintendo Switch and it was great, I mean it, it was pretty cool, we´ll play as Magolor in new four stages, our goal will be making us powerful again, because we lost all of our power.
It´s an interesting change, because as I said before, Kirby is already too powerful, but Magolor can barely jump and throw a magic ball that doesn´t do many damage, so we must be careful from our sorroundings, we´ll begin from a literally who to a character who is maybe too broken, the level design from the epiloque is actually pretty cool as well, even as good or better than the base game.
There is another new mode that is an amusement park, it´s exclusive as well and I´ll be honest I didn´t find the amusement park to be really interesting but the thing that catched my attention is that there are many minigames that you are allowed to play, I think these are exclusive content as well, I´m not sure, but I don´t remember minigames from the Wii version, respecting the minigames, I found them to be pretty good, there is this one minigame where you are like a ninja and the person who press A first wins the game, I don´t know, it´s pretty funny, not gonna lie, it´s a cool feature.
Finally, there is not much to say, I think Kirby’s Return to DreamLand Deluxe is a cool remaster, it´s not just a cash-grab as I said before, there is some love behind it, seems to me that Nintendo is actually doing a good job with ports or remasters, they did a splendid job with Metroid Prime Remasted which I loved it, then there is this Kirby’s Return to DreamLand Deluxe which is pretty cool too, I hope they keep making good remasters like these and we all can forget about the Super Mario 3D All Stars indicent. There is always the question about these ports or remasters, whenever it should be 60$ or not and I think this game should not be 60$ but there is more than meets the eye regarding to this game and I think it has a lot of content if you actually collect everything and play all of the modes that the game offers you.
All of the screenshots were taken by me