Earlier today, Nintendo dropped a video detailing the brand new and upcoming Star-Crossed World expansion for one of the original Switch’s best adventures: Kirby and the Forgotten Land.
The bad news: You can’t play the DLC on Switch 1, nor can you reap any of the purported performance benefits. The good news: If you already own the base Switch game, as well as a Switch 2, and also happen to have an extra $20 lying around, then you’ll be off to races later this month. The full, standalone Switch 2 version will cost you $80. And truthfully, the fresh content looks to be worth the price of admission.
Viewing the updated gameplay footage on YouTube, I was immediately struck by the noticeably faster framerate. It’s impossible to tell for sure without actual hands-on testing, but it sure seems like the developers have this running at a solid 60fps—excellent!
Even on Switch 2 hardware, the vanilla Kirby and the Forgotten Land is capped at a meager 30fps, so this framerate bump will be much appreciated. The gameplay already appears so much smoother; definitely one of the benefits of releasing a more advanced machine, and very recently, too.
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Granted, in its advertising copy, Nintendo is being pretty vague about the specific technical enhancements that will ship with the Switch 2 version, even though the upped framerate is pretty apparent. ‘Improved graphics’ and ‘enhanced resolution’ don’t really tell us anything exact, really, but in a recent Nintendo Treehouse segment, one of the hosts said they’re targeting 1080p for tabletop and handheld modes and 1440p when the Switch 2 is docked and playing on a TV or monitor.
Honestly, it’s a nice overhaul from how the game plays on the original Switch, which is 720p in tabletop/handheld and 1080p docked. This puts it in line with other first-party Switch 2 titles, like Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza, which both run at 1440p when docked, with some handy upscaling thrown in for good measure.
I’m still waiting for Nintendo to aim for docked 4K/60fps performance with all of its in-house titles, but in the meantime, I’ll have to settle for the buttery smooth 4K/60fps gameplay of third-party offerings like Fast Fusion.
Performance improvements aside, the Switch 2 Kirby DLC itself seems very cool and definitely worth a look. The continuing story is triggered by a sudden meteor impact, which opens up familiar but altered Starry Stages that you’ll need to complete in order to access the Star-Crossed World proper.
So overall, there’s new paths, new and altered enemies, new transformations (the bouncy Spring Mouth, a wall-climbing Gear Mouth and the sliding Sign Mouth), new collectible figures to earn and for all you masochists, an even harder boss rush mode called Ultimate Cup Z EX.
I actually played through Kirby and the Forgotten Land for the first time not too long ago and found it to be very, very good. One of the best 3D platformers I’ve played, as a matter of fact, though not nearly as solid as Super Mario Odyssey.
It will be fun returning to this bright, cheerful nod to post-apocalyptic experiences like The Last of Us and Horizon Zero Dawn, and even while I wish the upgrade came ‘free’ with my NSO subscription like Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, I think $20 is more than fair for what we’re getting here.
Kirby and the Forgotten Land – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Star-Crossed World arrives in stores and on Nintendo’s digital storefront in just a few weeks, on August 28.
