Kirby's Return to Dreamland marks the return of a classic Kirby game on a home console and the end of the Wii era.
This game can be considered the direct (or at least a spiritual) sequel for Kirby's Adventure (NES) and Kirby Super Star (SNES) because the mechanics and enviroment are basically the very same. You can jump, fly, eat, transform and warp around various worlds and stages through a real-time world map. In opposition to Kirby's Epic Yarn, instead only losing beads, this time you got a *small* life bar. Gameplay is simple, solid and precise (in my opinion, way more precise than Kirby's past Wii title), making use of the Wiimote sideways and it's two main action buttons (1 and 2). Motion controls are also present - but in a more clever way than Donkey Kong Returns experienced, not interefering directly on your basic actions neither causing trouble (remember those random deaths on DK Returns?). Graphics are also wonderful, staying close to Super Mario Galaxy textures and matching the Kirby universe without problems. The most part of classic power-ups, food and enemies (there's a lot of new faces!) are here in a colorful, tridimensional presentation.
Multiplayer was decently improved. They finally gave Kirby a 4-player simultaneous experience in actual stages. Waddle Dee, King Dedede and Meta Knight (badass!) are available for the party. There are a few minigames that can be unlocked through the adventure mode, which will grant hours of fun with your friends. Talking about unlockables, this time, you got a real challenge. Each stage has a certain amount of power spheres (or whatever they're called) to be found. By collecting them, more minigames, challenges and ability rooms will be unlocked inside the airship, giving the main game a few more hours of fun.
The soundtrack hasn't changed much, but still well polished. Old tracks were remixed (like the classic Kirby tune) and new ones gives just the right ambience to the stages. Sometimes it just will sound repetitive when a song appears twice in a world, since they only have five stages. Quick (but remarkable) boss battles are here too, with new and old folks (you won't be surprised by findind Whispy Woods as the first boss AGAIN!) doing their job to ruin Dreamland once more.
The main game itself won't offer you a huge amount of challenge: it's easy to pass through all the stages and reach the final goal, like any other Kirby game. It's not a total piece of cake too, 'cause you may die sometimes by just fooling around, specially on pursuit stages (pssh! Spoiler!). I believe that they kept the low difficuly to make a suitable game for all ages, also considering the young ones. The hard part actually lies within reaching 100% completion rate, like said here by many reviewers.
As my final words, I'd say that this is the Kirby game that you were waiting for since Kirby Super Star. Even if not showing up something new to the series, everything feels in the right place on its universe, and you may have a lot of fun with the simultaneous multiplayer experience and its extras if you need a co-op afterlife for it! It's definitely a respectful title to end the Wii era along Zelda: Skyward Sword, coming next month...