Game Review: Kirby and the Amazing Mirror
2024-May-30, Thursday 21:46![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dorchadas
This game passed me by when it originally came out. The first portable gaming device I owned was...well, technically it was the Sega Game Gear with its fantastic 30 minute battery life, and I got a lot of usage out of it on family vacations for the 30 minutes that it lasted. But past that, I didn't buy a portable until the PSP, and I didn't buy a Nintendo portable until 2008 right before I moved to Japan, so the entirety of the Game Boy and Game Boy Advance passed me by. That includes Kirby's Dream Land, which I only read about in Nintendo Power barring a few minutes' play on a friend's Game Boy. Lacking any preconceptions, I came into Amazing Mirror and was having a fun time and then I happened to be looking through old podcasts I hadn't finished and found the Retronauts Kirby 3 episode. I loaded up it at the 30 minutes remaining and was immediately greeted with people trashing the game's map and the progression.
I had no idea it was so controversial! But you google it and find out that Nintendo Life gave it a 6/10 and people online are arguing whether that's fair or not. This is what ubiquitous internet access to information has taken from us. By virtue of never playing the game, I went into it with no expectations and had a nice time, whereas if I had gone in after reading a bunch of people trashing it I would have been primed to dislike it. Instead I got the nice surprise that people did twenty years ago: "What you mean they made a Kirby metroidvania?!"
Choose your destiny.
Kirby games generally follow the formula established by Super Mario Bros. and continued by nearly every platformer game since then. You start on the left side, and you run to the right. You beat each stage and eventually reach the boss, and when you beat the boss, the world ends and you go to a new world with a new theme. Do this enough times and you'll get to the final boss, which you beat and the game ends. It's simple and understandable and what you expect. So imaging my surprise when I start wandering through areas after ending the door in the main area, starting in the Rainbow Route. I wander around, going into a few doors, and after a while I notice that I'm not reaching the usual Kirby tradition of finding a warp star that ends the level and I'm now in Moonlight Mansion. I do a bunch more wandering around, hitting a couple big switches that seem to make more doors on that initial room I had started from, and run into a boss named "King Golem," and when I beat him I get a shard of the mirror back and get sent back to the main area and I can do whatever I want.
This is why people call Amazing Mirror a Metroidvania--the levels are all a big interconnected web. Rainbow Route connects to worlds 2, 3, 4, and 5, depending on which path you take through it, and each other world connects to further worlds, and all worlds connect to the Candy Constellation through warp stars. Getting to some of these alternate routes requires particular copy abilities, or approaching the door from different routes--some rooms have multiple entrances and exits but have two paths that don't connect to each other. Maybe you need cutter or sword to slash down a rope and drop a platform to open up a new route, or maybe you need beam to hit a bomb that's behind a wall and blow up the stones to open up a door. Maybe you need a ranged copy ability to shoot the mirra blocking a door that would otherwise destroy the door if you got too close. It's the main conceit of unlocking secret areas from Kirby's Adventure but expanded out into a seamlessly interconnected world with a hub area.
However, if you've played Kirby games before but not this one, you're probably wondering "But how do copy abilities square with this?" and that's where the Metroidvania comparison grows pretty weak. In a typical Metroidvania, you start out with minimal powers, maybe just a basic attack and one special ability. In Metroid: Zero Mission, your gun doesn't even fire all the way across the screen! But as you explore new areas and beat bosses, you unlock permanent upgrades and those get you thinking about those doors you couldn't open, lakes you couldn't cross, and walls you couldn't climb, and you go back to check them out. Amazing Mirror doesn't have that because the upgrades are copy abilities and that means they're not permanent. What's worse, there's no health grace and even a single hit sends your copy ability bouncing away, and while the majority of unlocks require a copy ability from nearby, some do not. While there is map-based progressions in hitting switches to unlock shortcuts, all of which have a small room with a couple free copy abilities that gradually make it easier to get the exact ability you need, you still need to get that copy ability to the right place without getting hit.
And that leads to the main complaint most people have about Amazing Mirror:
Checking off those goals.
The map.
Maps make or break a Metroidvania. The original Metroid didn't have one at all and that's one of the reasons why people think that Zero Mission makes it obsolete. In Hollow Knight, the maps are good but you need to find the map-maker and have enough money to buy the map when you do, which was probably the single most-disliked aspect of the entire game. Players of Metroidvanias generally want to look at the map and check for any blank areas or non-walled-off passages so they know where the places they haven't been are, get new abilities, and then go to those areas and unlock them. A bad map is worse than no map because no map makes you unsure but a bad map actively misleads you.
I won't say that Amazing Mirror has a bad map but a lot of other people definitely did. As you can see, there's no continuous flow to the map. You can't see exactly where Kirby is at all times, just the current room, and you can't see exactly where the exits are, just their general location. A path leading off the east side of the room means that there's a door on the east...somewhere. Sometimes you can find it, sometimes you have to hunt for it. Okay, fine. That is all annoying, but searching for hidden doors was part of the fun in Kirby's Adventure, right, so what's the problem? Well, the problem is one-way doors. You look at the map and you find a door, and you're not sure if it's the right door or not, and you go through and not only is it the wrong door, you can't go back to the previous room. And the cherry on top is that because of the way the map is structured, there's no way to indicate that the door you went through is wrong, where it goes, or that it's one-way, so if you get annoyed and stop playing for a bit or go somewhere else and come back, you can make the exact same mistake if you're not careful!
Whether you'll hate Amazing Mirror depends on how you feel about this. It didn't bother me that much once I discovered that you could leave any room you didn't want to be in via the extremely-cute mechanism of Kirby pulling out an old brick feature phone and calling a warp star as a cab, because that meant it was easy to duck out and duck right back in. Despite the 6/10 review, several comments on that Nintendo Life review above mentioned how satisfying it was to fill out the map until every single room was pulsating (the sign that there's nothing left to discover there). It's not quite true that there are no permanent upgrades, because there are health hearts you can find that increase Kirby's life bar, and technically the maps are also permanent upgrades--without them, you can only see rooms you've been to and can't see the connections at all--but these are minor. If you like uncovering secrets and poking through rooms, multiple times, you'll like it. If you look at the map and think "Where the hell am I?" you'll hate it.
The rest of the game, despite the unconventional premise, is standard Kirby fare but with one gigantic twist that I, and the majority of players, didn't get to experience. Unlike Squeak Squad, the pinnacle of the "Kirby is an omnicidal maniac" characterization, in Amazing Mirror Kirby is unambiguously the aggresséd. Metaknight fights an unknown foe in the skies above Dreamland and is defeated, shattering the titular mirror into eight shards. The figure also drops down onto a hapless wandering Kirby and slices them with their sword, metaphysically cutting them into four equal (but different-colored) Kirbs. Over the course of the game, you can pull out that brick cellphone and call out for help to the other Kirbs, and they'll show up and bumble around and mostly do not that much useful, though they can distract bosses or drop their own copy abilities which you can then steal. I noticed that it showed where they "were" on the map and what copy abilities they had, even though the never seemed to do anything when they weren't directly in the room.
But here's the thing--Amazing Mirror was originally multiplayer.
Each of other other Kirbs was controlled by another player, and the giant expansive map was your playground. Four players, each with their own copy ability, each exploring whatever direction they like. All four players could be in different worlds, trying to find whatever paths they could, and if you were at an unfamiliar door or on the other side of an impassible barrier, you could look up and see what copy abilities your friends had and then summon them to your side to tackle a puzzle together. You could wander to your heart's content and join forces if anyone found a boss. You could easily have access to any copy ability you needed as long as your phone has power.
This completely changes the game! I saw the multiplayer toggle when I started a game, of course, but I had no idea how extensive it was. When I played Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures, I thought it would have been more fun with multiplayer but I didn't feel like I missed out on an absolutely essential part of the experience. But here, I think I did. When I told![[instagram.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/profile_icons/instagram.png)
sashagee about the intended way to play the game, she was immediately like, "That sounds like fun! I'd play that" and I agree. I wasn't a hater and I had a nice time, but I didn't play the real Amazing Mirror. I'm not sure how much I should say this is an actual review, since this game is part of Nintendo Switch Online and the game has been updated so you can use Switch multiplayer to connect with other people, making it much easier to find a group to play with than it would have been twenty years ago when the game first came out. This is like my review of Legend of Zelda: Tri-Force Heroes--it's a review of my experience, but not the intended one. That's why the other Kirbs' AI is so perfunctory, because they're supposed to be controlled by your friends.
I feel like I played Mario Kart 8 single player a bunch, wrote about it, and then later learned you're supposed to play against other people.
En garde!
The tides of multiplayer change over time. Originally everything was couch co-op or LAN parties, then Xbox live and the availability of DSL and cable internet made online gaming possible. In the 2010s there was another wave of couch co-op only indie games from people wanting to recreate the old 80s and 90s experiences and then the Plague Years sent everyone online. Amazing Mirror has been through both sides of this wave, with the original only playable through linked-up Gameboys Advance and it now being easily available for anyone willing to pay $20 a year for Switch Online. And since it is so easily available, my advice is--play it with friends. Play it the way it was meant to be played, on voice chat as you roam around the map and discover things and help each other open new paths. Don't summon the other Kirbies and watch them mill around like total idiots while you mutter imprecations under your breath at their inability to stand still on a simple switch, as happened to me. Just use your summoning phone and be like, "Hey, can you stand there for a moment" into the mic.
Ubiquitous internet has caused a lot of negative effects on our culture. However, it also made this old Kirby game good again, so who can say if it's bad or not? Play Amazing Mirror with friends, revel in the cute copy abilities as you chat about your days, and explore the first non-linear Kirby game. Sounds like a blast to me.
I had no idea it was so controversial! But you google it and find out that Nintendo Life gave it a 6/10 and people online are arguing whether that's fair or not. This is what ubiquitous internet access to information has taken from us. By virtue of never playing the game, I went into it with no expectations and had a nice time, whereas if I had gone in after reading a bunch of people trashing it I would have been primed to dislike it. Instead I got the nice surprise that people did twenty years ago: "What you mean they made a Kirby metroidvania?!"
Choose your destiny.
Kirby games generally follow the formula established by Super Mario Bros. and continued by nearly every platformer game since then. You start on the left side, and you run to the right. You beat each stage and eventually reach the boss, and when you beat the boss, the world ends and you go to a new world with a new theme. Do this enough times and you'll get to the final boss, which you beat and the game ends. It's simple and understandable and what you expect. So imaging my surprise when I start wandering through areas after ending the door in the main area, starting in the Rainbow Route. I wander around, going into a few doors, and after a while I notice that I'm not reaching the usual Kirby tradition of finding a warp star that ends the level and I'm now in Moonlight Mansion. I do a bunch more wandering around, hitting a couple big switches that seem to make more doors on that initial room I had started from, and run into a boss named "King Golem," and when I beat him I get a shard of the mirror back and get sent back to the main area and I can do whatever I want.
This is why people call Amazing Mirror a Metroidvania--the levels are all a big interconnected web. Rainbow Route connects to worlds 2, 3, 4, and 5, depending on which path you take through it, and each other world connects to further worlds, and all worlds connect to the Candy Constellation through warp stars. Getting to some of these alternate routes requires particular copy abilities, or approaching the door from different routes--some rooms have multiple entrances and exits but have two paths that don't connect to each other. Maybe you need cutter or sword to slash down a rope and drop a platform to open up a new route, or maybe you need beam to hit a bomb that's behind a wall and blow up the stones to open up a door. Maybe you need a ranged copy ability to shoot the mirra blocking a door that would otherwise destroy the door if you got too close. It's the main conceit of unlocking secret areas from Kirby's Adventure but expanded out into a seamlessly interconnected world with a hub area.
However, if you've played Kirby games before but not this one, you're probably wondering "But how do copy abilities square with this?" and that's where the Metroidvania comparison grows pretty weak. In a typical Metroidvania, you start out with minimal powers, maybe just a basic attack and one special ability. In Metroid: Zero Mission, your gun doesn't even fire all the way across the screen! But as you explore new areas and beat bosses, you unlock permanent upgrades and those get you thinking about those doors you couldn't open, lakes you couldn't cross, and walls you couldn't climb, and you go back to check them out. Amazing Mirror doesn't have that because the upgrades are copy abilities and that means they're not permanent. What's worse, there's no health grace and even a single hit sends your copy ability bouncing away, and while the majority of unlocks require a copy ability from nearby, some do not. While there is map-based progressions in hitting switches to unlock shortcuts, all of which have a small room with a couple free copy abilities that gradually make it easier to get the exact ability you need, you still need to get that copy ability to the right place without getting hit.
And that leads to the main complaint most people have about Amazing Mirror:
Checking off those goals.
The map.
Maps make or break a Metroidvania. The original Metroid didn't have one at all and that's one of the reasons why people think that Zero Mission makes it obsolete. In Hollow Knight, the maps are good but you need to find the map-maker and have enough money to buy the map when you do, which was probably the single most-disliked aspect of the entire game. Players of Metroidvanias generally want to look at the map and check for any blank areas or non-walled-off passages so they know where the places they haven't been are, get new abilities, and then go to those areas and unlock them. A bad map is worse than no map because no map makes you unsure but a bad map actively misleads you.
I won't say that Amazing Mirror has a bad map but a lot of other people definitely did. As you can see, there's no continuous flow to the map. You can't see exactly where Kirby is at all times, just the current room, and you can't see exactly where the exits are, just their general location. A path leading off the east side of the room means that there's a door on the east...somewhere. Sometimes you can find it, sometimes you have to hunt for it. Okay, fine. That is all annoying, but searching for hidden doors was part of the fun in Kirby's Adventure, right, so what's the problem? Well, the problem is one-way doors. You look at the map and you find a door, and you're not sure if it's the right door or not, and you go through and not only is it the wrong door, you can't go back to the previous room. And the cherry on top is that because of the way the map is structured, there's no way to indicate that the door you went through is wrong, where it goes, or that it's one-way, so if you get annoyed and stop playing for a bit or go somewhere else and come back, you can make the exact same mistake if you're not careful!
Whether you'll hate Amazing Mirror depends on how you feel about this. It didn't bother me that much once I discovered that you could leave any room you didn't want to be in via the extremely-cute mechanism of Kirby pulling out an old brick feature phone and calling a warp star as a cab, because that meant it was easy to duck out and duck right back in. Despite the 6/10 review, several comments on that Nintendo Life review above mentioned how satisfying it was to fill out the map until every single room was pulsating (the sign that there's nothing left to discover there). It's not quite true that there are no permanent upgrades, because there are health hearts you can find that increase Kirby's life bar, and technically the maps are also permanent upgrades--without them, you can only see rooms you've been to and can't see the connections at all--but these are minor. If you like uncovering secrets and poking through rooms, multiple times, you'll like it. If you look at the map and think "Where the hell am I?" you'll hate it.
<
The Legend of Kirb: Four Poyo Adventure.
The Legend of Kirb: Four Poyo Adventure.
The rest of the game, despite the unconventional premise, is standard Kirby fare but with one gigantic twist that I, and the majority of players, didn't get to experience. Unlike Squeak Squad, the pinnacle of the "Kirby is an omnicidal maniac" characterization, in Amazing Mirror Kirby is unambiguously the aggresséd. Metaknight fights an unknown foe in the skies above Dreamland and is defeated, shattering the titular mirror into eight shards. The figure also drops down onto a hapless wandering Kirby and slices them with their sword, metaphysically cutting them into four equal (but different-colored) Kirbs. Over the course of the game, you can pull out that brick cellphone and call out for help to the other Kirbs, and they'll show up and bumble around and mostly do not that much useful, though they can distract bosses or drop their own copy abilities which you can then steal. I noticed that it showed where they "were" on the map and what copy abilities they had, even though the never seemed to do anything when they weren't directly in the room.
But here's the thing--Amazing Mirror was originally multiplayer.
Each of other other Kirbs was controlled by another player, and the giant expansive map was your playground. Four players, each with their own copy ability, each exploring whatever direction they like. All four players could be in different worlds, trying to find whatever paths they could, and if you were at an unfamiliar door or on the other side of an impassible barrier, you could look up and see what copy abilities your friends had and then summon them to your side to tackle a puzzle together. You could wander to your heart's content and join forces if anyone found a boss. You could easily have access to any copy ability you needed as long as your phone has power.This completely changes the game! I saw the multiplayer toggle when I started a game, of course, but I had no idea how extensive it was. When I played Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures, I thought it would have been more fun with multiplayer but I didn't feel like I missed out on an absolutely essential part of the experience. But here, I think I did. When I told
sashagee about the intended way to play the game, she was immediately like, "That sounds like fun! I'd play that" and I agree. I wasn't a hater and I had a nice time, but I didn't play the real Amazing Mirror. I'm not sure how much I should say this is an actual review, since this game is part of Nintendo Switch Online and the game has been updated so you can use Switch multiplayer to connect with other people, making it much easier to find a group to play with than it would have been twenty years ago when the game first came out. This is like my review of Legend of Zelda: Tri-Force Heroes--it's a review of my experience, but not the intended one. That's why the other Kirbs' AI is so perfunctory, because they're supposed to be controlled by your friends.I feel like I played Mario Kart 8 single player a bunch, wrote about it, and then later learned you're supposed to play against other people.
En garde!
The tides of multiplayer change over time. Originally everything was couch co-op or LAN parties, then Xbox live and the availability of DSL and cable internet made online gaming possible. In the 2010s there was another wave of couch co-op only indie games from people wanting to recreate the old 80s and 90s experiences and then the Plague Years sent everyone online. Amazing Mirror has been through both sides of this wave, with the original only playable through linked-up Gameboys Advance and it now being easily available for anyone willing to pay $20 a year for Switch Online. And since it is so easily available, my advice is--play it with friends. Play it the way it was meant to be played, on voice chat as you roam around the map and discover things and help each other open new paths. Don't summon the other Kirbies and watch them mill around like total idiots while you mutter imprecations under your breath at their inability to stand still on a simple switch, as happened to me. Just use your summoning phone and be like, "Hey, can you stand there for a moment" into the mic.
Ubiquitous internet has caused a lot of negative effects on our culture. However, it also made this old Kirby game good again, so who can say if it's bad or not? Play Amazing Mirror with friends, revel in the cute copy abilities as you chat about your days, and explore the first non-linear Kirby game. Sounds like a blast to me.
