Kirby and the Forgotten Land + Star-Crossed World review for Nintendo Switch 2

System: Switch 2
Release date: August 28, 2025
Developer: HAL Laboratory
Publisher: Nintendo

This game’s title is a mouthful, to say the least! It’s been about two years since we’ve received a new Kirby game, and Nintendo has decided to release an upgrade pack for Kirby and the Forgotten Land. When it first launched in 2022, it was met with critical acclaim. Not only is the game considered one of Kirby’s best, it’s up there as one of the greatest 3D platformers – perhaps not on par with your Super Mario Odyssey or Donkey Kong Bananza, but up there nonetheless. The Nintendo Switch 2 Edition of Kirby and the Forgotten Land promises performance bumps and twelve new levels with Star-Crossed World.

First up, let’s talk about the base game – the past three years have been kind to it. Kirby and the Forgotten Land now runs at a smooth 60 frames per second, whereas it only ran at half the frame rate on the original Nintendo Switch. This alone makes the game feel much more premium – it feels better than ever to navigate the new world and track down hidden Waddle Dees. It also means you get to play the game’s original final boss in 60 FPS, which is an experience all its own. If you’ve somehow never played Kirby and the Forgotten Land until now, this is absolutely the best time to do so and the best version of the game – it’s a solid entry point to the series and it remains great fun three years later.

As mentioned before, Star-Crossed World includes twelve new levels. At first glance, they don’t actually appear to be new stages at all – they’re all retreads of ones you play in the base game. Once you actually start the stage, however, you’ll see it’s not quite that simple. The new world has been crystallized by a strange meteor, and these crystals open up new pathways in levels that take you through alternate routes that the base game didn’t. This means you’ll explore the ocean floor, the depths of Wondaria, and other parts of Northeast Frost Street, for example. So while these levels do feel familiar, they offer new challenges. Just like the base game, you have to accomplish specific tasks to find Starries in each level. Some of these are extremely well-hidden, and you’ll probably have to play stages over again to get them all in one go unless you use a guide. And although twelve levels might not seem like much, they’re fairly long – it took me about three hours of hurrying to get through them.

The new stages also introduce a couple of new Mouthful Modes for Kirby, including Spring Mouth, Gear Mouth, and Sign Mouth. Spring Mouth lets you bounce around, which is used fairly often in the new stages. Gear Mouth is good fun, and lets you climb up walls and launch yourself over gaps. Sign Mouth creates slider sections that test your speed and coordination. Overall, these are solid additions, and they all help mix up the gameplay every so often without feeling like they’ve overstayed their welcome. 

To sum things up, the Star-Crossed World DLC is essentially just more Kirby and the Forgotten Land, which is always a good thing. The levels are creative and fun to play as always, but they don’t really do anything you haven’t seen before minus the new Mouthful Modes, of course. My only real criticism of the DLC is the lack of new bosses – there’s a new final boss, as you might expect, but there are no newly-introduced standard bosses. They’re all crystallized versions of Wild Bonkers, Fleurina, and the other mini-bosses you fight during the base game. They’re used quite often during the new levels, and if you’ve beaten Forgotten Land before these will most likely pose no threat to you.

I do think Star-Crossed World may be intended to be played alongside a new file of the game, hence the lack of truly new bosses. You unlock the first of its stages after clearing the first world, so you’re supposed to focus on the main game and clear two Starry stages at a time. And like I mentioned before, if you blitz right through the DLC stages it’ll probably take you between three and four hours, depending on how thoroughly you explore the new levels. But even if you’ve played the game previously, we feel that the asking price of $20 is worth it.

Looking at Kirby and the Forgotten Land + Star-Crossed World as a standalone package, I can’t recommend it enough. Even in 2022, this was one of my favorite games of all time – it perfectly embodies the Kirby essence, and even though the new DLC doesn’t reach the same insane heights as the base game, it’s still more of one of Nintendo Switch’s best 3D platformers. Considering this upgrade pack is only just releasing, I assume it might be a little while until we see a brand-new main series Kirby game on Nintendo Switch 2. Between this and Kirby Air Riders, we definitely have enough content to tide us over.