Welcome to my Team Kirby Clash Deluxe Review! This year marks the 25th anniversary of Kirby and to celebrate Nintendo will release a trio of games based on our favorite pink blob. Team Kirby Clash Deluxe was the first to come out and I have to say that for me it was a breath of fresh air. I've only been playing RPGs, MOBAs and Fighting Games for a while now and I needed something different to unwind. What got me excited about this game was the fact that it was free-to-play or free-to-start. However, the fact that it had microtransactions worried me a bit. I've played other 3DS games with a similar model and got rather disappointed (I am looking at you, Pokémon Rumble). Despite this I was more than ready to give it a go, I have played a lot of this in the last few days and I would like to share my opinion on it.
GAMEPLAY
This game is essentially a boss rush game. You assemble a team of four and try to beat the boss as fast as you can. Similar to other free-to-play games you can't play the levels whenever you want. You have a Vigour bar that depletes every time you fight a boss. From five to five minutes the bar will fill by one point and when you have the right amount you'll be ready to head into battle!
You can take the role of four different classes as well as choosing your teammates roles. The classes in this game are Sword Hero, Hammer Lord, Doctor Healmore and Beam Mage. Sword Hero is fast and deals moderate damage, it can also shield others. Hammer Lord deals tons of damage, however, it is very slow. Doctor Healmore provides support and healing. And finally Beam Mage, the most broken class because he can stop time. Want to have that shiny platinum medal? Play Beam Mage.
After you beat a boss you gain experience, to level up, and Gem Fragments, which are used to buy new gear at the Shoppe. Each boss has four Heroic Missions to complete, if you manage to complete them you will earn Gem Apples or even Rare Fragments.
Gem Apples are needed for everything! They can be used for things like filling your Vigour bar, buy armor and weapons or get wandering adventurers sooner. The only way of getting Gem Apples is from completing Heroic Missions, the Gem Apple Tree that grows apples every twelve hours and buying them from the Shoppe. Rare fragments are used to buy level 10 gear and DX gear. Also, based on your score you will get a medal, the highest medal you can get is platinum but you will have to be very quick to get it!
To help you achieve this you might want to step into the Shoppe and buy some support items. You can buy Attack Potions do increase your damage or Stamina Potions to raise your health. And if you want to level up faster you can also buy EXP Orbs. But be careful when you use them, they only last thirty minutes!
Before fighting a boss you can use your Streetpass to seek out wandering adventurers to aid you in your quest. However you can only use them for a couple of fights, then they will disappear and you will have to wait before seeking out new ones.
There is also a small statue where you can scan your Amiibo to get more fragments, but they can only be scanned once a day.
This game also features a Wireless Mode so you can play with your friends locally. By doing so you'll game 1.5x more exp than normal. It is a shame that it does not have a real online mode though. Playing with someone else really enhances the experience.
MY EXPERIENCE
After the game launched I played alone for a couple of days but then I got my brother to play with me and as I said before, is a totally different experience! The AI of your teammates is not the best, sometimes they just stand there doing nothing or attack the air... This can really hinder your gameplay and prevent you from getting better times. However, when playing with my brother I would get platinum medals non-stop and in two days we managed to unlock most of the game.
My brother and I bought some Gem Apples to speed things up a bit but in the end, it was not necessary. Since we were gaining 1.5 more exp we were constantly leveling up, and by doing so it refilled our Vigour bar, so we never stopped and we did not feel the urge to buy more gem apples. We were already filled with apples from all the Heroic Missions we were completing. We did hit a cornerstone though. All the Gem Apples we had were used to get the best DX Gear and now we don't have enough to unlock the last boss battle, which costs 180 Gem Apples! All we can do is wait to get more from the Gem Apple tree and in the meantime, we will try to get our characters to level 50.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Overall it'ss a good and fun game and the microtransactions should not stop you from playing it. However if you are playing it alone you will progress much slower so you might want to spend some money on Gem Apples. I advise you to buy at least 50 to make your tree grow, it will almost triple the amount of Gem Apples you get daily.
The only thing that is truly lacking in this game is a real online mode. Other than that I think this was a quite successful attempt at a free-to-play game with micro transactions. I have spent fifty cents on it and I felt truly rewarded. No other game of this genre has done this for me. There is no reason why you shouldn't play this game.
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