At 96% complete I’m calling that done! The rest is just collecting those figurines.
This was a fantastic experience. The main game is light and breezy as mentioned above but be under no illusions: there’s some serious bite here if you go looking for it, in the various challenges but particularly the post-credits content which was an unexpected, initially daunting, but actually a really cool way of rounding the game out for folks like me who do enjoy some pushback.
I particularly like the structure and economy of The Forgotten Land. Bear with me here. In something like Mario Odyssey you’re collecting moons (and coins) and there are so many—many of which weren’t interesting to find, a bit like Breath of the Wild’s korok seeds—that I just mostly ignored them which kind of misses the point. Kirby has coins, the Waddle Dees, figurines and rare crystals. There aren’t many Waddle Dees to find per level, which straight away is more inviting to me, but levels aren’t super difficult or long either so re-running them to clear up isn’t a big ask either. Crucially though most of them are awarded for completing level specific objectives and they’re often subtly telegraphed so they’re not impossible to find on a first run if you’re playing carefully. I got a kick out of fully clearing levels first time. In turn Waddle Dees rebuild your town adding shops, cute mini-games and other services and I always enjoyed returning to see new areas opening up. Take that moons. Rare crystals, awarded for beating the numerous challenges across the world map, allow you to upgrade your abilities and each upgrade always made me grin, whether it was the visible power increase, the fancy effects or the theming of the upgrade (shout out to the pencil sharpener drill). The figurines are what you’d expect and I generally like these kinds of ‘art’ collectibles in games, even if I don’t go out of my way to collect them.
Now the coins. Light spoilers for the end game. By ‘the end’ I had some 20,000. The game wasn’t tough enough to dunk loads of them into boosters or health so I wondered why they were even a thing. Enter the ‘Ultimate Z Cup’ boss-rush in the colosseum where retrying costs 100 coins and each successive retry doubles the cost. Add in the ability to stack boosters from the shop, and the boss-rush being pretty bloody tough, and you’ve got a serious coin black hole if you’re struggling. I rinsed about 8000 trying to finesse certain segments! Once that’s all done though, anything left can be chucked into the ‘Gotcha’ machines to finish your figurine collection. That’s where I stopped.
All in all, this was just a joy. I think coming from Doom Eternal’s unrelenting difficulty, I needed something breezy like this, but I also wasn’t at all expecting The Forgotten Land to ramp up like it does. Basically all this:
There’s a lot more nuance to the abilities and certain mechanics than first meets the eye and the challenges really highlight this.
The story also goes some places. Whoa.
I’m so glad I didn’t look at these spoilers, as tempted as I was! Thanks for tagging them. That whole section had me confused then wide-eyed with gob agape.
Edit: also this theme and intro is great:
