Kirby's Dream Land 2

For the most part, it's a solid expansion of the original Kirby's Dream Land, incorporating the copy ability from Kirby's Adventure that would go on to define the series. Unfortunately, the boss battles tend to drag on for far too long, and the game turns into a hopelessly frustrating and tedious endeavor if you try to collect the rainbow drops to get to the true final boss. Doing so is not recommended at all, but if you just focus on getting to the end of each level, it's an alright little Kirby platformer.

This is a bad game. I used to like it when I was a kid; I remember begging my grandmother to buy it for me. I remember thinking the new animal buddies were cool, and it was the first Kirby game I played that had the copy ability so that was neat at the time. Ultimately, I wish I had not revisited this game, as it doesn't hold up at all. Out of curiosity, I looked it up and found out Masahiro Sakurai, the man behind Kirby and Super Smash Bros, had no involvement with this game or Dream Land 3. That doesn't surprise me. I always suspected the Kirby games involving Dark Matter and animal buddies were designed by a different team than the rest, and it's true after all.

Dream Land 2 has a few major problems that really stick out to an aged gamer. The first is enemy spawning: scroll an enemy off the screen, and it respawns immediately after that part of the screen becomes visible again. This is unbelievably frustrating in the various water maze puzzles in this game, and punishes you for backtracking to get things you missed. Another issue I have with the game is that the buddies and copy abilities Kirby uses are so much worse than his generic swallow and spit attacks. The attacks barely do any damage to bosses, making them take forever to beat. Even worse, a lot of the abilities will put you in precarious positions when used on bosses anyway. For instance, if you want to whack one with the parasol, it will take no hit-stun and just walk right in to you, rendering whatever advantage having the skill would give moot. Very few attacks in the game have movesets that are advantageous in the context of Kirby's movement and enemy positions.

The animal buddies are a bigger problem. First, there's Rick the hamster. Using him is inferior to just using Kirby, as you lose the ability to fly and have a bigger hitbox. None of the attacks he can use make up for this. Coo the owl is actually pretty awesome (and has an amazing theme song; actually, all the music in this game is great) but the game doesn't want you to use him! No! In almost every stage, you'll be forced to use Kine the fish, who is absolutely terrible out of water but is required in order to collect the rainbow drops you need to finish the game in about half of the game's levels. It's almost like a cruel joke by the developers. They give you all these potentially neat abilities, then make you use only the worst ones to get anywhere.

The final boss is terrible too, and he's the icing on the crap cake. To fight Dark Matter, you have to use the new Rainbow sword ability. Kirby also gets to move freely in all directions... very slowly. This makes it nearly impossible to avoid Dark Matter's screen-splitting attacks, and since the sword doesn't actually hurt the boss, you have to reflect his attacks with it. The physics of this are poorly conceived to say the least, so I would not be surprised if many players didn't bother to beat the boss. I know I save-scummed through it on this playthrough.

I wanted to say some nice things about this game, but apart from the soundtrack (Ando is a genius composer, seriously) there's not much to recommend. This game is worse than Kirby Super Star in every way, and there's nothing that would encourage a replay. The level design is poor, the bosses are done better in other Kirby games, and the physics feel stiff and antiquated. Look elsewhere for your Kirby fix.