Anti Frustration Features / Kirby

• In Kirby's Pinball Land, getting a Maxim Tomato will temporarily block the gap between the flippers.
• Starting with Kirby's Return to Dream Land, if you lose a life during a later phase of a multi-stage boss fight, you'll completely skip the prior phases that were already defeated upon re-entering the boss room. This does not apply if you pause, exit and re-enter the stage, however.
• Kirby's Return to Dream Land:
  • One of Magolor's first attacks in Phase 2 is throwing a bunch of mooks at you. The first one spawned will always carry the copy ability you had to ditch in the previous phase of the fight (due to you having to use Super Abilities) if you entered battle with one. This means you can get your Tornado ability back and not be stuck with having to inhale and spit stars at the boss.
  • This gets inverted while in the sub-stages marked by the star-shaped portals to Another Dimension. Throughout this game (and the series in general) a door is usually a checkpoint, but not the ones that separate the obstacle course and mini-boss areas. If you lose to the mini-boss, you get kicked out of the sub-stage entirely. However, this is played straight in Deluxe in which when you re-enter the sub-stage, you go straight to the mini-boss area.
  • In Deluxe's True Arena, you'll be given an apple to restore some health before Magolor Soul's surprise second phase, a much needed Heroic Second Wind after surviving not only the original bosses but the additional Magolor Epilogue ones as well.
  • In Deluxe, playing the minigames inside of the Lor Starcutter instead of Merry Magoland will give you Stamp Tickets equivalent of your efforts so you don't miss out on stamps.
  • Before unlocking the Merry Magoland True Extra Missions in Deluxe, the game counts your stats if you've already fulfilled a mission's requirement, so you'll be immediately awarded the respective mission stamp so you don't need to do it again.
  • Touching a downed miniboss after depleting its health (which may likely happen in the Magolor Epilogue while you're whaling on it for extra combo points) won't count as a damaging hit, which is useful in Magolor's case so you don't accidentally end your combo.
  • If you lose your copy ability and re-inhale it at the same time as you inhale a regular enemy that also contains a copy ability, you'll always regain your original ability when you swallow them. Unless the enemy you inhaled was a defeated mini-boss—then the mini-boss' power takes precedence. That's because mini-boss abilities are almost always required to get an item in the next area, and it's common to ditch the power you used to fight the boss to grab them.
• In main series Kirby games starting with Kirby: Triple Deluxe (alongside the Kirby Fighters spin-offs), every time you lose against a boss, they will have less health and more cooldown in-between attacks the next time you fight them. Additionally, you're silently given more health for each subsequent attempt. In the main-series 3DS games, losing three or four times in a row gives you an Assist Star item that automatically revives you on the spot should you run out of health in that battle.
• Kirby and the Rainbow Curse will let you skip ahead to the next stage if you lose too many lives in one stage.
• Kirby Star Allies:
  • Objects which require an ability that you don't get from a miniboss usually have a Copy Essence you can use to either take the ability yourself or spawn a Friend with that ability to deal with the object.
  • Objects which require multiple characters have a plate which shows how many you require; should this be early in the area, respawning enemies will be present to help round out your ranks, even if they have to spawn in front of you.
  • The pedestal for the Star Allies Sparkler requires a full party of four. If you enter the area or defeat Hyness without a full team, Friend candidates will spawn in until you have enough. This allows you to use the pedestal without having to leave the stage.
• Kirby and the Forgotten Land:
  • Copy abilities, when knocked out of Kirby, no longer bounce away and they remain for a longer time; considering how aggravating chasing after Ability Stars could be in the 2D games, it would be horrendous in 3D. Enemies whose abilities you need to complete a stage or a specific challenge respawn, and mid-bosses, when defeated, also drop a Copy Essence of their own abilities in case you didn't inhale them. In the Colosseum cups, if a boss knocks an ability out of Kirby and then dies from a lingering projectile or status, the ability will be automatically given back to Kirby in the rest area.
  • Kirby's Mouthful Mode abilities are separate from his Copy Abilities, but still require the object to be inhaled. Rather than forcing you to drop your ability to be able to suck up whatever machinery you need to continue, a prompt for Kirby to inhale appears when you get within breathing distance of the object. This also means that spitting out the object lets Kirby continue using his Copy Ability right away.
  • If you decide to venture away from a Mouthful object without inhaling it and the game will need you to make use of it later, another one will either appear further down or one will simply spawn when you go a certain distance, removing the need to backtrack to the one you passed earlier.
  • For the first time in the series, there is a toggleable auto-swallow feature. So whenever you swallow an enemy with a copy ability, you don't have to spend a second manually swallowing them. At the same time, the fact that it's toggleable means that you can spit ability-bearing enemies out as ammo if you want to.
  • To account for the new 3D aspect of the game, most projectiles have a slight auto-aim on targets and enemies. When the game figures you're aiming in the target's general direction, it'll account for that and have the projectile go straight for it even when you're slightly off-target. Additionally, as shown in a developer interview, attacks have an adjustment effect based on the camera angle; if it looks like they'll hit from your perspective, they will, even if they're not actually spatially aligned. This avoids Depth Deception by working it in your favor.
  • The above interview also shows a feature called "fuzzy landing", where if you try to jump again while landing from a previous jump, Kirby will "snap" to the ground so he can start his next jump. This prevents you from accidentally floating if you misjudge how far Kirby is from the ground.
  • If you finish a stage without discovering one of the hidden objectives, the game will tell you what the objective is. However, it will only reveal one undiscovered objective per playthrough of the stage.
  • Speaking of, if you start an objective that requires doing something multiple times, it will reveal it the first time you do it. It will stay revealed at the end of the stage and doesn't count as your "one per stage playthrough" reveal.
  • You can increase the speed that lit cannon fuses burn through if Kirby is already inside the cannon by holding the attack or crouch buttons to duck inside, keeping you from having to wait. This is necessary to beat the target time for the Dragon Fire stage of Treasure Road.
  • The Treasure Road bonus areas that involve an ability different from your current one will put your first ability in reserve when entering it and give it back when you leave, so there's no need to worry about losing the ability you already had.
  • Treasure Road areas have a restart function in the pause menu if you're dissatisfied with your current time through the stage, meaning you don't need to return to the world map to retry a Treasure Road.
  • Travelling sections which have rewards like a hidden Waddle Dee locked behind certain conditions often have a blue Warp Star at the end, which resets your progress to the beginning of that section so you can go look for it again.
  • In the stages from Forgo Dreams, Elfilin will inform you when you have collected all the pieces of Leon's soul in a given area, as well as say how many are still left in the area if you happen to try the stage again after beating it.
  • If you run out of cans as Vending-Mouth Kirby, spitting out the vending machine will cause another to respawn in its starting location with full ammo, in case you need them for a puzzle.
  • The Gotcha machines are heavily biased in favor of giving a figure Kirby does not already have, meaning players won't need dozens of tries just to get the one last figure they need. In addition, after beating The Ultimate Cup Z, a Waddle Dee will guarantee a figure Kirby does not already have in exchange for a rare stone.
  • If you lose a lot of Star Coins by dying, the next time you head to Waddle Dee Town, the Waddle Dees will send roughly half the amount you lost to Kirby's house; that way, you can make up some of the lost funds.