And the gameplay... it takes the 3d/2d blending aspect of VB Wario Land and Super Paper Mario, and improves on it... this is just the PERFECT kirby game for the system it's on.
Intro: Kirby's home ends up in a giant beanstalk... Dedede's castle is also on it, and some bad guy comes and kidnaps Dedede...
Lv1 Fine Fields... extremely easy, almost impossible to die. missed like one sun star. the boss was a whispy wood iteration with stars for leaves... it hops into the background and attacks you with its vines... maybe would've been harder without a powerup. beetle power is the best btw.
Lv2 Lollipop Land... okay now this is getting really good. there was a circus maze stage where I only found one sun star on the first playthrough... the boss was a female painter, she was actually kinda hard once I lost my powerup. just barely won on first try.
Next is Lv3 Old Odyssey
I'm definitely gonna be doing 100% of the story mode during peak high sessions.
12/18/2014
That was... amazing... used the bulk of today's high session to finish the last 3.5 worlds of the story mode. This game has every bit the same amount of style and charm as the old kirby games had when they first came out... the controls are really tight and the abilities give the game tons of variety/replay value.
My fav world was probably world 6... despite the fact that it's mostly boss refights (and all the bosses in this game are super fun anyway), it also has the best level which is 100% hypernova gameplay, and a cute 2nd-last level where you save all the fairies who are the ones who planted the giant beanstalk... in order to get the hero of dream land to save their sky land. the villain mistook Dedede for the hero of dreamland and captured him instead of kirby.
The last boss had more phases than I anticipated... it ended with an epic hypernova battle where Kirby just ends up sucking up the last boss whole.
1/01/2015
Got high and started gathering up all the missing sun stones, then played through all the Extra levels...
The last few ex levels are actually legit hard to get all the secret stuff on... even beating them can take a few lives at first...
Ended the session by replaying that hypernova miniboss rematch level... that level kicks ass.
11/02/2015
so far I've beaten Kirby fighters on hard with sword and cutter. I can definitely beat the whole thing on hard eventually.
Then I tried Dedede Drum Dash again for the first time since I first played the game... It's actually really fun, but requires a TON of concentration and precise timing. Getting the gold medals mostly just involves collecting every coin and not getting hit. There's also a bonus for not missing any backbeats that I never managed to get, but was able to get gold without that anyway.
Actually, looking at the guide on gamefaqs, there's also platinum medals that are very hard and most likely DO require getting perfect backbeats ontop of perfect everything else. The FAQ even says the platinum medal on the extra stage is just too insane and you should just give up on it.
I did get gold on drum dash level 4 a bit later after taking a break.
12/03/2015
Finally managed to beat Kirby Fighters on hard with every power. Ninja was definitely the hardest to use. Others like the whip and parasol I got used to and managed to figure out a good strategy, but with Ninja I just had to mainly rely on getting lucky with items.
1/04/2016
Dedede Tour high session... that was alright... so far it doesn't seem changed up much aside from hidden portals that let you skip some big sections of levels... I guess because those sections require Kirby's copy powers? I'm still doing some exploring and getting tons of new keychains... I'm just not going for full exploration and still making an honest attempt at a good time.
It actually gets a bit tough, especially the bosses near the end. The last world took me nearly an hour to beat, while all the other worlds only took around 20 minutes...
overall time: 2:16:06
20.5 hours logged on this game so far.
5/19/2017
Tried the arena mode for the first time ever... almost beat it, got KO'd on the 2nd last match, against Sectonia.
5/22/2017
I figured out that Hammer is OP against bosses. It takes most of them out before they can even go through all of the attacks in their cycle.
Now I'm on True Arena, where all the bosses are much faster and there are less health pickups... and I can do everything nearly flawlessly up until the last 3 fights. Dark Dedede, Dark Metaknight, and Soul of Sectonia kick my ass. I can get up to the final fight but I haven't gotten enough practice on Soul of Sectonia yet to get very far on her...
Now I'm resorting to youtube... I see someone get through it with the beetle power. It seems very useful, especially its dash attack that can avoid a lot of Metaknight's attacks and get behind him... but it's also much weaker than the hammer, and Soul of Sectonia's 2nd form with the beetle looks very challenging, having to whittle it down very slowly...
I see a commenter say that stone form makes the True Arena very easy, but it also takes a while... not quite sure if that'd really be easy or not though.
Then I saw someone do a no damage run with the hammer.. wow this makes me want to keep trying using it.
hell yeah! after watching that no damage run, I was able to beat it on the next try. I still did terribly against dark metaknight, but I used the maximum tomato after that to have full health for the Soul of Sectonia fight... I kept the hammer through the entire first phase which made that phase much easier, and then the 2nd phase once you realize it's best to just take it safe and only use vanilla kirby, it's pretty easy. although I did come close to dying because of that part where she spawns a bunch of tough enemies.
beat True Arena in 19:04
Then I tried the normal Arena again and beat it in under 9 minutes...
lol I'm still missing a lot of keychains... I'm never gonna 100% this game unless I just casually replay through the story mode again every once in a while.