Kirby and the Amazing Mirror (GBA): The only original mainline Kirby game on the Gameboy Advance stars Kirby as he repairs the mirror that sent him into Mirror World. All the while, Kirby gets split into four and he must rescue Meta Knight from Dark Meta Knight.
The game is structured differently from previous Kirby games, going for a Metroidvania style with a hub area that branches off into eight different worlds to explore. There are fast travel portals you can unlock as you go, and I would say are required to prevent a lot of unnecessary backtracking. It plays like your typical Kirby game, being able to run and jump and suck in your foes, some of which will give you an ability for Kirby to copy and use against his foes. The game looks fantastic! I love this style of 2D Kirby graphics and a few others in the series use this look and it’s timeless. The music is surprisingly good as well. The GBA is known for having rough sound, but there are examples of fantastic music on the system and this OST is one of the better ones I’d say.
The control is great, but I don’t think I’ve played a Kirby game that controlled poorly. My main issue comes from the Metroidvania design of this game. I love this from a conceptual perspective, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired. For one, the map isn’t all that great. I like that they have one, but it can be quite confusing to navigate, opting for me to pull up maps online to understand where I am at and where I need to go. The backtracking is very tedious, because these areas are designed like standard linear Kirby games, which is fine, but having to backtrack through these creates more frustration than fun. Enemy placement can be quite rough, and I took so many hits just trying to get where I needed to be and approaching these levels from various perspectives only highlighted how the game is not designed to be non-linear. The bosses are not that special and aside from the final one, aren’t all that memorable either. You are stuck fighting the mini bosses every time you encounter them, which makes them much more tedious as well. With Kirby splitting into four, this allows for multiplayer options, which is a great idea, but the GBA is not known for having a convenient way of playing multiplayer games, so the other three Kirby’s become goons that you call in whenever you need a health boost or to plow through a boss fight. There are some new copy abilities which I really like. The one where Kirby has his Super Smash Bros. move set is fantastic, but it is so easy to lose abilities and you never have a nice easy spot to grab one of those (unlike some of the more normal abilities which is a feature I do like), so if it’s gone, you either backtrack to get it or just say fuck it and move on.
The game was also short, beating it in around 4-5 hours max. Overall, I found this game to be disappointing. I still love the idea of a non-linear Kirby game and with this willingness to go 3D and have success with it in Forgotten Land, I could see this idea being done in a 3D space. Maybe Kirby starts not having any way to copy abilities and then after some time, you unlock that and then can revisit these areas with copy abilities to find extra secrets or to progress the game’s main story, just an idea. It’s not the worst Kirby game, but you have better options. 6/10.
