Kirby & The Amazing Mirror

Kirby & The Amazing Mirror
One for all, and all...four Kirbys?
Protagonist(s): Kirby Genre(s): Platform Metroidvania Platform(s): Game Boy Advance Release Date: JP: April 15, 2004 EU: July 2, 2004 NA: October 18, 2004 AU: December 23, 2004 Developer(s): HAL Laboratory Flagship Dimps Publisher(s): Nintendo Country: Japan Series: Kirby Predecessor: Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards (chronologically) Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land (by release date) Successor: Kirby: Canvas Curse (by release date) Kirby: Squeak Squad (chronologically)

Kirby & The Amazing Mirror is a Metroidvania-platform game developed by HAL Laboratory, Dimps and Flagship, with Nintendo acting as the publisher, for the Game Boy Advance. It was released throughout 2004,

Why It's an Amazing Mirror

1. Unlike most Kirby games, which are linear platformers that utilize a world map to select stages, this game uses a Metroidvania approach, with a hub world and many branching paths to obtain the Mirror Shards.
2. The idea of a parallel universe to the pre-existing one in-universe is always a good concept in and of itself (such as A Link to the Past's Dark World or Lorule from A Link Between Worlds), and it is well-executed in this game with the Mirror World paralleling Dream Land.
3. Bright, colorful graphics typical of the Kirby series, with a variety of environments to explore, including forests (Rainbow Route), caverns (Cabbage Cavern), a volcano (Mustard Mountain), an ocean (Olive Ocean) and even outer space (Candy Constellation)!
4. You can call in three other Kirbys using your Cell Phone, provided your batteries have enough charge in them, and also use it to warp back to Rainbow Route.
5. The gameplay is still excellent, with many new Copy Abilities to obtain such as Magic, Missile, Angel/Cupid and even Smash Bros., which utilizes Kirby's moveset from that series.
6. The controls, as always, are tight and responsive, and here they are even better than in most Kirby games since this one is faster-paced.
7. The two new characters from the Mirror World are nice parallels to Kirby and Meta Knight:
   • Shadow Kirby may seem like he's trying to harm you, but is in fact a friendly character who gives you food, 1-Ups or Invincible Candy.
   • Dark Meta Knight is just as cool as his counterpart, with two excellent boss fights and offering the Master Sword before the fight against Dark Mind. He also becomes playable in Star Allies' "Guest Star ???" Mode alongside other characters who are or have been villains (i.e. Marx, Daroach, Magolor, Taranza and Susie), while his gameplay is reminiscent of this game due to the branching paths.
8. Great soundtrack composed by Hironobu Inagaki and Atsuyoshi Isemura, despite some of the songs being reused from Nightmare in Dream Land.
9. Fun bosses as usual, including Moley, Mega Titan/Titan Head, both Dark Meta Knight fights and of course, the final fight against Dark Mind.
10. The treasure chests are fun to find and collect, containing maps of the area, food, Spray Paint to change Kirby's body color and soundtracks to play in the Music Test.
11. There are three fun minigames to play, those being Speed Eaters (where the players have to eat the food on their plates before the others do), Crackity Hack (where the players must break through rocks in a similar vein to Megaton Punch from Kirby Super Star) and Kirby's Wave Ride (where the players race aboard their Warp Stars across a water track whose length and layout differs depending on the difficulty).
12. Great replay value, primarily due to the many paths one can explore to find the bosses, treasure chests and many other secrets!
    • If you push every Big Button that creates a portal to Rainbow Route, the Ability Room will be unlocked so you can test out each Copy Ability.

Bad Qualities

1. While the Metroidvania gameplay is still good, navigation can be difficult without finding the various maps throughout the areas.
2. The other three Kirbys can sometimes feel intrusive and are often hardly useful when solving puzzles.
3. Mini Kirby is the most useless Copy Ability, as it is only useful to fit into tight corridors and can't even attack.
4. For unknown reasons, the Kirby series deuteragonist King Dedede doesn't appear in this game at all; this is the only game in the series to have this distinction.

Reception

Kirby & The Amazing Mirror received "generally favorable" reviews, according to Metacritic (scoring 80/100). Critics praised the open-ended nature of the game, its gameplay, graphics and sound, while criticizing the map feature.

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