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This is not a difficult game - easy to beat in a day for anyone over the age of twelve. It has so much charm though; it's the most delightful, adorable game since Kirby's console debut (Kirby's Adventure - NES). I had a dumb smile on my face the whole playthrough, caused in part by an extreme level of localisation which meant that outside of the main game, in the storytelling sections, I felt like I was watching a cartoon from my childhood - King Rollo, say, or Mr. Ben (edit: apparently I'm not the only one that felt this way - www.shoinan.com/?p=4202).
Good Feel proved with Wario Land: Shake It! that they can do excellent 2D platformer level design and lush visuals and they borrow the collectables-as-replay-value mechanism directly from that title here (three treasures per level). Additional replay value can also be had though: a rather tame "design a room" interface is obviously aimed squarely at younger children but the mechanism is adapted to unlock a total of thirty challenge stages (speed trials, etc.); most impressively, fourteen extra levels (two per area) can be unlocked by beating the area bosses with a high score. In short, this game shows not only that Wario Land: Shake It! wasn't a one off but that Kirby may be the perfect IP for them to be entrusted with as a second party developer.
