Everyone plays together in the same space, so a group session of Star Allies does play better on a large television than on the built-in screen: The sheer amount of stuff going on at any given time reads a lot more clearly on a full-sized TV. Star Allies, on the other hand, carries forward the Switch’s philosophy of versatile, adaptable multiplayer: One to four people can jump in easily by popping out the Switch kickstand, and the only accessory needed for a maximum multiplayer session is a second set of Joy-Cons. After all that, the free-roaming design of the game resulted in very little actual cooperation.
All four players needed to own separate cartridges and systems, and they had to juggle link cables in order to connect their devices. Kirby’s first team-up with three allies, 2004’s The Amazing Mirror for Game Boy Advance, ended up being a total mess. They also offer a great example of how Nintendo’s approach to cooperative gaming has evolved over the years. However, the differences between Star Allies and its predecessors take advantage of the Switch’s strengths as a multiplayer device. This isn’t the first-ever multiplayer Kirby game, or even the first four-player Kirby platformer. It’s a cute feature, but what makes Star Allies truly compelling comes from the way it uses these companions to enable drop-in-drop-out cooperative play for up to four people. They’ll help out to the best of their ability as computer-controlled characters. Whichever critters you ally yourself with, you can bring along up to three monsters as Kirby’s companions. Once you unlock secret “Dream Palace” stages, you can summon those friendly rivals into action through a character roulette. You can even turn most midbosses into your pals. Toss a heart icon at a monster, and it’ll become Kirby’s partner in action. In this adventure, players have a single button used exclusively for befriending enemies, the most charming dedicated command since A Boy and His Blob’s “hug” button. Instead, its real hook is hinted at in the title: Star Allies is all about the power of friendship. Were the leap to HD graphics the entirety of Star Allies’ additions to the Kirby universe, it would be a pleasant but totally missable blip in the series’ history. (Kirby facing off against eldritch horrors from the depths of space is pretty old hat, for that matter.) Compared even to the recent Kirby: Planet Robobot and its wild giant mech-suit sequences, Star Allies plays things incredibly safe, even as Kirby games go. The back half of the game changes things up a bit, but you’ll still be working with familiar skills and mechanics even as the environments grow decidedly more cosmic in nature. en route to predictable showdowns with the likes of King Dedede, Whispy Woods and Meta Knight.
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The first two worlds that appear in Star Allies - of four total - take players through the familiar turf of Grass Land and Planet Popstar, where you’ll hoover up series regulars like Waddle Dee and Poppy Bros. There’s a lot of water being treaded here. In that sense, you can almost see Star Allies as the series pausing to take stock before leaping ahead. (The core Kirby games skipped Wii U altogether, with only the wonderful but decidedly nontraditional Kirby and the Rainbow Curse repping the franchise on that ill-starred console.) There’s no denying that, as with every classic franchise, experiencing familiar characters and beats through glossy high-fidelity visuals has a certain compelling charm all its own. Yes, somewhat surprisingly, Star Allies marks the first time HAL Laboratory and Nintendo have published a traditional Kirby platformer in HD. It pulls together well-worn themes and elements while leaning on two key factors to make it feel fresh: high-definition graphics and four-person multiplayer. Instead, it comes off as something closer to a recap of 25 years of Kirby history. As the series’ first major outing on Switch, Kirby Star Allies seems like the kind of game that would have been designed with an eye toward pushing Kirby into the future.
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