MAJOR spoilers for Kirby and the Forgotten Land
Let me start this by saying that I haven’t actually played that many Kirby games. With the exception of some one-off titles like pinball or dream course and, of course, spamming the flutter jump in Smash Bros., the only game I’ve beaten is Kirby’s Epic Yarn.
That being said, I was very excited about Kirby and the Forgotten Land and its post-apocalyptic vibes. Jokingly being linked to The Last Of Us by fans, the game is as fun as it is wholesome… until you get to the last world. Brimming with lava and dramatic music, Kirby fights his way to a laboratory where you get the backstory of the world he (and everyone else from his planet, Popstar) have been sucked into. This leads to a final boss battle that feels like a mix of Resident Evil, Final Fantasy, and … intergalactic big rig racing?
Has Kirby always been so bonkers? Is this another Pokémon moment where I find out the franchise I thought was cuddly and full of good vibes is cuddly, full of good vibes, AND is bizarrely awesome?
So there’s this Resident Evil slime monster who turns into a god-like creature…
Midway through the game Kirby’s new friend, Elfilin, is captured by King Dedede. After fighting the king a second time, you find out he’s actually possessed by something. In fact, all of the beasts of the Beast Pack are, and they (along with the Waddle Dees) are being used by the ACTUAL big bad for labor (you find this out later).
After King Dedede stays behind to hold back the beasts so you can get the Waddle Dees to safety, Kirby finds himself in an elevator where a recording reveals that the abandoned tourist attraction is actually a lab? And an extraterrestrial creature named Fecto Forgo tried to invade the world?? But was captured and researched because it could create rifts in space and time???
Anyway, it turns out Elfilin is a piece of that creature, and Fecto wants to merge back with Elfilin to become whole again. Oh, there’s also something about the leader of the Beast Pack (Leongar) wanting to use Fecto to reach the “land of dreams” because everyone left the planet. Fecto turns around and possesses him, absorbs all the beasts, and turns into a giant blob that looks like a creature at the end of Resident Evil that you have to beat before the self-destruct sequence activates.
Then the blob absorbs Elfilin and becomes a Final Fantasy summon.
This was genuinely an upsetting sequence of events in my “surely this will be more chill than Elden Ring” game of choice, and by upsetting I mean “I didn’t know Kirby games were like this, I’ve been missing out, this is my jam!”
Slapping god with a big rig
So god Fecto beat the shit out of me, but after I stopped reeling from the sudden turn in my “the enemies are literal puppies” game, I managed to win … or so I thought. Because Fecto opens a rift in the cosmos and decides to take Kirby’s planet and make it crash into the world!
Jeez, some all-powerful beings really don’t know how to take the L.
Kirby and Elfilin (who has been set free from Fecto) decide that the only way to stop Fecto is to, well, use the game’s new mechanic: Mouthful Mode. There are all sorts of buildings, rubble, and vehicles flying around them, but at the end of the day, their chosen mode of heroics is the noble big rig. Kirby sucks it up and drives through space, taking on some Kamehameha-like-blasts from Fecto, until he can slam the truck into him for the victory.
I couldn’t stop laughing at how absurdly epic the whole thing was, then again, I should’ve seen it coming, I guess. This is a game series where Kirby dances in front of his unconscious enemies and screams HI to his friends even if the world is literally coming crashing toward him.
Now we’re collecting souls?!
There’s more to do in Kirby and the Forgotten Land once you beat it. Apparently, the Beast Pack is concerned for their leader, who didn’t make it back to the planet after the whole “ripping apart the galaxy” thing that Fecto did. It turns out that pieces of his soul are trapped in another dimension, so now Kirby and Elfilin have to go and track the pieces down to bring him back to their reality. This is the part of the game I’m currently playing through, and it offers a more challenging take on the worlds that have already been played.
This isn’t at all what I was expecting when I decided to sit down and play through a Kirby game. While I was aware of some of the odd monsters like “giant tree that cries after being beaten” and, you know, the fact that Kirby gains power by eating his enemies, I didn’t expect to defeat an intergalactic creature by driving a truck through space? The final, epic lava world was already dramatic enough, but years of traversing through Bowser’s castle prepared me for it. Hitting reaction commands to ram into a god? Yeah, not ready for that one.
It definitely makes me want to go back and play the other Kirby games to see if they get as bizarrely entertaining as this one did. Honestly, this has been one of my favorite games to play this year, I just know to expect the unexpected for the next Kirby game.
(Image: Nintendo)
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