Kirby and the Forgotten Land’s upcoming Nintendo Switch 2 upgrade, Star-Crossed World, is dropping on August 28, but until now we didn’t have very many details about what exactly the big update to Kirby’s biggest adventure would entail. But a new trailer today has cleared up a lot of questions around the scope of this sparkly upgrade, including a look at what new enormous objects Kirby can fit in his ridiculous stretchy mouth.
The upgrade comes with the usual slate of performance improvements for the base game of Kirby and the Forgotten Land, and yeah, dang, the original campaign sure looks smooth. But the meat of the upgrade is in the new Star-Crossed World content, which is unlockable once you’ve finished the first world of Forgotten Land’s campaign.
In it, a glittery meteor smashes into the Forgotten Land and transforms familiar levels into Starry Stages, where shimmering star pathways open up new areas and star fragments power up monsters into stronger versions of themselves. There are also new coins to collect, new figurines, and a new boss rush in the Colosseum.
But really, it’s the level changes that are the most exciting. While some of the shifts seem to be just interesting little branching paths in familiar places, other Starry Stages appear significantly transformed, including one level where waters part and you run around on the ocean floor. These stages also take advantage of three new Mouthful Mode transformations. In one, Kirby eats a spring and is able to bounce extremely high. In another, he eats a big gear and can roll around, including up and down and along walls, opening up a whole new dimension to movement. And in the third, Kirby can eat a big sign and slide down slopes really fast.
Nintendo Series Tier List
Nintendo Series Tier List
The big takeaway from today’s trailer is that Kirby and the Forgotten Land’s Switch 2 upgrade seems like it’s trying to earn its $20 upgrade price tag (or $80 full price, if you don’t already own the Switch 1 version). When it was first announced, there were some concerns about how expensive the update would be relative to what players were getting out of it. But Star-Crossed World seems like a proper, full DLC for Kirby’s first-ever 3D adventure.
And a well-deserved one, too. If you somehow skipped Forgotten Land first time around, the Switch 2 version seems like a good opportunity to revisit a game we gave an 8/10, saying it “successfully warps the series’ classic mix of ability-based combat, platforming, and secret hunting into the third dimension.”
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
