A cute distraction.
What They Say:
Choose from a cast of Kirby’s most iconic copy abilities—including the brand-new Wrestler ability—and duke it out to be the last Kirby standing. Familiar friends and foes like Bandana Waddle Dee and King Dedede also make an appearance as playable characters in the Kirby Fighters 2 game, available exclusively for the Nintendo Switch™ system.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Kirby Fighters 2 came out the day it was announced. When Nintendo surprised dropped this game, many would assume there would need to be a reason. The reason is pretty simple: it’s a weekender game that you shouldn’t put your hopes up with. While the basics are there to have fun, Kirby Fighters 2 has little depth to hold it through.
The story for Kirby Fighters 2 is simple. Metaknight and King DeDeDe have teamed up to create a tower in which Buddy Duels happen. Climb up the tower to defeat the two. That’s it, that’s the story. Going up the tower one would think that it would be a straightforward ascension right? That is not the case. Climbing up the tower you have to fight each different team or character under certain conditions. These conditions change as you go up the floor. The difficulty that increases as you get more points, and get higher and higher up level. The good thing is that with each tower climb, you can take special power-ups that help you with health items and other aspects to improve your chances of winning. The bad thing about it is that at the end of each chapter you start right back on floor 1 and climb your way back up again.
One would assume the game plays very simple and somewhat shallow, it kind of does. If you know the set up for Super Smash Bros., then you know mostly how to play. There’s a button designated for jumping, there’s a grab button, and there’s an attack button which for each one of your Kirby’s can be different. There’s Sword Kirby where are you can do spinning/attacks add piercings, there’s a Yo-Yo Kirby that could be able to do more zoning and ranged attacks. There’s even a Wrestler Kirby that could be able to do short-range and wrestler moves to take out people. This is tandem with other characters that you can unlock as you play the game. There are combos that you can do for characters but often looping the exact same attack can easily take out opponents. It often feels like blocking is more of an afterthought because there’s no real reward in blocking at all it just chips down your health a lot less.
This series of events lead towards very very short matches that often times give you 2 to 3 minutes but can be done in roughly 90 seconds if you know what you’re doing. There are comeback mechanisms to make rounds longer. To win, you either defeat your appointment or your team has more health. The other mechanism is Ghost Kirby. As Ghost Kirby if you can land a hit on an opponent you can heal yourself up and have some partial like to keep on going to take out your opponent. You do have to wait before you can use it, but it does mean that everybody can hop in and still play.
Besides the Battle mode and Story mode, Kirby Fighters does offer online. Online gaming was fairly stable, and you can hop in either with yourself or with a friend in order to play against teams in buddy battles and see which one wins. There’s no ranked mode, only opting for a Friend’s Match for those who have the game and Random Match to find people online and play. Single-handed mode makes you fight a lineup of characters to get the best time to complete the task. If you want to train and practice, you can go to Practice mode to figure out what combinations work for you.
In Summary:
Why would you get this game then? Why would you invest how many minutes or hours into a game, that doesn’t really really seem to give as much as what you invest in? Very simply put, it’s the rent a Blockbuster or Hollywood Video for the weekend kind of game. It’s a great way to relax and smash a whole bunch of buttons as you take down different people as a cute adorable Kirby, knowing you can walk away from the game at the end of the week. Kirby fighters 2 offers enough depth to get you through and nothing more. Its various characters, combinations, and items that appear won’t attract hard-core fighting game enthusiasts. It will hold most people’s attention however for a quick play session with kids. Kirby just wants to have fun at the end, and that’s what the game will give you.
Grade: B-
Developer: HAL Laboratory, Inc.
Publisher: Nintendo
Age Rating: E/Everyone
Release Date: September 23rd, 2020
MSRP: $19.99
Platform: Nintendo Switch(reviewed)
