Kirby's Dream Land 3 (SNES) review "Although not with plenty of flaws, Kirby Super Star was a giant step in the right direction. Having several moves at your disposal that varied with each power and combining multiple styles of gameplay was much better than the previous aging Kirby formula. The game was only slightly above average, but at least there seemed to be some life in the Kirby series. "

Although not with plenty of flaws, Kirby Super Star was a giant step in the right direction. Having several moves at your disposal that varied with each power and combining multiple styles of gameplay was much better than the previous aging Kirby formula. The game was only slightly above average, but at least there seemed to be some life in the Kirby series.

Kirby’s Dream Land 3, the Dream Land series’ true successor, was released over a year later. Instead of adopting the good parts of Super Star, as well as everything that made the NES and Game Boy games great, it completely ignores all of the positive aspects. As a result it plays far worse than the original on the Game Boy (or the NES if you want to go back that far). It is an absolutely terrible platformer that won’t even please the most diehard Kirby fan.

The three main things Kirby is noted for are the abilities to float in the air like a giant balloon, suck up and spit out enemies, and use swallowed enemies’ powers. Unfortunately none of this is fun in Dream Land 3, partially due to the terrible controls. You see, Kirby cannot move and perform an action at the same time, such as moving and floating. This isn’t too much of a problem when you’re on the ground, since the “run ‘n suck” concept was never implanted into a Kirby game, but it really makes floating and swimming very difficult, especially the former. If you want to move while floating, you have to float up, glide to the left/right while descending, and then float upwards again. So basically you can’t move forwards (or backwards) unless you descend about halfway or mash the ‘B’ button quickly enough to tire you out in a few seconds.

Having to move that way makes this ability more tiresome and annoying than fun. But it’s the lack of secrets that makes floating pointless. In past Kirby games, the camera would move with Kirby, and sometimes allow you to float to new areas. In Dream Land 3 the camera stays in a fixed position, which completely restricts you from going anywhere but forward. Because of the camera and poor controls, the floating feature is worthless, unless you’re at one of the few points in the game where you have to get to a ledge that can’t be reached by a single jump. The floating was one of the best parts about a Kirby game, and the exclusion of it takes away half of the fun.

Too bad the ground/water portions are just as bad. Dream Land 3 is one boring, uneventful, and linear game. Each level will give you the perception that there are multiple paths, but in reality there are just many doors that all lead to the same place. You can take the first door or the next door down at the end of the corridor, but the only thing traveling a little further will do is drop you off a bit later in the next room. Kirby’s Dream Land 2 was a freaking Game Boy game, and it still managed to offer several different paths and tons of secrets. Dream Land 3 is on a machine that’s more than twice as powerful as the Game Boy, yet it can’t offer as much as a game that came before it on an inferior system did.
Since the levels are so linear, you would at least expect something new, right? That isn’t the case here. There’s still a grassy world (with Wispy Woods as the boss), a water world, a mountain world, etc. They fail not only to provide something new, but something somewhat interesting. Everything has been done before with a better variety of enemies (more on this in a second), a greater challenge, and more secrets. Go figure.

Many of the powers from past Kirby games are present, such as fire, stone, wizard, and cutter, but you will rarely come across most of them. I’ve probably encountered about 6-8 powers (which is meager compared to Super Star’s 30 or so), but most were seen only once or twice. Swinging a boomerang with cutter is pretty cool. Too bad I only saw one or two enemies throughout the course of the game that offered this ability. Most enemies don’t give any abilities at all, and are super easy to defeat. To spice things up your animal helpers are back, although with the exception of the fish they aren’t much of a help (the only reason why the fish isn’t worthless is because of the unresponsive swimming controls without it). The giant hamster was great in Dream Land 2 for running through levels which required it, but now he moves too sluggishly and makes life more difficult. The owl and bird would normally be great for cruising through the sky, but they are plagued by the same problems that Kirby’s floating has.

Dream Land 3 doesn’t even look good. Normally I wouldn’t care about graphics for a 16-bit game, but this is just bad. Everything is clear and distinguishable, but something’s wrong when a SNES game released six years earlier looks better. The saddest part is older SNES Kirby games, such as Super Star and Dream Course completely blow it out of the water in terms of visual appeal. Kirby’s Dream Land 3 is certainly no Mohawk and definitely not unplayable, but the entire game is completely insipid, sloppy, and ugly. Unfortunately worse games do exist, but practically anything will give you a more enthralling experience.

Community review by Halon (December 03, 2008) A bio for this contributor is currently unavailable, but check back soon to see if that changes. If you are the author of this review, you can update your bio from the Settings page.