Kirby Star Allies

Kirby Star Allies is a platform game developed by HAL Laboratory and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Switch. It was released worldwide on March 16, 2018.

Plot
On the planet Jambastion far away from Kirby's home planet, a dark crystal heart explodes due to a mysterious ritual, sending its numerous fragments, Jamba Hearts, hurling into deep space. Many characters, including King Dedede and Meta Knight, are possessed while investigating the hearts. A heart hits Kirby, but it gives him the ability to befriend enemies by throwing hearts instead of possessing him. Kirby notices many Waddle Dees bringing food to Castle Dedede and decides to investigate.

After Kirby defeats Meta Knight and King Dedede and frees them from the Jamba Heart's influence, a large fortress lands on Popstar. After defeating three generals of ice, fire, and electricity, Francisca, Flamberge, and Zan Partizanne, respectively, Kirby and his friends fly to Jambastion itself.

After defeating Francisca, Flamberge, and Zan again with other bosses, Kirby and his friends connect a path to Jambandra Base and breach its defensive barrier. They battle Zan once again before meeting Hyness, a robed figure who is planning to restore a mysterious dark force to full power using the Jamba Hearts. Defeating Hyness reveals his true face, a blue large-nosed figure with twitching eyes. He summons Francisca, Flamberge, and Zan and uses dark energy to strengthen them. After being defeated, the four enemies sacrifice themselves and subsequently revive Void Termina.

Kirby and his friends use a Friend Pedestal to transform the Friend Star into the Star Allies Sparkler. After overcoming Void Termina's body, also regurgitating Hyness, Francisca, Flamberge, and Zan in the process, it is revealed that its true form is a purple cluster with three dark eye-like spots that resembles Kirby's face. During the battle, this blob morphs into different shapes that reference previous bosses from earlier games, such as Dark Matter from Kirby's Dream Land 3 and Zero-Two from Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards. The Sparkler is destroyed by asteroids, but Kirby uses a Warp Star to return himself and his friends safely home.

Why It's a Star Ally

 * 1) Kirby can "become friends" with enemies by throwing Friend Hearts at them, turning them into allies, and allowing other players to control them. In single-player, allies are controlled by an AI, and the AI is thankfully a lot better than in Kirby Super Star. In co-op, the allies are played by human players.
 * 2) Solid controls that allow the game to be played by all, being simple enough to learn easily but have enough complexity for more serious gamers.
 * 3) Many new copy abilities that make the game a lot more fun to play than the previous titles, such as Staff and Spider.
 * 4) In addition to allies, lots of characters from the previous Kirby games are playable, such as Knuckle Joe and Chef Kawasaki.
 * 5) Allies can be used in creative ways to explore levels.
 * 6) Great local co-op gameplay.
 * 7) Beautiful and colorful graphics with gorgeous visuals and lots of charm as expected from Kirby games.
 * 8) Impressing boss battles. Even Pon and Con return in this game as bosses after a large absence after Kirby's Dream Land 3, and come back in the fourth world as Goldon and Silvox.
 * 9) Combined copy abilities make a reappearance since Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards, although the only combinations consist of adding the elements of Blizzard, Bluster, Sizzle, Splash, and Zap.
 * 10) Thirteen new playable characters unlocked from free DLC, with each one of them with their own stages and final boss theme on the Guest Star ???? Star Allies Go! mode.
 * 11) * Rick, Coo, Kine, Marx, and Gooey return (although in the 2.0 update) as playable Dream Friends, as well as Adeleine & Ribbon, Daroach, Dark Meta Knight (only in the 3.0 update), Magolor, Taranza, Susie, and the three Mages Sisters (Francisca, Flamberge and Zan Partizanne) (only in the 4.0 update), and the latter three after you complete Heroes in Another Dimension with 100 or more friend hearts).
 * 12) Lots of post-campaign content available that adds to the game's replay value, especially when you first start the game.
 * 13) Great soundtrack, like you would imagine from a Kirby game.
 * 14) Many non-intrusive callbacks to previous games and the anime, such as Muscular King Dedede and Evil Kirby (when you select the Soul Melter difficulty in The Ultimate Choice).
 * 15) The Water Ability from Kirby's Return to Dream Land, the Cleaning ability from Kirby's Dream Land 3, the Yo-Yo, Plasma, Suplex, and Cook abilities from Kirby Super Star make their return in this game, and although the Cleaning ability wasn't that good, it got hugely improved in this game.
 * 16) Morpho Knight, a character who was supposed to appear in the cancelled GameCube Kirby title, appears as a fusion between the Butterfly and Galacta Knight, which is really awesome and clever.
 * 17) A new game mode, Heroes in Another Dimension, adds four challenging levels plus a battle with the Three Mage-Sisters, each one that allows the player to use each Dream Friend to resolve puzzles.
 * 18) All of the playable characters have faithful movesets that feel completely inspired from the Super Smash Bros. games and Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3.
 * 19) After the end, you can get the classic Kirby skin from the first few Kirby games up to Kirby's Dream Land 3.
 * 20) Amazing and satisfying combat.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) While the local co-op is great, single-player is a bit lacking by comparison, because the game is specifically built for co-op.
 * 2) * Other players can't join in until you have an ally for them to control.
 * 3) Story Mode seems to be too easy for Kirby standards and can be completed in a few hours, but without the difficulty. Luckily, in the alternative mode, Guest Star ???? Star Allies Go!, you can decide to not bring any allies or collect any heart so that you can add some challenge.
 * 4) * On top of that, Heroes in Another Dimension, can be unforgiving: If you miss a certain heart in a door, you won't get it unless you return.
 * 5) While the bosses are awesome, you re-fight some of them in the fourth world (two of which are reskins with slightly harder attacks) which makes the game a little repetitive.
 * 6) The hitboxes are a bit off.
 * 7) The battle with The Three Mage-Sisters in Heroes in Another Dimension and the battle with Astral Birth Void in Soul Melter EX are considered  EXTREMELY  difficult for players.
 * 8) The gameplay doesn't run at 60 fps. While 30 fps is usually not a big deal, some Kirby fans are baffled about that.
 * 9) *An easy solution to mitigate the 30 FPS cap without modding is to enable the motion smoothing option on your TV. Not all TVs support this feature, and even then, it won’t look perfect, and the smoothing won’t take effect in handheld mode or on Switch Lite models unless you choose the second option below.
 * 10) *The only other way would be to install a mod that would increase the framerate cap to 60FPS.
 * 11) The game takes multiple steps backwards from it's predecessors mainly with the game having only four worlds (Which is half the amount of worlds previous games had) and also not having mini-games that are as interesting as Planet Robobot's or Triple Deluxe's.
 * 12) The puzzles are pretty bad. The game gives you the abilities that you need to solve the puzzle and it even tells you how to solve the puzzle. And sometimes the CPU friends do the puzzles for you.
 * 13) The game's levels in a lot of the worlds feel very disconnected from each other and none of the worlds have a cohesive theme (aside from world 3).
 * 14) One of Nintendo's most notorious examples of "release it now, finish it later", the game didn't have that much when it was first released, and only until Magolor, Taranza, and Susie were playable did the game become complete and much more fun to play. This practice might have turned people away from the game.
 * 15) Unfortunately, as good as it may seem, Plasma returning in place of Spark is not a good sign. It's essentially a downgraded Spark (Kirby Squeak Squad (if you get the ability scroll), Kirby's Return to Dream Land, Kirby: Triple Deluxe, and Kirby: Planet Robobot only).

Trivia

 * This is the first Kirby game where Kirby actually smiles in the North American cover.
 * There is a typo in Magolor's move set where Magolor's name is mistakenly shown as Magalor in the Magolor Surge attack

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