Over the course of the past two years, I covered five games available in Kirby's Dream Collection: I started off in May 2015 with Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards, because I had it on the Wii’s Virtual Console. Then, later in 2015 I started placing Kirby reviews at the beginning of my review order. In November I reviewed Kirby’s Dream Land. Then, come 2016, I went through Kirby’s Adventure, Kirby’s Dream Land 2 and Kirby Super Star. (On the side I also reviewed Kirby’s Epic Yarn in 2014, but nobody cares). It got progressively more difficult as I was going through these games, because there’s only so many jokes I can make about Kirby’s copy abilities before I run out.
Are you ready? In the next three weeks, I’ll cover
everything I’ve still got to cover about Kirby’s Dream Collection. That
includes Kirby’s Dream Land 3, the three episodes of the Kirby anime that can
be found in the Gallery, and a final post about the collector’s item as a
whole.
Kirby’s Dream Land 3 is the second game in the Dark
Matter Trilogy, and I can already spoil that because I reviewed the final
installment where Kirby, helped by both old and new friends, defeats Dark
Matter once and for all after it revealed itself to be a white, angelic demon with a bleeding eye, a halo, wings and large spiky vines coming out of its ass.
It’s the Kirby series, it’s hardly big news; Hell, the other day, some little
jester decided to wish for ultimate power and nobody batted an eye… You get
used to the world being constantly in danger. “I just saved the world for the
274th time, can I have a 24-hour break before I have to save it for
the 275th?”
Thankfully, Kirby is always excited like a child to go
and save the world again. Blissfully unaware that this new adventure could be
his last, never conscious of all the risks he’s taking. This isn’t a Kirby game
without dangers and monsters of near-godly power. This also wouldn’t be a Kirby
game without some unique style to it, and as a result K’sDL3 has an art style
reminiscent of colored pencil sketches. It might be interesting to point out
that this was the last game released in America for the Super Nintendo console,
in 1998, and that it uses a unique rendering procedure known as “pseudo
high-resolution”, which gave the game a wider palette of colors to work with,
creating tones and ameliorating the “hand-drawn sketch” feel.
Left to right: Coo, Pitch, Chuchu. Rick (with Kirby on him), Gooey, Nago and Kine. |
Why, thank you, miss Tulip! (In a later mission, a mushroom asks you to crush all the flowers.) |
Okay, enough about the game’s functions, how about we
get into the plot itself? The intro is simple. A large mass of darkness
with a single eye blast across space and soon finds Planet Popstar. Kirby and Gooey are enjoying a nice day fishing when the entity descends
and spreads its tentacles across the world, taking control of key characters
like King Dedede or, *pfffft* Whispy Woods – okay, sorry, there is no way that
tree can be a notable force that an evil demon would take control of. Anyway,
with Popstar in danger once again, Kirby sets out to free the world of this
shadowy creature’s influence for good, this time helped by seven helpers.
"We have to stop this monster! What do you say, Gooey?" "I like fish! Herp dee derp!" "That's the spirit! Let's go, pal!" |
That’s all we need, right?
We all know that behind every Kirby game, there's a Grass Land as your first challenge. A proof that you can face whatever's coming next. Either that or it's just a place for beginners. |
Same old, same old. Why would it change? It's just Whispy. |
And of course, once again. it’s a ridiculously easy fight. It
summons apples, we inhale them and throw them back. And before you know it, since
this guy sucks so much, we’re halfway through the fight, and on the way to
definitive succe-wait. …WHAT? Whispy has uprooted itself and is chasing Kirby? THE TREE IS RUNNING AFTER ME! AAAAAAH! It’s gotten harder to grab apples
and throw them! And the tree might just crush our pink pal! Why did I
make fun of you all these years, Whispy? Whyyyy? Is it my comeuppance?? …Oh
hey, look, it still goes down with a few more hits. Guess I panicked for no
reason. Congrats to HAL Laboratories, though, to throw this curveball at us. I
never saw it coming.
...Did I panic? ………………..Nooooooooooooooooooo…. I was
merely… surprised, that’s all! Totally not panic. Just surprise. I swear.
When Whispy is defeated, if you collected all six Heart Stars in Grass Land, patches of black
seem to rise out of the world around, which is now freed from the influence of Dark
Matter.
This guy wants a Kine+Parasol show. Gotta beat the level with that... |
At the end of Ripple Field awaits Acro, an orca that
really acts opposite to all orcas. Its behavior is all backwards. It starts the
attack on land, but then takes it to sea, and your best chance there is to toss
back at it what it throws at you.
Whoa, was the last Waddle Dee I ate high on LSD? I feel like I could just trip all day. So purdy backgrounds... |
The boss is a duo: Pon and Con, a tanuki and a fox who
team up and bring around their offspring to hit Kirby. Aw please, don’t drag
kids into this! Kirby will inhale them and hurt you with them! They also throw
bombs on the battlefield! And those can also kill the kids! This is a
slaughter! Tactical suicide! Either way, Pon and Con are defeated, and the
influence of Dark Matter is repelled from this part of the world.
The game never explicitly states that Rick can do that; It's implied early on since it's shown Rick can jump when staying right next to a ledge, but it's not clear enough. |
The boss at the end of this one, it’s a sky world,
it’s gotta be Kracko. I mean, why wouldn’t it be? Fucking Kracko… Always the
most infuriating boss, even worse than the final bosses! And it turns out to
be…. Ado? A painter girl? Well, color me surprised. That can’t be so hard, the
other painter girl, Adeleine in Kirby 64, was kinda easy. Ado starts off by
summoning Ice Dragon. Okay, a boss, but not all that tough. Then, Sweet Stuff
is summoned. That’s a bit harder, I admit, but still, not a big threat. Then she
summons Mr. Bright and Mr. Shine…. Oh boy, now this starts getting pretty
difficult. Because those two still work as a team even if they’re using a
simpler pattern than usual, and so it can be hard to avoid them at all times,
not to mention one goes crazy when the other is down. Then, Ado summons…
Kracko. OH, FUCK ME. As if Kracko as a boss wasn’t already fucking hard enough,
they put him at the end of a quartet of bosses, and make him as hard as he
normally is. Holy Christ, HAL Laboratories, this is insanity. Ado has got to be
the hardest boss in the whole game, and if you don’t have a Copy ability, she’s
nearly impossible to beat. Though, if you defeat Kracko, she attacks by herself
and has only one hit point, so there’s that. She can still kill you, though.
FINALLY, we win and we can free Cloudy Park from Dark Matter. Christ.
Well then, that’s about
everything I could cover for Part 1, how about I continue this in Part 2 this
Monday?
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