Kirby & the Amazing Mirror (2004)

This title is a distinctive entry in the Kirby series that experiments with non-linear exploration, setting it apart from previous Kirby titles. Instead of progressing through a strictly linear set of levels, you navigate a vast, interconnected mirrored world, filled with branching paths, secret areas, and hidden treasures. This design encourages you to explore thoroughly, rewarding curiosity and careful navigation with power-ups and secret collectibles.

The game retains the classic Kirby formula of inhaling enemies to gain their abilities, offering a wide variety of powers that can be strategically combined to overcome obstacles. The combat is simple but satisfying, and the puzzles, though not overly complex, add a nice layer of variety to the gameplay. A major highlight is the introduction of cooperative multiplayer, which allows up to four players to join in simultaneously, each controlling a different colored Kirby. I've never experienced the multiplayer feature so I can't give much of a valuable opinion on this, I played this entirely alone, and it was still an enjoyable experience.

Visually, the game is bright, colorful, and full of charm, with detailed sprite work that brings the mirrored world to life. The OST is lively and memorable, perfectly complementing the whimsical, adventurous tone of the game, similar to previous titles of this franchise. On the downside, the open-world structure can sometimes feel a bit aimless compared to the tight, level-based design of other Kirby games, and certain areas can become repetitive during extended play sessions.

It's open-world is it's biggest strength, and also it's biggest weakness, it was not very well implemented, leading you to waste a couple of unnecessary hours lost in the navigation process. Overall, this game is a bold and enjoyable experiment in the series, its combination of open-ended exploration, classic Kirby gameplay, and multiplayer fun makes it a unique and memorable experience for both longtime fans and newcomers alike, offering a refreshing take on the pink puffball’s adventures.

Game #55/200 Amazing Mirror is a Metroidvania-style game -- I am not really sure how strongly it can be classified as a Metroidvania, mainly because the genre is not clearly defined, but also because it lacks some hallmarks of Metroidvania titles, for example, to my knowledge, no part of the game's map is ability locked. There is a lot of backtracking as I'll discuss. Cave Story, which seems like the prototypical Metroid/Castlevania fusion and therefore perhaps origin of the genre, came out months after this game -- that follows typical Kirby gameplay conventions. In the spirit of the Kirby series' usual inventiveness, it has no trouble moving away from the conventional "beat a stage, move on to the next stage" formula of many of its preceding titles to have an interconnected world. It's not a huge map, but each screen will have some fun gameplay elements, whether they're found in platforming, defeating some enemies, or solving some simple puzzles. The actual gameplay is very traditional by Kirby standards (I do want to note that Kirby Super Star seems to be this game's primary influence, outside of perhaps Metroid). It's also a beautiful looking game, maybe my favorite looking Kirby (ahh... but then there's DW3) for its classic GBA spritework which I'm biased toward and overall art design (staying very true to Kirby). But you will be delighted by the various charming enemies and surprisingly varied environments. The game is broken up into 9 short worlds which each have a theme. World 9 -- Candy Constellation -- is an interesting mix of stars and sweets, for example. There are also a perfect variety of powers: not too many and not too few. You have some that I stay away from, like Cupid which is slow and weak, and some that I prefer, like Burning which is a great puzzle solver and good for powering through foes. Sword is also always a fun get, and some rarer powers like UFO give interest abilities like permanent flight. Other powers range from typical (Ice or Fire), to amusing (Cooking, Crash), to very powerful (Missile, Smash [which adopts Kirby's Super Smash moveset]). Music and sound is all vintage Kirby stuff. Nothing really stood out except maybe the end credits theme.

I had a decent amount of fun inside Amazing Mirror. It's a 6-7 hour title (for an adult; for a kid it's probably a good 20 hours of running around aimlessly until moving on to a different game) that challenges you to navigate a large map with interconnected worlds, something that is fairly different from the normal Kirby experience. I found it pretty smooth, although accessing the map screen was a bit unintuitive, and liked how you had to open chests to discover maps (think Zelda) before you could see how rooms were connected. This encouraged free roaming and exploration. Often, you had to make a choice between which door in a room you wanted to try to see which path it took you down. I also loved how doors shined if they had been unexplored, or were dull if you had already tried them. This simple visual hint facilitated exploration. I jumped a lot among powers and had a nice mix going throughout the game that kept things fresh. There were various mini bosses you encountered semi-randomly, but all of them were easy as you might expect from Kirby. The final boss was also predictably easy, but you can challenge yourself much more with him if you opt not to call in your Kirby friends -- AI-controlled Kirbys that are kind of stupid (think level 3 CPU in Super Smash intelligence) but do help out in a fight. Amazing Mirror is a nice Kirby title overall, maybe one of the better ones I've played, but nothing mind-blowing.

Released in 2004 for the Game Boy Advance, Kirby & The Amazing Mirror is a unique Kirby game for two reasons: It has a heavy focus on multiplayer and a open world to explore.

Four players can play at the same time with their own Gameboy Advance and Game Pak in minigames or the main story, where each player have the freedom to explore the room they want, or going together to complete puzzles and defeat bosses easily. For the time, this was a really good multiplayer, as all the players were equals, unlike games such as Super Mario Galaxy 2 or Super Mario Odyssey, where the first player has all the fun.

However, the multiplayer mode isn't the only good thing about the game, as the single player experience is just as fun, thanks to the freedom offered by the open world. You can do the areas in any order you want, rush directly to the bosses or explore all the rooms and get the optional content, like color sprays to change the appearance of your Kirby, extra Health Points and more. Not only it adds a lot of replay value, but getting to new zones is much more exciting than ever. In my case, I didn't know anything about the Area 7 until I found the door of a huge Palace by total accident, something that would never happen in most Kirby games.

Sometimes that openness can be a problem, though, as there are routes where you can't go back and have to defeat a boss to return to the main area and try another door, which means that you have to repeat the same rooms multiple times until you find the correct door or get all the treasure chests, a process that can become tedious after a while. There are also some obscure rooms that you won't find without a guide, like a room that you can only access if you fall into the abyss, something that is usually fatal, or a path blocked by a giant block that you have to move hitting the wall with the burning ability, a mechanic that is never explained nor used again.

But otherwise Kirby & The Amazing Mirror is really enjoyable, especially if you liked The Great Cave Offensive mode in Kirby Super Star. I definitely recommend playing it if you want a solid platform experience with open world, even if you didn't like other Kirby games.