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When I jumped back into Kirby and the Forgotten Land, I was shocked to discover something. I’d only finished the first world. For reasons unknown, I never made the effort to finish it. Despite what I remember about my experience with the base game, I’m kind of happy that I didn’t. For one, this Forgotten Land is an excellent upgrade on the Nintendo Switch 2. But where the Zelda games only enjoyed a visual upgrade, Forgotten Land benefits from new content entirely – a batch of levels called Star-Crossed Worlds. How much of that content is new is the only sticking point I have with this package, but overall, it’s been fun to experience Kirby and the Forgotten Land in the best form it can be.
Ironically, being a mouthful in and of itself, Kirby and the Forgotten Land – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition is easily the best way to play Forgotten Land. With this upgrade, you’re getting a hearty resolution bump and, more importantly, a jump to sixty frames per second. Such an increase in the game’s fidelity helps everything pop, especially given how colourful Forgotten Land already is. Even some effects appear to be more prominent, such as water glistening on Kirby’s skin after a cute little swim, but overall, a lot of the benefits from this upgrade come from the improved framerate. Of course, the crux of the upgrade can be appreciated most when playing the Star-Crossed World levels, which feel like something you wouldn’t have been able to pull off on the original Switch.
Star-Crossed World is easily the cornerstone of this upgrade. It’s an expansion that adds around twelve new levels to the game, amongst other things. To begin, the improvements that this upgrade brings integrate seamlessly with the main game. There’s no weird division of content here like Nintendo’s upgrade for Super Mario Party Jamboree. You can start working through Star-Crossed World levels as soon as you finish the first world of the main game, with new levels unlocking after you defeat the boss in the main game. So if you haven’t finished Forgotten Land and want to play all of the new Star-Crossed World content, you’ll have to work your way through it first.
In the expansion, a massive meteor covered in blue crystals falls out of the sky. As it falls, crystals snap off and fall all around the world map of Forgotten Land. Upon investigating an island created by the meteor, Kirby and Elfilin are tasked with saving Starries, which are like cosmic Waddle Dees. They set off on a journey to save the Starries and perhaps even confront a sinister new threat. It’s a simple premise, admittedly, but it has all of the bizarre cosmic horror undertones that we’ve come to expect from the deeper cuts of the Kirby lore.
The Star-Crossed World levels open up on already existing levels of the Forgotten Land game. Each of the new levels takes existing ones and remixes them in some way; the sparkly, iridescent blue corruption of the meteor works its magic to warp the level significantly. As an example, one level in the original game had you navigating paths around a building. In the Star-Crossed World version, new paths are drawn by the blue crystal power to take you up and through the building. Another, more visually impressive one, in which you swim across water to get to your destination, splits the water entirely and instead has you running across the seabed. It’s a clever way to put twists on old levels, though I understand if some might be disappointed to hear that this means there’s barely any new biomes or bosses included.
Although that is dependent on what your definition of new is. A large majority of the enemies you encounter in Star-Crossed World are enemies that appeared in the base game, only now with crystals added to them. They are often harder as a result, but overall, it does feel less interesting. The only new enemies that do turn up use the blue crystal power to attack in interesting ways, but not nearly enough. This is not a huge deal, as the new level designs are interesting enough for me to recommend still you give Star-Crossed World a try. But it does mean that Star-Crossed World feels like more of Forgotten Land than anything else, which is by no means bad, but it’s not nearly as experimental an expansion as it could’ve been.
There are some new mouthful abilities, however, and they are some fun twists on the Kirby platforming you’ve already come to know from the base game. The Cog Kirby, also known as Gear Mouth, is one of my favourites. It allows Kirby to dig the edges of a cog into a wall to scale it in ways you previously couldn’t. The combination of haptics from the Joy-Con and sound makes this one of the more satisfying mouthfuls to use. But then, on the other side of this, there aren’t any new copy abilities introduced or even new evolutions of already existing ones, which, again, feels like a missed opportunity.
Beyond the twelve new levels, which feature their own currency and Starries to collect in place of Waddle Dees, there’s also a whole slew of collectibles to gather as well. Appearing as a new set of Gacha in the Waddle Dee Town, these are all essentially figures to unlock that show off the new crystal-corrupted forms of the enemies you’ll encounter in Star-Crossed World. There are also new battles to undertake in the Colosseum. Beyond that, this is still fairly typical Kirby fare – it’s a more breezy experience that you won’t find challenging (beside the epic final boss) but will still find charming.
All in all, Kirby and the Forgotten Land finds some great new life on the Nintendo Switch 2. The visual improvements are noticeable, and the doubling of the original game’s framerate is well appreciated. Star-Crossed World, included here as an expansion, is a great addition that integrates well with the main game, featuring a whole bunch of remixed levels to explore. However, it doesn’t introduce anything too dramatically different from the formula already established in Forgotten Land. Regardless, this is the best way to play Kirby and the Forgotten Land, which is more than I can say for some remasters and updates.