While Kirby and the Forgotten Land can be relatively easy to beat on the main path, there are a lot of optional challenges that can really try the patience of players.
- One of Circuit Speedway's missions is to beat the first race in under 20 seconds. While beating it in under 25 seconds isn't too difficult (which is required to obtain one of the hidden Waddle Dees anyway), beating it in under 20 seconds requires extremely precise timing with steering and ensuring that you don't get stuck in any mud at any point. Until you find out you can just jump on the tire stacks instead of steering around them.
- Each boss stage (outside of the final gauntlet at Lab Discovera, thankfully) has a mission that requires you to defeat the boss without taking any damage, all of which are difficult on their own.
- Sillydillo can be tough to take on every mission at once. Even though he's not too hard to deal with if you're familiar with the dodging mechanics, his spinning move makes it harder to hit him, and if you spend time trying to dodge them, you won't be able to defeat him in time. Also if you're not careful enough, he can trap you in his cage (which is an instant death attack if you don't escape within 10 seconds), which damages you anyway. It's a good thing that in the rematch against him in "Gathering of Beast Council", you only have to worry about defeating him in under a minute and 30 seconds, meaning you can focus on taking him out as quickly as possible.
- In the Presence of the King, which features Forgo Dedede as a two part boss battle, is perhaps the most frustrating one of these, as three of the missions are not to take damage, not to get hit by his fire attacks (easier said than done because it bypasses the invulnerability window of Ice and Gigant Sword), and to beat him in 2 minutes. What happens if you fail to fulfill any of these? If you don't immediately suicide Kirby, you have to try again later to get another chance, as you're railroaded straight to Lab Discovera afterwards. However, it is possible to skip the cutscenes and exit the Lab stage, at least before the boss encounters, allowing you to retry the previous boss fight if needed.
- A bit going from above, there are two frustrating "no-damage run" missions in the form of "The Battle of Blizzard Bridge"note and "Gathering of the Beast Council"note , which force you to fight a boss damage-less at the very end of the stage. If you get hit, you either have to let Kirby die and lose 100 coins or start all the way at the beginning of the stage.
- The Twin Wild Frosty duo is arguably the tougher of the two, because unlike Clawroline where you have a relatively large arena with one target that can be completely blocked by Gigant Sword or Ice (meaning you'd still have to be careful with not getting hit when attacking), the same can't be said about the two mini-bosses. One of their attacks involves eating you, which bypasses that aforementioned invulnerable state. The arena is also smaller and it's easy to get stuck in a corner and hit by one of the two.
- "The Beast Pack's Final Stand"'s final Waddle Dee requires you to get to the end of the stage without falling into the lava in the Cone Mouth section. While already reasonably difficult due to Cone Mouth's limited moveset (what with its attack having a cool-off while platforming on falling platforms) and the Big Red Tortuilding taking shots at you in the background, it's made extremely infuriating by the fact that if you fail, you have to redo the stage from the beginning, which usually takes about 10 minutes to get back to said section (while most stages have subsections that are optional and can save you a lot of time if you're just looking to complete a mission or two, all of the subsections here are mandatory and are very time-consuming), due to the fact that the Cone Mouth section is what ends the stage.
- The last mission in Enter the Fiery Forbidden Lands requires you to destroy seven flaming rocks with the Water-Balloon mouth before they hit the ground. If you miss even a single one, you have to start the stage over, since they don't respawn. And since the section this must be done at is right at the end of the stage, you have to do the entire stage over again just to get to that point. As if that wasn't enough, to break the first three, you also have to go through the secret area in said room each time to get Water-Balloon Mouth before they spawn. If you didn't realize this and they spawned, it's too late and you'll have to either start the stage over or make Kirby lose all of his health and lose 100 star coins to respawn at the checkpoint right before the area with the flaming rocks.
- What's worse is that the last set of flaming rocks also hit an area where the last Waddle Dee is at. Fail to hit those, and you also need to either repeat the stage or lose all of Kirby's health just to rescue that Waddle Dee.
- Though they're only for a bit of extra Star Coins and not required for 100% Completion, getting the target times in the Treasure Roads can be absurdly tight on some of the later ones. Three of the most difficult ones in this regard are "Freezing Fight! Frosty Ice Trial" (1:30) due to the difficulty of defeating Wild Frosty quickly, "Rush and Roll! Falling Needle Road" (0:30), which requires you to constantly maintain momentum with the Crystal Needle ability by running into enemies and star blocks while not falling off the path, and "Attack! Masked Hammer Trial" (1:40), which is an onslaught of enemies ending with Wild Bonkers that doesn't have a lot of ways to optimize your time.
- The Treasure Road "Burst and Rise! A Path Full of Pipes" in the first area can be very tricky if you aren't good with Cone Mouth yet. You have to be really precise with hitting the leaking pipes (while also avoiding enemies), meaning that missing even one means a couple of seconds wasted. And speaking of seconds, you only have an entire minute to clear it in Wild Mode.
- The Time Crash Treasure Road "Stop Time! Slow-World Scramble" is a bit of a Guide Dang It! moment. In Wild Mode, you only have 10 seconds to beat it, yet you're expected to know the full capabilities of the Time Crash ability. You might know that you can use the Time Crash to slow time down, but if you don't know that you can also touch enemies to extend that window, you're in trouble. You have to touch the enemies effectively so you can have that window of time, because as soon as that Time Crash wears out, you're out of luck. It's made a bit more bearable in Spring-Breeze Mode, as you're given 40 seconds for this one instead of 10.
- The Dragon Fire Treasure Road "Melt and Glide! Race to the Cannon" is particularly tough. Once you light the fuse, you need to quickly break all the ice blocks that are blocking the fuse from reaching the cannon, and the Dragon Fire variant of the Burn attack is tougher to control than the regular Fire and Volcano Fire variants. It’s also easy to accidentally use the Burn attack while in the air when you were trying to use the Fire Breath attack instead, which will waste time. If the fuse gets put out by an ice block, it’ll become a lot tougher to clear this Treasure Road in 1:30 in Wild Mode, and if you want to beat the target time of 1:00 for this one, you’ll need to know that you can crouch while in the cannon to make the fuse reach the cannon much faster.
- Tilt-and-Roll Kirby Level 3 on Extra Hard difficulty. The original Level 3 was already tricky enough, but now you have Gordos rolling around to make life a living hell as you struggle to balance your Kirby around efficiently without dropping them into a pit, with a sharp zig-zag path at the end determining whether or not you make it into the goal. The last section on "easy" also has narrow walls that are missing in the Extra-Hard version, meaning the jump in difficulty is significantly higher than on Levels 1 and 2. And getting the goal time of 30 seconds requires near-perfect timing and heavy amounts of practice. Thankfully, the Extra Hard versions aren't required for 100% Completion, but they do yield Rare Stones which could be useful for evolving weapons even further.
- During the Flash Fishing minigame, getting the Bling Blipper requires extremely precise timing near the end. Whenever the button shows, you only have a split second to press it. Press it too soon, and you'll fish a dud. Press it too late, and you'll be pulled in the water. Its only saving grace is that it's the same button (X) every time.
