Though the Kirby series is well known for branching out frequently into new and different gameplay styles, the core platforming series still firmly remains centered around Kirby's cope abilities. Ever since Kirby's Adventure, dozens of copy abilities have made their debut, though many have a tendency to disappear for a few games before being brought back in a later entry. Kirby: Planet Robobot had a solid balance of new and old abilities, and the Director of the game recently talked about how abilities were chosen for this game.
The third and final "Ask-a-thon" was just published on Miiverse, wherein Shinya Kumazaki answers questions asked by fans on Miiverse. When the question about copy abilities came up, Kumazaki cited time and hardware restrictions as a contributing factor to the amount of abilities that made it in. Furthermore, balancing becomes an issue if too many copy abilities are included, so the team tries to keep it to 25 or less. Here's what he had to say:
In the past 5 or 6 years, we've gained over 10 new abilities so we're always struggling to balance out the old and new ones. We were also restricted by development time and hardware limitations. But even from the perspective of game balance, once you go over 25 copy abilities, you start to see an effect on the frequency of each ability per stage and on the balancing for the new Robobot elements. Even with the limited number of abilities that made the cut, the command inputs make up for it with a wide variety of actions so it isn't such a problem.
The rest of the interview can be found here; there's plenty of interesting topics discussed, such as how Kumazaki's pet cat provided the voice of the final boss.
What do you think? What's your favorite copy ability? What did you think of Planet Robobot? Drop us a comment in the section below.
[source miiverse.nintendo.net]
Comments 12
Planet Robobot is still one of my favorite Kirby games. As far as the copy abilities, I always liked the fighting, sword, and bomb abilities. The poison one in Robobot is good too.
I miss Kirby 64 system.
Combining abilities and finding one which you liked was awesome.
I hope they bring that mechanic back somehow.
Great game
its not my fav kirby game but its a nice game after all ... but the game lag too much ... i guess fps problem ?
@Gridatttack I would LOVE that! I do see why they don't do it currently. Having combined abilities for all powers along with the expanded moveset for each ability would be a nightmare
@Gridatttack I feel like we're past that now. I loved that system, too, but I like the current system where an ability has a whole plethora of options.
I still don't like that they brought back that stupid fore/background switching mechanic, but it's only a minor part of the game this time, so I can overlook it with all the other awesome features this game offers.
@peeks If you run the game on a New 3DS you won't get any lag
@peeks That's weird, I played it on the old 3DS with 3D effects on (The 3D was unexpectedly good in Planet Robobot for me!) and I didn't get any lag at all.
UFO will always be my favorite.
ESP is a great new ability tho probably a bit OP (aren't all the good abilities OP tho?)
@Oat Plus the base abilities in Kirby 64 were very vague and general concepts which made it easier to come up with combo abilities. Some of the abilities seen in other games are more specific, could you imagine trying to combine Poison or Circus?
What we really need back are some of the things they did in Squeak Squad, particularly the belly mechanic and Ability Scrolls. The belly mechanic adds a sense of flexibility and the added challenge of inventory management to the gameplay (yes, they do have the single item slot for food now, but that's way more limited) and Ability Scrolls make it more exciting to reuse old abilities.
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