Kirby Star Allies

Kirby Star Allies is a disappointing follow-up to the excellent Planet Robobot, being a less complex, creative, and engaging game in almost every aspect. It banks on nostalgia, recycling old ideas, characters, and music, in the hopes that they will be sufficient to appease fans.

Star Allies is much less narrative-driven than its predecessor. Here, a dark, mysterious wizard makes a spell that corrupts the hearts of the people of planet Popstar. Kirby, then, must help his old friends and enlist their help to defeat the wizard.

The main gimmick of Star Allies is the ability to have three allies accompanying Kirby in his adventure: Kirby can throw a heart at an enemy to immediately convert them to his side. These allies, then, can defeat enemies, assist in puzzles, and add their elemental attack to Kirby’s main powers. This seems like a natural evolution of ideas present in previous games – Kirby had an ally in Super Star and could combine powers in Squeak Squad –, as they are now linked together. But the game fails to capitalize on this.

Allies, of course, allow the game to be played in co-op, but Star Allies doesn’t know what to do with the multiplayer aspect. Rare is the puzzle that requires the four characters to work together: when these “puzzles” appear, they usually come down to just “pull four levers at the same time” – and the levers are even right next to each other. Sometimes, the game will divide the group in two, but both teams just need to press forward and hit a switch to open the path to the other team: there’s no thinking and real teamwork involved.

Levels, to accommodate four characters, are big and empty, with simple geometry and layout. When we play alone, allies are controlled by the game, so the very basic design of the levels – there’s usually just a ceiling, a bridge, a couple of enemies, and a few obstacles, if that – allows the also very basic AI to function properly, for each time the levels become just a bit more inventive, CPU characters will get stuck on the scenery, be crushed by moving blocks, fail to act, and so forth.

At specific parts of some stages, we have access to the so-called Friend Actions: Kirby and his friends climb a golden platform and unite to form a specific shape. It can be a train, a bridge, and even the “Friend Circle”, which turns everyone into a giant unstoppable wheel that breaks everything on its path.

These actions/powers serve as a great way to shake up the pace of the levels, and help develop the “friends” theme that permeates the game. Kirby’s ability to swallow his friends, on the other hand, killing them for their powers… not so much. This is especially striking when a villain performs a similar “sacrifice” at the climax and we are supposed to judge him for it.

Allies can also lend their elemental powers to Kirby. Combining fire with a sword or a hammer increases their attack, but also adds a specific elemental property to the weapon. Fire, for example, can burn down grass and reveal hidden picture pieces (they unlock artwork), while electricity can power up some devices.

The game has puzzle rooms where we are supposed to use a mixed power to get to some picture pieces, but the problem is that these rooms are too shallow. Each of them hands us the very two powers needed to beat it – and Star Allies even displays the answer in a condescending image, which can, fortunately, be turned off in the main menu –, so there’s no process of experimentation and discovery regarding what we should use. And to top that off, most of the time, we just need to do one simple action with the mixed power to complete the puzzle, such as combining electricity with a whip and pressing the attack button to power up a switch behind a wall.

In other words, the main problem with Star Allies is not that it’s easy – on the contrary, making it more difficult would have only emphasized how poor the CPU allies are – but that its level design is unsophisticated: it lacks elements to engage us in any way.

A breakdown of a whole level will be useful to illustrate this. Nature’s Navel is a level from the second world – from a total of four –, chosen because its simplicity can’t be excused as being an introduction to the game’s world and rules, and its in-depth description can’t be – reasonably – seen as a spoiler.

We start the level at the top of a mountain and there is a sign telling us to go down, even though we can just fly forward to the next section, which would skip just a small bridge with a single bird enemy. Now, there are two giant spinning devices that have gears as eyes and some rocks that rotate: these rocks are actually blades that deal damage, but they are so thick that they can, at first glance, be taken as platforms. We avoid the blades and move forward.

Next, there is a very brief enemy gauntlet and an optional puzzle room. In this room, there’s the ninja power-up, the bird enemy, and two flaming chains. We get the ninja, befriend the bird – if we didn’t turn it off, now there would be a drawing on the screen telling us what to do next – and use the attack button to activate the mixed power and destroy the chains to grab a couple of generic picture pieces. Here, we could have used a water ally, too, so at least there are options.

The next section has another giant rotating device to dodge, a couple of enemies, and another flaming chain blocking access to the next puzzle room. We could think the previous puzzle room was just teaching us how to destroy the chains so that we are prepared for the real challenge, but this illusion is immediately shattered when we enter the room and discover… that this one contains just another flaming chain. So, we just repeat the effortless action of pressing a single button and the path opens to a big switch – another call back to the first Kirby games – that unlocks a secret stage. In other words, there’s no evolution in complexity with the flaming chain: the game doesn’t increase their number or mix them up with enemies, or – God forbid – does anything creative and surprising with the idea.

The level’s last section has Kirby climbing up platforms while avoiding the rotating gear devices…which stay on both sides of the screen where we don’t have a reason to go, since the objective is to go up. Right next to the exit, there’s a generic picture piece right on the path of the spinning blades. We are supposed to wait until one of the blades passes by and then quickly grab it, but it’s more likely that, while the player waits, one of the CPU allies will just go for the piece, grab it, and take the damage. Finally, next to the exit, there’s a passage leading to another spinning device with a special picture piece and a life. But the device has only one blade, so it’s quite simple to avoid it. And that’s the whole level.

Instead of each stage guarding three hidden special items (such as Robobot’s cubes), they now have just these picture pieces scattered around that – together – form a single piece of artwork and music (each artwork requires up to a hundred pieces, so it takes a while to unlock anything). Generic pieces fill any hole in the picture’s puzzle – so any piece is like another – and special pieces fill designated areas. However, each level has just one special piece and, sometimes, this piece is not even hidden – in Reef Resort, for instance, the stage’s special piece is just lying on the ground after the miniboss.

There are, however, good bits of design spread throughout Star Allies. One stage that teaches how to combine bombs with electricity focuses on the resulting ability to electrify things up high. The stage’s boss, then, stands mostly in the air, floating around, testing our recently acquired knowledge.

The last world saves the game from complete disaster, too. In it, we can tackle levels in any order – and each one unlocks a boss battle. Enemies are more aggressive here, with bosses resisting damage long enough to at least show their full attack patterns. The level design also becomes a bit more intricate (one level has a plethora of secret exits that must be found to open the final door, while another has us freezing waterfalls to clear the way). It’s all still very simple and obvious (there are signs pointing at the secret exits, for example) but at least there’s creativity here.

This last world should have been the base to build the game upon and not its climax: the way it is, Star Allies ends when things are finally getting good. An update eventually added a post-game mode called “Heroes in Another Dimension”, which also develops the ideas present in the main game, with challenging remixed bosses, and is a welcoming – if brief – addition.

The soundtrack, meanwhile, follows the game’s general tendency to rely on nostalgia and consists of a lot of remixes from old tunes – but nothing as inspired as something like The Great Cave Escape remix from Rainbow Curse. Some tunes are used with no rhyme or reason, too: Dedede’s theme plays in a random volcano level…and probably just because it sounds cool, as there is not a fight with Dedede in it.

Finally, unlike Robobot, there’s little to write about Star Allies’ story. There’s this evil wizard intending to do evil things and Kirby must stop him. Dialogue is a rare occurrence, but it’s still playful, at least: “We wish to assemble the dark Jumble Heart Pieces that were scattered around the universe. Once we do, our most twisted of visions will be… untwisted. Unthawed? Unfurled!” one of the wizard’s generals tell Kirby.

For the most part, Kirby Star Allies is an uninspired, shallow experience that takes too long to develop its ideas. If it was supposed to be a celebration of the Kirby series, it deserved better.

May 15, 2023.