Kirby and the Forgotten Land's Experimentation Holds More Promise After Legends: Arceus
The Nintendo Switch has been a huge success following the company's Wii U era, and a large part of that has been on the shoulders of franchises experimenting with their core formulas. Super Mario Odyssey returned to a 3D sandbox format with expansive movement and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild turned Hyrule into an open-world playground, marking two of the most notable examples. HAL Laboratory's Kirby and the Forgotten Land is the next adventure on the docket for a major Nintendo mascot, and it has a lot of the same potential.
Forgotten Land is the series' first true foray into 3D, going all the way with a traditional adventure as opposed to the 3D puzzle spin-off Kirby's Blowout Blast. Trailers leading up to Kirby and the Forgotten Land's March release have impressed fans, especially after 2018's Kirby Star Allies was a safe 2D platformer centering fanservice elements. This makes it similar to Game Freak's Pokemon franchise, which released multiple «safe» titles on the Switch before really breaking the mold with Pokemon Legends: Arceus. The success of Legends: Arceus follows a pattern set by other Nintendo IPs, which bodes well for Kirby's future.
Kirby and the Forgotten Land' Zelda-Style Boss Titles Help Build the World
Super Mario Odyssey and Breath of the Wild are just two examples of Nintendo franchises experimenting and becoming break-out successes on Switch — the latter inspiring numerous open-world games in the following years. For example, Fire Emblem: Three Houses leaned into life-sim elements more than its predecessors, and Animal Crossing: New Horizons was more about free expression with terraforming and outdoor decorating. Other titles that took more expected approaches like Luigi's Mansion 3 and
Read more on gamerant.com
