Zodi Plays: Kirby's Dream Land 2 (By Ham, Fowl, and Fish)

Let's Plays Completed Let's Plays
#1

Dream Land 2 Border by Pinkhaired August

It’s time once again to return to the world of Popstar! Kirby’s Dream Land 2 is an end of life Game Boy Classic game, to the point where it even actually has Game Boy Colour interaction. I didn’t know about this at the time and am recording from my Kirby Anniversary Collection disc so I wouldn’t be able to make use of it anyway. Which is a little disappointing given the game’s actually rather gray without colour, though it’s pretty ironic given this entire game is about recovering chunks of rainbow. This little adventure features Kirby running and floating around, trying to get back the shards of the Rainbow Bridge that connects this chain of Rainbow Islands he’s visiting on vacation. Something has broken them, and I think the instruction book just outright tells you what it is but I’m not going to, because I have no real way of knowing for sure and it’s funner this way.

What’s really important about Kirby’s Dream Land 2, however, is that it introduces the animal friends. Cute little animal buddies that Kirby can ride, increasing his power but trading off his mobility…for the most part. It’s complicated, and I will touch on our friends when we get to them. Videos will be as long as they need to be since I’m gonna complete a world each, though I doubt any will be over 15 minutes to be honest. But yes, without further adieu, lets get to Kirbying!

Also, one major note to all of this: I’ve never played Kirby’s Dream Land 2 before! This is my first time playing! I saw a LP of it a million years ago, but remember basically nothing.

Zodi Plays: Kirby’s Dream Land 2 [1] Hamster

Video Length: 9:00

In this episode we begin our Kirby quest, running around Grass Land beating up it’s inhabitants and baby chickens and otherwise causing minor trouble as we go about looking for the sparkly potatoe chip that’ll help us repair the bifrost. We meet a few new friends in the form of powers, specifically Umbrella and Burning. They both act like they did in the last game, umbrella being a stick you hit people with and float with, and Burning being a powerful fireball dash! More importantly however, after beating up the miniboss Efreeti, we rescue Rick! Our first animal companion, Rick is quite useful. He can’t fly, but he doesn’t slip on ice and has a focus on making our powers bigger and stronger. His Umbrella is adorably launching Kirby into the air like a circus ball, and his Burning is basically the regular ole Fire power. It’s pretty great all around, though hitting with the umbrella is a bit tricky.

The sparkly potatoechip is in level 3, guarded behind some cloudy blocks only a swift hit of the umbrella can solve. If we had Rick it’s far easier to hit them but ate him by mistakte. My bad! After obtaining said potato chip and taking down the first three levels (Dream Land 2 is way less extensive than Kirby’s Adventure) it’s time to face the boss of Grass Land, Wispy Woods! He has a cold so don’t be too rough on him, Kirby! This is actually the start of Wispy Woods having attacks other than just shooting out air puffs and dropping apples and Gordo’s on you, as he can sneak attack you with a jutting out of the ground root attack! How very devious. Half way through the fight we knock the sick mask and glasses he has on off, so it’s back to a more standard Wispy fight where he can puff at us. Not the hardest boss in the world, but you can tell he’s getting slightly more advanced as we go along the series. I wonder what later Wispy Woods will be like…

Anyway, with delicious snack in mouth, we’re done for today. Hope you all enjoys, I’ll see you guys next time for the next island!

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Zodi Plays: Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus (Furry Crime Adventure)
#2

I just went back a few weeks ago and 100% this game for the first time since I was a kid, and it brought back so many good memories. It is fantastic that you get to experience it for (basically) the first time! And I think subbing it is a great idea, because the sounds and music in this game are so delightful.

I think the aspect ratio of the game a bit off? I think it should be more square.

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#3

I’ll take a look at it, but this is basically exactly what I saw on my TV. Might be a problem to look at.

The other problem is that Youtube does screw with this stuff a lot. I’ll look into it. Also it wouldn’t be a Zodi LP if the first video or two wasn’t slightly broken in some way.

EDIT: Yeah looking at the raw footage and at the game on my disk, the reason why it’s more square than you remember is because it IS on the Anniversary Collection disc, and as such isn’t actually the correct aspect ratio. It’s more rectangular to fit TVs better. Not my fault, sorry to say.

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#4

Slightly late video because oops went to bed at 3.

Zodi Plays: Kirby’s Dream Land 2 [2] Owl

Video Length: 11:03

In this episode, we tackle island 2, otherwise known as the Big Forest. It’s a rather sizable forest, though is only three stages long. In this video we’re introduced to the second of our three animal friends, Coo! Coo is my favorite of the three, a very powerful owl that lets you fly around at high speeds, giving you effectively free range to move in the air. While Kirby is himself rather agile for a puff ball, this is still a step up movement wise. Coo’s powers are almost universally air to ground style stuff, which makes sense given his aerial mobility. The moves that aren’t are otherwise rather good at covering the screen in attacks or keeping our now rather large hit box protected, as seen with the Cutter triple shot and Umbrella spin charge type thing Coo gets. We also see Coo’s Burning in this episode, where he charges diagonally downwards in a blast of fire. Finally we get to see Coo’s Needle attack, which is just turning Kirby into a huge spike. All in all Coo is rather impressive to look, and also has my favorite musical track in the game tied to him. Expect to see this good owl friend a lot. The sparkly cookie of this episode requires Needle, though it takes me a bit to realize it.

With cookie in mouth and all the forest explored, it’s time to fight the boss. The boss of this island is Nruff and the Nelly’s, a large wild boar and her family of smaller, but no less wild boars. They’re the second in a long line of what I call “three-lane” bosses, where the boss runs around down three lanes and you’ve gotta hit em as they pass, the first of these being Lololo and Lalala. As three-lane bosses go Nruff is actually fairly simple, not using any huge spike balls to block your path or anything. What she does have going for her is that she can change lanes, and throw out bombs at you at random. That being said though, she’s not the hardest boss in the world and goes down fairly easy.

Also in this episode: I show off the bonus minigame. If you revisit a boss it gives you a silly minigame where you must catch stars while avoiding being hit. One hit and you’re out, and you have to beat an entire stage to try again. I’m not sure if I’ll show off all of these, because they’re rather long and not super interesting, but doing all of them gets you that last bit you need for 100% to unlock Boss Rush and the sound test, so give it a shot yourselves!

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#5

Oh, I never knew you could redo the bosses. I guess that’s why I only ever got 93% when I played the game. That, and one other obscure thing that I didn’t know about when I played. This game’s kinda silly about its completion percentage.

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#6

Time for more Kirby!

Zodi Plays: Kirby’s Dream Land 2 [3] Fish

Video Length: 13:04

As the worlds get longer and tougher, so too do these videos. In this episode we go to Ripple Field, the third island in the Rainbow Island chain, to see about finding us a delicious snack and also I guess fight something I don’t know. We find one of my favorite powers, Stone, as well as the rather useful Cutter ability. Stone does as it always does, whereas Cutter is the relatively fast boomerang throw we know and love. We also swim a lot, and playing this game has made me realize something. I think the swimming portions of Kirby are probably the least good, maybe even worst, part of Kirby. Swimming is slow and not very fun, if you lack a power you just have this close range spit attack, you can’t eat things and if you do have a power in most of the modern games it doesn’t work underwater. And if you get hit, you’ll probably lose it immediately with no recourse. It’s not actually that good mechanically for the game and it’s interesting to think about, I think.

Anyway, we fight Master Green to get the Spark ability, another rather good power that makes Kirby sparkle and crackle like a broken bit of machinery, which I’ve also found interesting compared to the more modern version of Spark where it’s more of an AOE aura of lightning. More importantly however, we save Kine! Kine is our fish friend, and he is in fact quite bad at land, hopping around very slowly and having natural ice physics to him (though not as dramatic as ice physics, which give him a REAL bad time) and a rather high jumping height compared to say, Rick. Kine’s main advantage is, obviously, swimming. He’s very fast, able to bypass water currents without any trouble, and is far more agile in water than Kirby is. You can also suck up stuff under water, which is a plus. As for Kine’s powers, most of them are short range, basically all of them are forward facing without any up or down to them, and aaalmost all of them cause Kine to have just the worst day possible. Spark gives us my favorite combined power (and most useful) the Lightbulb Missile fish. Cutter and Burning give Kine a rather SHMUPy style attack that is basically just a forward facing gun attack. Stone is just regular old stone, with the added benefit of making Kine just not have a good time. Needle is also that, basically entirely. I’ll be honest, Kine’s distress is some of my more favorite comedic moments in this game, because I DO like this fish and he IS a good friend, but man is he finicky to control and boy is it fun watching this poor sunfish just got wideeye as he zaps himself with a lightbulb out his face. Where did you even get that Kirby, get that out of his mouth. Anyway the special whatever is hidden behind a rather interesting set of uses of Kine. Gotta use the lightbulb to see the door is there in the first place, gotta use Stone once you’re in there to get it.

The boss of the island is Sweet Stuff, and angular fish and the closest this game is going to get to a classic Kirby SHMUP out of nowhere section. Sweet Stuff shoots a bunch of lasers at you, he can charge you, and he can summon squids and starfish to attack you. I didn’t come into this stage with a power by mistake, so we had to rely on shooting enemies, but I imagine with Spark or Cutter this is not the most difficult boss in the world. All in all though it’s a fun boss, but it really is fascinating to look at this and go “this is really it huh? This is the only SHMUP like section of the game” because…every Kirby so far has had some degree of SHMUP gameplay out of nowhere, it’s a series tradition. But here, in our third game, we only have Sweet Stuff. Ah well. Hope you all enjoyed, I’ll see you guys next time!

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#7

Wrong. Yet it speaks to the truth of Kirby.

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#8

I have fixed the typo! Though you’re not wrong, I kinda want a Kirby plushie now.

#9

Hey, it’s Kirby time!

Zodi Plays: Kirby’s Dream Land 2 [4] Ice

Video Length: 16:49

In today’s episode, we head to the fourth island in the Rainbow Islands, Iceberg! We are officially out of what I would consider the tutorial islands and are now ready to face a rather sudden spike in difficulty. We’ve got disappearing blocks that break apart when you step on them, we’ve got more enemies to handle, and harder puzzles to solve. The game will also give us any animal friend, not limiting it to just one (though some bags will still always have a single drop). Lucky for us, a relatively easy Rick is here, letting us see a bunch of cool Rick powers like Cutter (throwing Kirby like a cutter) and Spark (which is just Beam, an overlap that I like and forget if I mentioned before!) and, of course, my favorite Rick ability, Stone Rick. Rolling around at the speed of ham! We also find Ice for the first time, which fives Rick the Cold power from the previous game but works like standard Ice for Kirby. Coo gets a cool looking but otherwise incredibly unwieldy ice breath, and for that matter gets a really cool lightning rain for Spark. We also get to see Ice Kine, which is just fantastic.

Less fantastic is getting the rainbow bridge piece for this island, which I’ve so correctly dubbed as a french fry. To get it, you’ve gotta take Kine with Burning across a rather lengthy, ice covered auto scrolling segment! You can’t get hit since that will obviously knock your power out, and since it’s auto scrolling it’ll bounce away from you off screen. And of course if Kine gets too beat up and has to run away you’ve gotta find him again, which can be troublesome on it’s own right since we don’t have an easy place to go get em! Then we have to carefully navigate the maze like area where the french fry is, hopping past spikes and glunks and other such enemies, until we reach the spot where we can melt the ice blocks. But we have to be careful since there’s a 1up and Maxim Tomato in this area we can uncover, but if we do we can’t actually get OUT of the area to go down and get the french fry! It’s very devious! Finally, to actually get TO the room with the french fry, you need to drop your power in water, uncover the entrance by sucking up the blocks, then quickly grab your power back before it breaks. It is overall a very silly, troublesome series of affairs to get this shiny whatever. They only get harder from here, folks. Kirby games: easy to play, quite challenging to complete.

Rounding off our adventures in horrible ice town, we have the boss Ice Dragon! A rather tricky boss, who stomps around dropping icicles at us and also has the occasional ice breath attack. It’s not the most complex boss in the world (there’s only so much you can really do with the Gameboy after all) but it IS rather difficult compared to the previous ones. It’s a good thing I had Kine with me or I might of actually got beaten up. It does suffer from the problem of “and then your power falls off screen” though, which is something I don’t think they ever really intended since so many of these bosses feel like they kind of expect you to keep your power throughout it.

At any rate, the Dragon’s been beaten and we have a french fry. Hope you all enjoyed, I’ll see you guys next time!

#10

It’s time for…perhaps, more Kirby?

Zodi Plays: Kirby’s Dream Land 2 [5] Rock

Video Length: 21:34

Jeez, these videos are getting ever so slightly longer as we go. Not a big surprise considering each island has added another level for us to go through. But yeah, it’s Red Canyon time, the rocky mountainous island. It’s also another difficulty spike, and I’m not just saying that because Master Green beats my face in in the opening of it. Though that DOES happen. I always have the hardest time with Master Green. Luckily, animal friends heal us when collected. Less lucky is my reaction time to…you know, jumping. Sorry Rick!

There’s honestly not a lot to talk about in this one. We’ve seen most of all the powers, and all of the combination of powers with our animal buddies, so now it’s really just going through progressively harder levels. And of course doing the convoluted puzzles required to obtain the snacks that’ll help fix the rainbow bridge. The french fry of this level involves taking our good buddy Rick to a vertical section and getting to the very top of it, with Spark. Not actually all that difficult unless you’re me and for some reason think you need to bring Kine to do this initially, which I did. And of course it’s a little frustrating to have to go reget the power and animal friend from a different stage just to get this little whatever. But eh, it’s fine.

The boss of Red Canyon is our old friends, Mr Shine and Mr Bright! This sun and moon pair are quite powerful, flying around smashing us with stars and fire and cutters and stuff, and they even have a powerful eclipse style attack that I think is actually REALLY cool looking, if simple. They are actually a really hard boss, not the least of which because the open area means your power will just kinda bounce off if you get hit, leaving you without must recourse to attack. It’s a problem this Kirby in particular has, though all power having Kirby’s have problems along this line to some degree. The balance of “we just expect you to have a power” vs actually providing us with non power means to do things.

But yeah, hope you all enjoyed today’s episode. I’ll see you next time for…more Kirby? Yeah. More Kirby.

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#11

Due to unforseen circumstances, taking a break from Kirby.

Zodi Plays: Far Cry 4 [1] Ashes to Ashes

Video Length: 28:24

So, as said above, unforseen circumstances and all that. We’re gonna be delayed on Kirby, and until it’s fixed I’ve decided to switch gears to this little number, Ubisoft’s second most recent entry into the Far Cry series, a series I literally only care about because Primal gave me a satisfying uppercut in an FPS game.

We’ll be playing this until we beat it, and by then hopefully Kirby’ll be back. Until then, please enjoy this impromptu sudden video.

#12

Stayed up too late so decided to post the new video today so I can sleep in for like an hour. It’s Monday for me so it countsss.

Zodi Plays: Kirby’s Dream Land 2 [6] Cloud

Video Length: 27:27

In this episode, we head off to island six, Cloud Park! This is one of the more…frustrating, set of levels. They’re a little TOO hard at times, in not super good ways. A lot of clunkiness and general “and then you wait for a million cloud blocks to break” sections that make it not that fun to go through. All that being said it’s pretty fun, and the overly elaborate sequence of events required to get the magical whatever piece, a delicious Easter time chocolate egg, is actually kind of interesting. If, again, requiring me to fly back to like island 5 to ensure I get the correct animal friend. And taking me 20+ minutes to actually perform correctly due to just a general lack of paying attention. At one point I just spit the Spark we need out at a miniboss! I’m very silly, and playing this entire game in one shot was perhaps not the brightest move on my part.

The boss of Cloud Park is, as you’d expect, Kracko Jr! Not the hardest boss in the world, though it suffers from the same problem of all the late game bosses in that if you lose your power it’s going to be a slog. Thankfully, we’ve made this one into a quasi SHMUP boss by coming in with Coo and cutter thanks to the egg puzzle. This makes the fight a bit simpler. After defeating Kracko Jr, it of course forms itself up into Kracko proper, a monster cloud full of lightning and rudeness. Kracko is one of those bosses, along with Wispy Woods, who is in basically every Kirby game. The difference being that Wispy Woods is always slowly changing and advancing, whereas Kracko is almost always identical, baring a few minor changes to account for gameplay alterations. Kracko is a really well designed mechanical fight, as that no doubt shows. He also has basically not changed one whit design wise as well, whereas even Whispy’s gotten a minor make over here and there. It’s a testament to how powerful “a single cyclopian thunder head” is as a design. Kracko is of course quite a step up from Kracko Jr, and beating him is no easy feet. But we do it, and are rewarded with…the ability to just leave and continue to the next island even though I don’t think anything is really stopping us.

At any rate, join us next time for…more Kirby! We’re actually getting rather close to the end, so I hope you’ve enjoyed this little romp.

#13

How’s about…a Kirby.

Zodi Plays: Kirby’s Dream Land 2 [7] [FINALE] Darkness

Video Length: 26:15

And so begins the final level of Kirby’s Dream Land 2, the Dark Castle. A mysterious fortress, crumbling at the edges and full of baddies to fight. Each of it’s seven levels ends with a miniboss fight, a final little round up of all the game’s hardest challenges. Half the levels are kind of mirrored versions of the other half, unfortunately, so they’re not all interesting stages (though it’s interesting to see the design given it’s a castle). Most of them are good, though they’re quite a bit short and the auto scrolling parts of these levels are just really, really bad. Like, genuinely frustrating game design level bad. But overall, it is still Kirby, and still quite fun. The final rainbow bridge piece is in the final level (meaning island 6 is the only one that doesn’t do that!) and requires use of almost all our powers, revealing the order of powers we need to use with Kine Spark. It’s a clever puzzle, defeated by the fact that I remembered that it exists since it’s one of the only things I did know about it. Ah well.

With the final snack in hand, we head off to the final boss. And who should it be but King Dedede himself!..but something is different, the poor guy is sleep walking! This is a surprisingly hard fight despite this, as while King Dedede’s standard moves are all on display here, after he takes a certain number of hits he gets angry and changes up his attacks, becoming far stronger and far more unpredictable, and way harder to hit if you, say, die and thus don’t have a power and can’t exit the stage to fix that. So yeah, a little frustrating in that sense, but overall a rather good, challenging final boss. Only…once he’s defeated, a darkness rises! King Dedede was possessed the whole time, but the mysterious being known as Dark Matter! This one eyed eldritch monster attacks with a sword of darkness, which only the rainbow bridge pieces (combining to form the Rainbow Sword) can defeat! This is the true final boss, and it is a HUGE challenge. He takes a lot of hits, and dishes out a lot of damage rather quickly. The trick to this fight is to reflect the sword blasts that he charges up back at him, dealing a lot more damage. Once he’s defeated, he sheds his sword and takes up his true form as a horrible flying eyeball of darkness, and you both start falling towards the ground. A time limit, like the first half of the Nightmare fight, how devious! This is easier than the Blade part, but still rather difficult. Thankfully it is more pattern based, so after game overing like twice during this boss fight I managed to figure him out and defeat him.

With Dark Matter destroyed, Kirby flies off into the distance, Rainbow Sword trailing colours behind it. Our friends and Dedede all watch on, and the credits roll. And that’s it for Kirby’s Dream Land 2! I don’t have much to say about it, to be honest. It’s a really good game, even if it’s not as good as other Kirby games. I feel like, given it’s age and when it was made and what system it was made for, it stretches a lot of what they could really DO with the Game Boy, and thus cracks start to show. That said, the animal friends are great, and this is the first introduction of Kirby’s love of putting in hard to collect collectables to reveal a true ending, a staple of the series. It’s just aged a little, is all.

But yeah, that’ll be it for Kirby’s Dream Land 2. But don’t fret, we have the bonus video coming up Monday, where in we show off all the cool star minigames we’ve unlocked through beating up all the bosses. Until then, I hope you enjoyed this lovely little game. I’ll see you guys next time.

#14

Dreamland 2’s definitely not one of my favorite Kirby games. I think it’s one of the only ones I was tired of when getting to the end, though that might in part have been due to the copious amounts of bad autoscrolling sections. Introducing the Animal Buddies was pretty important, though; it was the first instance of altering Copy Abilities, which is usually a really good mechanic.

Also Dark Matter’s design in this game is pretty good. Because swords.

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#15

Kirb.

Zodi Plays: Kirby’s Dream Land 2 [BONUS] Stars

Video Length: 3:31

And here are the rest of those star minigames like I was asked. There’s really not much to say about em, they’re all good for lives but ultimately not that compelling to talk about. With that, Kirby is now finished! I hope you all enjoyed this tiny little bonus as we round out the game.

As always, thanks for watching. We’ll be back in action on the 20th with Psychonauts, which is the next LP. I hope you all enjoyed!

But yeah, @moderators you can put this in the archive now, but keep it open for posting.

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