Kirby and the Forgotten Land is already a smash hit on the Switch only a few weeks after its release. The game quickly broke sales records in Japan, moving hundreds of thousands of copies in its first week in that region alone. Not only is it selling well, but reviews for Kirby and the Forgotten Land are solid too, with praise heaped on its experiments with Copy Abilities, upgrades to combat, bonus challenges, and more. All in all, Kirby and the Forgotten Land seems to be a standout game even for the Kirby franchise, meaning it deserves the honor of a proper sequel.
The Kirby franchise doesn't often have direct sequels to individual games, perhaps thanks to the Kirby franchise's unstructured timeline, but Kirby and the Forgotten Land's innovations make it worthy of an exception. While the game's plot wraps itself up nicely, HAL Laboratory could derive an idea for a sequel by studying Nintendo's work on Super Mario Odyssey. Its journey through many highly diverse worlds, as well as the new abilities Mario gained with Cappy's help, seem like prime concepts to adapt into a Forgotten Land sequel. Kirby and the Forgotten Land is already an ambitious game, but a sequel could go even further.
Learning from Super Mario Odyssey
Kirby and the Forgotten Land's various levels are already quite diverse. Not only does Kirby move through a long list of different biomes, but he visits different types of ruins as well, ranging from amusement parks to industrial districts. A sequel could go even further by traveling between lots of different worlds, however. Forgotten Land's Elfilin possesses remarkable powers over portals and interplanetary travel, meaning he could serve as a gateway to worlds, characters, and enemies far more diverse than Forgotten Land contained. Chasing a new enemy across the universe while befriending a wide range of adorable aliens sounds like a great angle for a Forgotten Land sequel plot.
A sequel could add to Forgotten Land's gameplay with Elfilin's help too. Super Mario Odyssey famously introduced Cappy, who allowed Mario to perform a range of new hat-throwing tricks, including possessing enemies to overcome obstacles. Elfilin's ability to open and close portals has a similar amount of potential. A Forgotten Land sequel could have Elfilin accompany Kirby through levels and open up portals in certain places to help Kirby solve puzzles. He might also help Kirby teleport around the battlefield in combat to ambush enemies or evade attacks, adding an extra level of skill expression to combat alongside Forgotten Land's robust Copy Ability upgrades.
Kirby and the Forgotten Land's Sequel Potential
Kirby and the Forgotten Land doesn't just deserve a sequel because of its strengths; it would be a great way to improve on the game's shortcomings as well. For example, the Kirby franchise isn't known for its difficulty, and while Forgotten Land has some moments of significant challenge, it tends to be pretty easy overall, even during the newly added Wild Mode. A Forgotten Land sequel could turn up the heat with tougher enemies, more complicated puzzles, and so on. After all, Super Mario Odyssey introduced some major challenges of its own, in spite of Super Mario's generally approachable design. A Forgotten Land sequel could do the same for Kirby.
Since Forgotten Land is still such a new release, fans will have to wait quite a while to find out what HAL Laboratory wants to do next. Reusing many of Forgotten Land's core components could make development of a sequel easier, but if it were to follow Super Mario Odyssey's premise, there would still be a lot of new work to be done. Regardless of HAL's eventual sequel plans, though, Kirby and the Forgotten Land is clearly a new benchmark for Kirby game design. HAL's next installation in the series needs to learn from Forgotten Land, whether it's a sequel or not.
Kirby and the Forgotten Land is available now for Nintendo Switch.
