I have spent the last day without internet access doing almost nothing but two things: watching House and playing Kirby and the Amazing Mirror. I picked this game up again because I thought I could finish it in a relatively short period of time. I enjoy the series and thought it would help to take a slight chunk out of my backlog. I finished the game and enjoyed it, but man, did it take me a lot longer than I expected.
Most Kirby titles are pretty linear. One notable exception I can think of is The Great Cave Offensive subgame from Kirby Superstar, one of my favorite titles from the series. Instead of a linear stage progressions, The Great Cave Offensive tasks you with combing a massive maze for treasures until you have found them all. Kirby and the Amazing Mirror borrows this concept and makes an entire game out of it consisting of 9 expansive levels filled with puzzles, alternate passageways, and bosses, some of which show up entirely too often. I can't count how many times I came across Batafire, a fiery bat boss while backtracking to figure out where to go. It was at least seven times too many.
I have traditionally enjoyed Kirby due to its simplistic and fun gameplay, excellent music, and colorful graphics. Kirby and the Amazing Mirror has this in spades, but its exploration mechanics bring to mind nothing else more than Super Metroid, a game that I respect but don't necessarily enjoy. I think I've made it clear over the course of this writing exercise that I'm definitely more fond of RPGs than any other genre. I like platformers but they rarely hold my interest. I think I could change this state of mind if I just showed some willpower. I think if I hadn't lacked internet access over the past 24 hours I probably would have given up on this game--but I didn't. I kept backtracking and backtracking and examining my map until I figured out what obscure passageway would open up new content.
Of course, before you find maps locked away in hidden chests, you're pretty much going in blind. You are required to consistently explore every inch of the levels that you encounter to make sure you haven't missed any hidden doors or chests that might lead to a new boss or a new level. Although the levels are number from 1 to 9, there is no logical order to these levels. The first level of the game is Rainbow Route, but it has many passages to both Area 3 and Area 4. It would be difficult to complete these levels in numerical order, if not impossible. While I praise the game's non-linearity, I have to say it does make the game more frustrating for me personally. Objectively, it probably gives the game more depth--but it's certainly not what I'm used to.
The game was also significantly more difficult than I was expecting. While I breezed through the first several areas, I suddenly found myself dying repeatedly against certain bosses, whose fast moving patterns I couldn't quite get the hang of. The final boss in particular proved to be quite the challenge, because you have to fight Dark Meta-Knight and then three different forms of the Big Bad right after that. Even with a hefty buffer of extra lives under my belt, I found myself getting stricken down over and over. It makes me wonder if my platforming muscles are atrophying. A few years ago, I played through each of the classic Mega Man titles--most of which are much harder than this game. Since then, however, I've played very few games in the action/platforming genre. Maybe I should consider this a crash course.
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