YMMV / Kirby's Return to Dream Land

• Accidental Innuendo: In the Italian release, the Fun with Acronyms aspect of the levels' naming is absent... intentionally, that is. Putting the initials of each level's Italian name together inadvertently produces the phrase "BDSM FIC."
• Alternative Character Interpretation: How much of Magolor as a villain was him and how much was the Master Crown? We know at minimum he was willing to both attack Landia and con other people into doing his dirty work to get his mitts on the crown, but was he out to conquer the universe the whole time? Or did he just want a rare artifact or stronger magic and the whole “Welcome your new overlord” spiel was the Master Crown already taking effect? The remake supports the latter interpretation with the revelation that the Master Crown is both sentient and malevolent; it amplifies the darkness in the wearer's heart and steals their sense of self until they are nothing more than a manifestation of the crown's will.
• Awesome Music:
  • "Bring On the Super Ability" does a fantastic job of getting you in the mood for tons and tons of asskicking using super versions of Sword, Beam, Hammer, and more.
  • "Freezing Temple" perfectly capture the atmosphere of exploring a palace against the northern lights.
  • The remix of the Grape Garden theme is absolutely beautiful.
  • The music that plays against the final boss Magolor's first form, "Welcome Your New Overlord", is pretty awesome in itself. It is then followed by the second phase theme, C-R-O-W-N-E-D. The violins just make it so intense.
  • The final level theme is truly inspiring.
• Anti-Climax Boss: While Magolor Soul is a fun fight and a fairly challenging end to Extra Mode, he's rather disappointing in the True Arena—despite being the final opponent, his battle has no changes at all, is arguably easier due to you no longer having reduced health like in Extra Mode, and comes off the heels of the far more difficult Galacta Knight. This is rectified in Deluxe, where Magolor Soul's True Arena fight is modified to be much harder, in addition to having new music and pause screen lore.
• Best Level Ever:
  • Stage 5 of White Wafers is a relaxed puzzle-solving stage with a lovely background and the aforementioned music.
  • Stage 3 of Dangerous Dinner outfits you with Ultra Sword to go to town on hordes of mini bosses, a trend that continues in the sequels.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Galacta Knight's appearance as a surprise Superboss in The True Arena. He doesn't make an appearance anywhere else in the game, meaning he has no explanation, canon or otherwise, as to why he even appears unlike in his earlier and later appearances, and he flies away as quickly as he shows up upon defeat. While his new pause screen in Deluxe makes the slightest connection by emphasizing that his seal is made out of gem - presumably the same as the Gem Apples - he still makes no appearance in Magolor Epilogue or anywhere else.
• Breather Boss: Metal General, who comes in between the climactic fights against the Grand Doomer and Landia. He has no relevance to the plot, and isn't as difficult as either boss. This was made up for in Extra Mode, where he got the greatest changes, becoming a Sequential Boss with HR-D3. Its appearance pretty much strips him of his Breather Boss status in Extra Mode. Ironically, HR-D3 itself becomes a Breather Boss in the Deluxe version of True Arena (which it's fought separately unlike in Extra Mode), when it comes right after Crowned Doomer and all of the preceding Magolor Epilogue bosses, meaning that you'll be dealing with a boss that's far easier to predict and breathe around.
• Catharsis Factor: After all the suffering the Master Crown put the player and Magolor through, seeing Magolor cement his redemption by cleaving it in half with his own Ultra Sword is immensely satisfying.
• Critical Dissonance: Several professional critics at the time of the original game's release gave it middling ratings; they saw it as So Okay, It's Average at best, with the main criticisms being that it was too easy and it didn't do anything new compared to Kirby's Epic Yarn or competing Wii platformers New Super Mario Bros. Wii and Donkey Kong Country Returns. General audiences and Kirby fans, however, loved the game for being a return to Kirby's roots and for defining the series' modern formula after its Audience-Alienating Era in the mid-2000s. Hindsight has been more favorable to Return to Dream Land, with it being credited for paving the way to the series' future successes like Kirby: Planet Robobot and Kirby and the Forgotten Land.
• Ending Fatigue: A bit in the main game, due to the final level sequence being very long. First you fight Landia, who's set up to be the final boss... then there's a twist cutscene, a lengthy Unexpected Shmup Level with its own boss, another cutscene, then the actual final boss, which has two phases (the first of which ends on a Fake-Out Fade-Out). It can feel like the game keeps snatching victory away from you at the last minute. Later Kirby games would still have long final levels, but they make efforts to lessen the fatigue by clearly setting them up beforehand, concretely dividing the segments, and also ditching the idea of having actual levels between the bosses.
• Epileptic Trees: In the original game, the theme "Where the True Enemy Lies" is played in the intermission before the last 5 boss fights in the True Arena. Deluxe changes this so that it plays before Galacta Knight specifically, which has lead some fans to wonder why Galacta Knight is considered the true enemy specifically despite the Master Crown being the Greater-Scope Villain of the game.
• Fan Nickname:
  • "Sinister Elmo" became a popular nickname for Magolor for a while thanks to The Runaway Guys' playthrough of the game. During it, Chuggaaconroy voiced Magolor using an Elmo impression, even after he seizes the Master Crown's power for himself, the latter of which led ProtonJon to jokingly coin the "Sinister Elmo" moniker. Thanks to the recency of the playthrough, the first episode of which was uploaded just months after the game came out, and thanks to the popularity of all three members of the Runaway Guys at the start of the 2010s, the nickname quickly caught on among Kirby fans at a time when the fanbase was only just beginning to expand beyond its longtime niche status.
  • Dedede's redesign in the Deluxe version (carried over from Kirby and the Forgotten Land) has been frequently called "Club Penguin Dedede".
  • Although not the only track to get this treatment, the theme for the final boss's first phase was commonly and colloquially referred to by fans as "Under My Control" due to the lack of an official English translation at the time. It was only until the Deluxe rerelease that the theme was given an official English name, "Welcome Your New Overlord".
  • The Gem Apple-esque fruit formed by the Fruit Fragments is only ever referred to as a red fruit in-game, but fans have taken to calling it the Gem Apple Seed to match the Gem Apple Tree it eventually becomes. This name is widespread enough that it's sometimes mistaken for being official. The actual official name, revealed only in Japanese supplementary material, is Grand Gem Apple (グランドジェムリンゴ).
• Game-Breaker:
  • The Spark ability in this game combines the classic Spark (hold down attack to erect an electric force-field) with the Plasma's charged-shot mechanic from Kirby Super Star and Kirby Air Ride. However, this time you can charge Spark by shaking the Wii Remote (or quickly rotating the L Stick in the Switch version), which can quickly and easily fully charge the shot. Combined with the fact that the fully charged blast deals ludicrous damage to just about anything, it can take down even the Final Boss in less than a minute. As a bonus, hitting the attack button while holding up or down will fire a lightning bolt to the edge of the screen in that direction, instantly hitting everything either above or below you regardless of your charge level.
    To make it even better, when fully charged it generates a barrier around Kirby that does decent damage and protects him from most attacks: it either repels enemies who attack at close range, or destroys projectiles that touch the barrier. And if Spark Kirby is riding on another Kirby's back, the barrier is large enough to protect them both.
    • However, for all its game-breaking potential, Spark has shades of being a Skill Gate Ability. Despite trivializing the difficulty of the main campaign and being a safe pick against bosses, humans can only charge Spark so quickly; thus, its damage falls off for more experienced players, making it never the optimal choice for any sort of speedrun.
  • Ice is incredibly broken, but the exact way in which it is depends on the skill level of the player. Beginners and intermediate players can use its fully invincible dash-down-attack and near-perfect guard to never get hit against bosses, making it solid as a stone wall ability to conserve health throughout a stage or boss rush. Advanced players will instead take Ice in the completely opposite direction, using it as a berserk rushdown ability that constantly damage boosts against bosses to sneak in as many hits of its dash-aerial attack (Super Ice Sprinkle) as possible and shred the Arena modes in the blink of an eye.
  • The Leaf ability's guard renders you completely intangible to almost all attacks. It also happens to be one of the best offensive abilities in the game, with a Leaf Uppercut that has absurd range and is very easy to spam, and a downwards aerial attack in Leaf Rain that covers a large range and has more firepower, but is more unwieldy. Deluxe nerfed Leaf slightly by dropping the power of Leaf Uppercut from 24 to 20, making it so that players must learn the more difficult Leaf Rain strategies to set competitive times in the Arena modes.
  • The Tornado ability makes Kirby completely invincible until he stops spinning, making it easy to avoid damage and punish enemy assaults. Not only that, but it now has a charging attack that is used by shaking the Wii Remote while Kirby is spinning. When he stops, the tornado spreads out as it dissipates, causing a ton of constant damage and covering Kirby as he recovers.
  • Parasol, in the original Return to Dream Land, was the absolute best ability for shredding grounded bosses. Its grounded down attack, Parasol Twirl, had full invincibility and did 64 damage in the blink of an eye if all of its hits connected, making it faster than even Fighter and Hammer at taking down anything that was even remotely close to the ground. While (ironically) airborne bosses give it quite a lot of trouble, the amount of time you save from destroying the other 70% of the bosses in the game more than makes up for it, and experienced players have learned ways to overcome this weakness. Unfortunately, Deluxe gave its single harshest nerf to Parasol Twirl, toning down its base damage from 16 to 12 and thus reducing Twirl's damage to merely 48 (after combo adjustments). While it is still strong against grounded bosses, it is no longer broken-levels of strong, and several of the new endgame bosses are conveniently at a height where Parasol Twirl can't reach, making Parasol struggle greatly against them. Seems like someone on the development team really had it out for this ability...
  • Meta Knight can use his Shuttle Loop from Super Smash Bros. Brawl in this game. It eats at boss HP like crazy and it's very spammable. Wing Kirby has the same ability and several air dashes that let him blow through stages nearly completely invincible, if not for Some Dexterity Required. Deluxe buffs Meta Knight further by giving him the Galactic Counter from Star Allies and Kirby Fighters 2 that can deal heavy burst damage to the most difficult bosses in the game when timed correctly.
  • Hammer's infamy carries on into the original Wii version. It's made worse with King Dedede, who naturally keeps his hammer even after using Hammer Throw, meaning he can just spam the powerful attack as much as he wants. In Deluxe, Hammer Flip was updated to its modern and less efficient version that requires Kirby to charge it, making it useful only for scoring incidental hits. However, at the same time, Dedede was significantly buffed; the developers gave him his Head Slide and Super Dedede Jump from Star Allies and Kirby Fighters 2, and, compared to Triple Deluxe, Star Allies and Kirby Fighters 2, his neutral aerial attack is an aerial Hammer attack instead of a Giant Swing, which comes out much faster. He doesn't even mind the Hammer Flip nerf as much, since his version is now stronger, and his hammer doesn't do passive damage; since Return to Dream Land scales damage down if a hit is "comboed" into, that means he will always be hitting for maximum damage.
  • The two new abilities added in Deluxe are truly worth experimenting with.
    • Sand is one of the most overdesigned abilities in the entire Kirby franchise, inheriting the properties of multiple other abilities and doing their jobs better than them. It has Leaf's invulnerable guard and can even attack out of it with an upwards leap reminiscent of Hi-Jump's normal attack to immediately reposition, and has a stronger version of Whip's charge grab that can only be fired forward. Players will enjoy its arsenal of spammable, simple close-range attacks that have somewhat effective DPS, and sand castles to lay "traps" reminiscent of Poison from Planet Robobot. All of these traits already allow Sand to completely trivialize Deluxe's buffed-up True Arena on their own, but there is more to this ability than meets the eye. Sand's grounded down + charge attack (Golem Crusher) has very high grounded DPS, and releases a small shockwave at the edge of the attack that does more damage than the actual fist itself. And you know how the upwards attack needs to be charged in place for 2 seconds to release a huge Sand Hurricane? Turns out that if you input upwards attack at the peak of a "Hi-Jump" that you do out of guarding, this attack comes out immediately. Oh, did we also mention that Sand Hurricane does almost as much damage as a fully-charged Hammer Flip? Players and even speedrunners expecting Sand to just be an average, safe pick into bosses (and, of course, who all had their eyes on the newly-buffed Dedede and Meta Knight) were completely shocked when the True Arena world record was shattered by Sand with a sub-11 minute time, showing everyone just how even more unbelievably broken this ability could be.
    • Mecha seems to have something for everyone. Not only is it good for close-range attacks (the Flaming Mortars in particular are spectacularly spammy against airborne bosses, and puzzles that require Fire to solve will accept them), but it also allows for you to repeatedly shoot at enemies from a distance, the latter of which can be handy if you want to keep your distance from a particularly hard-hitting foe. Additionally, the air power provided by its rockets is arguably easier to control than that of Kirby's normal Video Game Flight.
  • Magolor's Dash Attack in the Magolor Epilogue, Magolor Surge, is very, very broken. It has some of the highest DPS in the game, builds combo extremely fast, and grants generous invulnerability during use. A fully upgraded Magolor Surge allows Magolor to chain up to three consecutive invulnerable dashes in a row in any direction desired, allowing him to steamroll the entire rest of the game.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: Magolor thanking Kirby for his help in fixing Lor Starcutter and him stating to hope that they could be friends forever is this as of Kirby's Dream Collection Special Edition. While this line was originally implied to just be him sucking up to Kirby to help him get the Master Crown, Magolor's actions in Dream Collection (he built Kirby an entire theme park as an apology for duping him) make the line genuine.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Unfair Magolor Soul is a Game Mod for the original Return to Dream Land which gives Magolor Soul a whole slew of ridiculously overtuned and cheap attacks to turn it into a SNK Boss. Come Deluxe, and the True Arena actually added a much stronger version of Magolor Soul as the final boss who, while understandably more fair, actually shares a number of additions with the Unfair Magolor Soul mod, such as the more complicated laser portals, lingering spikes, faster chained dashes, upside-down super attacks, and more.
• I Knew It!: For the Switch Updated Re Release, many fans expected that there would be a postgame mode featuring a playable Magolor, considering his prominence in the cover.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!:
  • On release, many critics claimed that making the game too much like Super Star and Adventure brought it down. This is mainly because this game was an intentional throwback to Kirby's roots, while Kirby's previous Wii outing, Epic Yarn, significantly shook up the series' formula with its novel arts-and-crafts style and received a lot of praise for it.
  • Despite the many aesthetic changes in the remake, some lamented that the soundtrack wasn't remade at all and was just ported over from the original, albeit with almost imperceptible remastering tweaks.
• It Was His Sled: Magolor is evil and has been manipulating Kirby from the very beginning to get his hands on Landia's crown.
• Magnificent Bastard: Magolor, upon crash-landing in Dream Land, plays the innocent victim to persuade Kirby and his friends into repairing his ship, traveling with him to Halcandra, and defeating the dragon Landia, whereupon he seizes the Master Crown and sets his sights in conquering the rest of the universe, starting with Planet Popstar. What separates Magolor from the other one-shot villains of the series is his personable and talkative personality, going so far as to earnestly thank Kirby for his help even as he betrays him. Having a change of heart in Kirby's Dream Collection onwards, Magolor set a standard of character depth for future Kirby antagonists.
• Nintendo Hard: The True Arena, returning from Kirby Super Star, and just as difficult as ever. Your health items are limited, the bosses are in their EX forms, and once you make it to the final five battles, the door is replaced by a star portal high enough that you can't even bring the Maxim Tomato box through it to at least give yourself a little health boost before the final battle. The Deluxe takes it one step further by adding every boss from the Magolor Epilogue, who are already much more brutal than the EX bosses, nerfing certain powerful Copy Abilities, and turning Magolor Soul into one Eldritch Abomination of a rude awakening for those who were expecting the original fight. Need more signs that Deluxe's True Arena will give you one hell of a time? There are 21 fights, the most out of any Boss Endurance in the series.
• Remade and Improved: While the original is still considered to be the start of a series renaissance and a nostalgic classic for many, Return to Dreamland Deluxe is considered by many to be the superior version, with improved graphics, two brand new copy abilities, an entire side mode devoted to Magolor showing what happened to him after the player defeats him and why he ended up pulling a Heel–Face Turn, Merry Magoland, which allows players to play all the minigames in co-op and an even harder version of the True Arena, complete with making Magolor's Soul, something of an Anti-Climax Boss in the original game, into an utter monster.
• Scrappy Weapon:
  • Hi-Jump. While it is mandatory for certain puzzles, it struggles to find use in any other situation. This is a stark contrast to its previous appearances where it was a solid Boring, but Practical movement ability that had some cool applications against bosses due to the ability to cancel Hi-Jump mid-leap. It isn't even the best movement ability of its type; Wing beats out its base kit without even trying, and the only way to make Hi-Jump faster than it is to learn an advanced technique known as "puff-canceling" to cancel its endlag. And hilariously, because stages weren't designed with this in mind, "puff-canceling" can often make Kirby overshoot his target, meaning you don't always want to do it even if you know how to. It notably has the dubious distinction of having the worst Arena and True Arena clear time by far, and its existence is something of an in-joke among top Return to Dream Land True Arena speedrunners. Deluxe made things even worse for it; not only was it not buffed in any way, but its regular attack was also given almost wholesale to Sand, adding to the latter's already-huge arsenal of game-breaking moves. Ouch.
  • Needle, which struggles to find a concrete niche in the game. While it is fun to use, it simply does not do anything that other abilities can't, and the addition of a new invincible dash attack hardly stands out when half the abilities in the game also have one. It does not represent a unique solution to any puzzle in the game and its DPS against bosses is consistently in the lowest tier. At least in Deluxe, its range helps it score hits against some of the high-flying endgame bosses, which means it can at least comfortably clear the True Arena in the hands of an experienced player... or they could just use a better ability and save themselves the trouble.
  • While effective in what it does including its Socialization Bonus damage buff, returning ability Festival in Deluxe catches flak for being another limited-use Smart Bomb in a game with already two of them (Crash and Mike), leaving it superfluous when its slot could've opened up potential for using old fan-favorite abilities in Return to Dream Land; such as Yo-Yo, Jet, Mirror, Suplex, Archer or ESP, to name a few.
• Tainted by the Preview: Some fans of the original game have cried foul towards Deluxe's visual changes, such as having thick outlines on the character models and the decision to change King Dedede's look to his Club Penguin-esque Kirby and the Forgotten Land redesign. Some of these complaints were alleviated when more gameplay footage was released and showed the updated visuals in a greater capacity, with the backgrounds receiving massive upgrades and Dedede's model being much more expressive than the initial trailer suggested.
• Tear Jerker:
  • Any time "Guardian Angel: Landia" plays.
    • Against Landia itself, it's because of Landia's status as a Hero Antagonist; they were merely trying to ensure the Master Crown doesn't fall into wrong hands... like Magolor's. It gets worse when Team Kirby Clash Deluxe introduces Parallel Landia, who is stated to have succumbed to the Master Crown's evil.
    • The song also plays in HR-D3's second phase on the Wii version...which is the third phase of Metal General EX. Metal General won't give up until either it or its opponents fall... and Kirby just won't die. There's also the fact that this fight is exclusive to the Extra Mode (and the True Arena); by then, the player knows Kirby is playing for the wrong side, which caused many people to assume Metal General was created to protect Landia. No wonder Metal General looks desperate...^SpoilersIn Deluxe, the second phase is accompanied by "Roar of Dedede" instead.
    • It also plays during the first phase of Galacta Knight's boss fight. Assuming that Galacta Knight was one of the four heroes of yore that sealed Void Termina, and that he was thought to be too powerful, it really drives in that he was feeling betrayed by those he was trying to protect.
  • There's the fact that Magolor turned the Lor, the very thing you spent the game rebuilding, against you once he reveals his true motives.
  • Magolor himself receives a massive one in the Extra Mode. Magolor Soul is described as an Empty Shell and a manifestation of the Master Crown, implying Magolor wasn't himself. It's driven in further by a concept artwork of Magolor's second form◊, which looks like Magolor is upside down, and when you flip it right side up, it looks like Magolor is crying. Combined with the fact that Magolor genuinely appreciates the fact Kirby fixed the Lor and that, if further games are any indication, he genuinely sees Kirby as a friend, it establishes Magolor as a tragic character: he wanted power, and now he got it, but at a huge cost: his friends. (And his sanity.)
    • In Deluxe, the second phase of Magolor Soul in the True Arena has three major changes outside of the music. One; as Magolor Soul is staggered, he throws a single apple that can replenish a little bit of lost health. Two; the second phase has his eyes vanish as the Crown's eye remains in his mouth for the rest of the fight, Three; Magolor Soul begins using new attacks, and old ones in new, even more difficult arrangements. In that order, Magolor uses what little magic and control he has left to heal Kirby, fully succumbs to the Crown's will in the process, and can no longer stop it from using everything in its arsenal.
  • In the Deluxe version, there is a mask of Taranza, a bug that looks like him, and Sectonia. Anyone who has played Planet Robobot should be familiar with the Sectonia Clone turning into a being that resembled Taranza. The name of this mask? Old Friend.
• That One Sidequest:
  • The third energy sphere in 6-2 requires Kirby to have Spark and use the Thunderbolt move to hit the third bomb block at just the right time while the elevator is quickly moving forward. Fail that, and you have to start the entire stage all over again.
  • To get the third energy sphere in 7-3, the player will need to get the key from the Key Dee, then make it through a vertical section with fire orbs, lava, and Iron Barbars. The key will be destroyed if it touches the fire orbs or the lava, and it will also be destroyed if it is held on for too long. If this happens, the player has to restart the stage from the beginning, since the key was in the previous room.
  • Earning platinum medals on the Challenge Stages may not be required for 100% completion, but it is a tough task that requires collecting all of the coins, defeating all the enemies, not taking any damage, and finishing the stage with a certain amount of time remaining. This gets even harder in Extra Mode, where all of the challenge stages change where some of the coins are placed alongside the size of certain enemies.
  • A lot of the missions in Merry Magoland are extremely hard to achieve, namely those that involve clearing the hard difficulty in certain subgames, as well as clearing them with a comparatively high score or multiple times in a row. Special mention goes to the hardest difficulties of "Magolor's Tome Trackers" and "Kirby on the Draw", where you get a full taste of what a cheating bastard the computer can be. Even if you're able to overcome this (or bypass it by getting four controllers and leaving only yours active to dominate the competition), there's still the hardest difficulties in single-player subgames like "Egg Catcher" and "Samurai Kirby", both of which rely on you to react at your fastest to a ridiculous degree.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Deluxe, on the surface, seems to be an almost completely faithful remaster of the original game. However, some fans took notice of the massive ability rebalancing that happened in the background, with changes being made to abilities almost completely arbitrarily. Strong abilities such as Leaf, Hammer, Ninja, and Parasol fell victim to the nerf hammer, but several middle-of-the-road abilities like Fire and Spear were also nerfed, while other strong abilities such as Wing, Fighter and Ice were mostly untouched. Sword and Stone gained several new attacks from recent titles, but Scrappy Weapon Needle failed to receive even its single new attack from Triple Deluxe. On the other hand, King Dedede and Meta Knight were given significant buffs despite being already very strong characters, which some fans viewed as taking the spotlight away from Kirby.
• Unfortunate Character Design: Deluxe gives us Hydriath, a water-elemental variant of Goriath fought in Magolor Epilogue that has a crown with a water tendril coming out in lieu of Goriath's hair plume. Like Goriath, Hydriath also has a Golden Super Mode as a Shout-Out to the Super Saiyans. However, this results in the water tendril turning gold too, which makes it look like a tendril of piss.
• Viewer Name Confusion: Magolor's name is often misspelled as Magalor by fans. Even the staff responsible for the localisation aren't immune to this, as this misspelling appeared in Kirby Star Allies and has occasionally popped up in promotional materials in games where Magolor makes an appearance.
• Win Back the Crowd: After the previous two mainline games were met with mixed reception for either changing up the traditional formula or not changing many things about the general gameplay, this game single-handedly saved the franchise and brought it back into relevancy through interesting worlds, bosses, original music, and a surprising plot twist.

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