Kirby Star Allies opens with a rain of dark hearts descending on the Land of Dreams. Result: all the exposed inhabitants fall into darkness, except good old Kirby who inherits a heart-friend. It is therefore thanks to this that he will be able to convince the enemies to join his cause, including the imposing King Dedede and Meta Knight. Yes, the Nintendo Switch achieves this miracle. Even if unity is strength, the player does not find himself at the head of an army of madmen, but rather a squad of four characters. More than enough to test the mechanics based on cooperation, and combine the powers of the different allies. We are not going to spread out all the possible formulas, don't worry, but with 24 types of potential partners and almost 30 imitable powers, there is plenty to do. Naturally, mastering these associations is essential to solve the puzzles concocted by the developers. Nothing hot, of course, but completing the game at 100% – that is, collecting all the puzzle pieces and unlocking the alternate levels – will still require more than one run. In any case, with three lieutenants at our side – embodied by friends or the AI – we feel invincible, the opponents showing a rather distressing weakness. Faced with the bosses, there is no need to be subtle: we screw around without thinking, and it goes like butter. It's only the Dark Lord who pissed us off a bit. In short, we follow the courses without really taking the time to savor them.
GLITTERLESS STARS
It's a shame, because Kirby Star Allies, if not quite as inspired as The Rainbow Brush, offers some visually accomplished sequences. It allows you to forget the fairly slow pace of the game, except when the four friends join hands to become a train or a circle that crushes everything in its path. As far as we are concerned, we have a weakness for the star with which Star Allies takes on the appearance of a shoot'em up. On the other hand, one wonders why the guys from HAL Laboratory have integrated these phases where the team is split in two, with mechanisms to be activated here and there. Zero interest. No one, too, the last levels which are content to recycle the bosses, as if the developers no longer had enough juice to complete the adventure with panache. And when you look at what's next, it doesn't motivate more. In "Hero of Sidereal Strike", the goal is to send a meteorite that is dangerously approaching the Land of Dreams as far as possible, using a baseball bat; while in "The Ace of the Axe", it will be a question of cutting as much wood as possible while dodging the caterpillars and the Minérissons. Once the main campaign is behind us, two other modes appear: "Star Allies Go!" where Kirby's friends must revisit levels by going as quickly as possible, and "The Ultimate Dilemma" where we must chain the bosses of the game. Yeah, not enough to prolong this tasteless experience.
