Kirby and the Rainbow Curse may not be rolling toward Europe until later this year, as Kirby and the Rainbow Paintbrush, those in North America are now just a day away from the pink star’s return.
Reviews have begun arriving, being resoundingly positive aside from a few that the Wii U exclusive didn’t click with. We’ve gathered as many as we could find below, which will hopefully help you decide whether to pick Kirby’s clay-moulded adventure up.
* Destructoid – 9
“Kirby and the Rainbow Curse will amaze fans of traditional stop-motion animation with its achingly charming visuals. It works great as a lighthearted single-player platformer, a wild and boisterous multiplayer campaign, a tough-as-nails action-puzzle challenge, a bite-sized Off-TV handheld experience, or a big beautiful HD spectacle on your television screen, all depending on how you choose to play it.”
* EGM – 9
“Kirby and the Rainbow Curse is a fine successor to Canvas Curse—it’s on par or better in many ways and should provide a potent challenge for even the most experienced platform player. It’ll also keep you on your toes as it constantly adds new elements over the course of the game’s seven worlds. And, of course, it does all that in a charming, colorful fashion that can only be decidedly described as staying true to what Kirby’s all about.”
* Game Informer – 7.75
“I never fully fell in love with only having secondary control of Kirby. Drawing platform lines is undeniably different, but I’m not convinced it’s the best way to play a platformer. Rainbow Curse smartly toys with the mechanic, adding surprising twists and changes, and by the end I was having a good time – even if I still was yelling at Kirby to just do what I told him every now and then.”
* GameSpot – 5/10
“Kirby and the Rainbow Curse is a tiring game. It’s taxing without being rewarding, like doing a mile on a stationary bike and discovering that you only burned away calories from one bite of your lunch burrito. The game gets frustrating quickly due to repetitive obstacles and there’s not much incentive to dig into a game that won’t give you that agency. It’s a mediocre romp through a gorgeously detailed world that doesn’t give you the control you need as a player, which ultimately dulls its shine.”
* GamesRadar – 4/5
“Kirby and the Rainbow Curse is one of the series’ better experiments, with warm, lively visuals working in tandem with a dynamic, unusual approach to platforming. It’s no epic, and the extras are a little on the shallow side, but it’s great while it lasts. The Wii U is in desperate need for strong content and justification for its extravagant controller, and Rainbow Curse provides both.”
* GiantBomb – 2/5
“Playing Kirby and the Rainbow Curse was a tedious experience from beginning to end, and it lacks the “time and place” factor of Canvas Curse. If Nintendo was more open to bringing its properties to mobile and tablets, I could see the game being more appealing as a cheap eShop or iPad title. As a full-fledged $40 Wii U title, however, it only feels like a disappointment.”
* GoNintendo – No Score
“Kirby and the Rainbow Curse continues the recent trend of Kirby games that really offer up something special. Kirby’s Return to Dreamland absolutely blew me away. Kirby Triple Deluxe had some fantastic tweaks and additions to the Kirby formula. Kirby and the Rainbow Curse offers up not only a unique way to control Kirby, but an entire different approach for the series. All too often, us gamers spend years talking about games to no end. When those games come out, we blast through them as quickly as possible…and then it’s on to the next thing. I know I’m guilty of that and it really is a shame. This is something that developers have spent years finely crafting and we should certainly slow down and enjoy it.”
* Nintendo Life – 7
“Kirby and the Rainbow Curse is perfect for a lazy Sunday afternoon: a pleasant roll through a gorgeous world, with some novel concepts, and one of the most beautiful games the Wii U has yet seen. However charming the game may be, Rainbow Curse is a few strokes from greatness: overly repetitive mechanics, underused ideas, and a failure to integrate its clay theme into gameplay in any meaningful way keep it from reaching the lofty heights to which it potentially could. Well crafted, but not a masterpiece.”
* Polygon – 8.5
“Kirby and the Rainbow Curse shines because it’s a simple game that delivers superbly on a simple concept. You’re repeating many of the same actions again and again, but with each new stroke it feels more refined, more graceful. I’ve never felt smarter or more sophisticated while playing a Kirby game.”
* ShackNews – 8
“Ten years ago, Canvas Curse helped Nintendo explain its handheld oddity better than any press presentation or Q&A session ever could. The gameplay was so intuitive, so immediately familiar and smartly designed, that it went a long way toward convincing me that a touch interface could do more than simple mobile experiences. A decade later, those mechanics work just as well wrapped in a beautiful new presentation, but by its very nature, it feels more at home on a handheld. Just in this case, it’s a handheld system that’s tethered to your living room console.”
* USGamer – 5/5
“Don’t let Rainbow Curse’s relatively small length put you off; it’s a sublime experience that completely washes its hands of the padding most games employ to justify a retail release. If you’re used to finishing games out of a sense of weary obligation, expect to be pleasantly surprised when this latest Kirby spin-off leaves you fully satisfied by the end of its final level.”
* Wired – No Score
“If I have one caveat it is that Kirby is fairly short. I finished it in a few play sessions over the course of one evening and the subsequent day. You can go back and get the collectible doodads you missed out on, but I find myself fairly reluctant to actually do that for a few reasons: The levels themselves are pretty lengthy, and many of them auto-scroll at a fixed pace. So going back in to find hidden treasures would mean 99 percent of my time would be spent doing things I’ve already done, and 1 percent completing the tough little mini-challenges that the collectibles are locked behind.”
Kirby and the Rainbow Curse review round-up
