I was really excited for Return to Dream Land Deluxe, I had been meaning to replay the original so this was a great excuse to experience one of my favorite games in a new way. For reference, I've played nearly every Kirby game and this is one I held in especially high regard. I still do, although my time with it allowed me to soak in how it stacks up against some of the games it precedes (Triple Deluxe, Planet Robobot) which I had just replayed the year prior.
I've got a lot of good to say about the remake. The visuals are really great and the screenshots don't especially do them justice. I wasn't sure how I was going to feel about the outlines, if they were going to make Kirby and Co feel less organic within this world, but they pulled it off nicely I think. The new content is especially great and made up for the admittedly steep price of admission. I found myself a lot more captivated with the subgames than I expected, a new completion challenge involving unique goals for each game and unlocking various masks to reward longtime fans with cute nods. I'm pretty sure I was wearing the Marx Soul mask through most of my grind. Magolor's post-game quest is really neat too. I appreciate that they're giving these supporting characters more things to do, and the format of building up combos and leveling up your abilities was a ton of fun. I wouldn't mind them expanding on that in a future Kirby game, to be honest. I lampshaded it but $60 is a pretty big ask if you've already played the original. I'm unsure if I would wholeheartedly suggest someone buy it unless they've never touched the Wii game before, but for Kirby dieheards like myself there's just enough to chew on. A bonus Magolor story sold me almost immediately, but I feel like that's got to be a pretty small niche of buyers LOL.
I will say though, this is the big one, the fact that there was no online multiplayer is a massive disappointment. I wanted a rerelase of this game specifically so I could play online with friends and not suffer the lag we experienced trying to play co-op on Dolphin. I also have great memories playing the original on Wii with my sister and with my friends growing up. Right now I'm not really in a life situation where I can pull someone aside for couch co-op, and I would have appreciated the option to play with those aforementioned friends. This is another thing that made the game a bit difficult to recommend to others, particularly convince people who I initially was eager to push the game onto so we could play together.
Overall my experience was a positive one, but I came out of it a little cooler on the game than I initially was. I think Triple Deluxe and especially Planet Robobot take what was established here and elevate it to incredible heights with more imaginative and memorable level design. Outside of a few noteworthy puzzles, I feel like it's difficult to make the distinction sometimes of which RTDL level you just played. Compared to Robobot - I could name you the casino level, the traffic level, the ice cream one... Lately, on the heels of replaying the 3DS Kirby games as well as loving Pizza Tower earlier this year, I've had more of a hunger for platformers where levels feel wholly distinct from one another. This hunger was satisfied further with Mario Wonder, which was absolute joy from beginning to end. I still greatly appreciate the road that RTDL has paved for its successors, but after revisiting it the ways that it's been able to grow and improve have become more obvious.
