YMMV / Kirby & the Amazing Mirror

• Best Boss Ever:
  • Even if it's considered That One Boss, the fight against Mega Titan is still extremely fun and hectic with its Multi-Armed and Dangerous Rocket Punches.
  • The boss of Candy Constellation: Master Hand and Crazy Hand. For added awesomeness, use the Smash Bros. Ability to make it seem even more fitting for the battle against the Hands. ^note There's a fight with a lone Master Hand a couple of rooms before the boss fight with the Hand duo, suggesting this is what the devs were hoping the player would do.
• Breather Boss: With all four Kirbies attacking him from underwater, Gobbler is an absolute pushover who can go down in seconds, because the four water blasts bypass the boss' invincibility frames.
• Contested Sequel: Amazing Mirror is a bit of a divisive entry in the Kirby series, due to its Metroidvania aspects. It is generally considered very solid as a standalone game, and many fans enjoy the more open-world style of gameplay, but others think the game doesn't mesh well in the overall Kirby series and can be overly confusing and difficult to navigate, considering it one of the worst games in the series.
• Game-Breaker: In multiplayer, one player can stand outside a Warp Goal door and repeatedly call the other player(s) to warp them back to their location, allowing them to play the goal game over and over again to grind extra lives, health and batteries with no backtracking needed.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • The Bronto Burts in this game stalk Kirby relentlessly and will distract you from the more dangerous enemies.
  • The Heavy Knights are aggressive and attack fast, and since they are bigger than the average enemy, Kirby takes longer to inhale them and is left vulnerable if he tries.
  • Leap will kiss you if you're not careful in the air, and you're helpless for a few seconds thanks to Kirby getting out a handkerchief and wiping the kiss off of his face. If this happens above a bottomless pit, it will result in a lost life.
  • Droppy, who steals your ability and turns into the enemy you got it from. If it steals a boss-only ability like Hammer or Smash, it instead turns red and runs around randomly.
  • Roly Polys are commonly placed in areas with slopes, and will quickly roll into players who approach. They are especially annoying in large and vertically-scrolling rooms as they are more difficult to spot in conjunction with the smaller screen.
• Older Than They Think: While this is the first time the palette swaps of Kirby have plot relevance (due to them being clones created when Dark Meta Knight used his powers on Kirby), this isn't their first appearance. Their first is Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land. Kirby 64 also had palette swaps of Kirby in the minigames (with red swapped out for blue), and even before that, there was the yellow Kirby called "Keeby" in Kirby's Dream Course. There even are some fans who call Yellow Kirby "Keeby".
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Some spots in the game require you to hold on to a specific ability until you reach a puzzle that requires it. If you take the wrong path, you'll have to return to the hub and retread the path, and if you lose your ability along the way, you'll have to find it again.
  • One-way doors, which can make exploration and backtracking more tedious as you may have to leave the area and retrace your steps if you take the wrong door and it happens to be one-way.
  • Boss and mid-boss health scales the more human players there are in the game. The idea is that it is meant to make it so that bosses can't be easily defeated by a whole group, however the scaling still applies if a player decides to fight a boss solo, making bosses far more difficult for one player than in single player.
  • In a multiplayer game, important collectables will only go to the player whose save file is in use (e.g. they will go to player 2 if their save file is chosen at setup). This also includes health extensions, meaning only one player will benefit from them while the rest don't, and this especially hurts players who join using new save files.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike: One of the more difficult Kirby games for several reasons:
  • You start with very low health (six bars, thankfully one can find up to four health extensions by exploring and finding secrets).
  • Enemy density is much higher than usual, and they are often placed in inconvenient spots, with a few ambushes thrown in. Many of them even attack much faster and more effectively than they do in previous installments.
  • Many tight flying sections, with spikes or airborne enemies all around.
  • You lose your ability after one hit from any attack.
• That One Boss:
  • Mega Titan. His impenetrable armor — except against electric abilities, namely Spark, Beam, and UFO — and fast, wide-reaching attacks make for a frustrating fight. He becomes smaller and more difficult in his Titan Head form (not a good thing when he's still launching missiles at you from every which way).
  • Returning from Nightmare in Dream Land, Phan Phan qualifies as That One Mid-boss. Between his pattern being randomized, moving insanely fast, and his attacks coming out quickly with little warning, he is by far the most annoying miniboss to fight. On the bright side, at least he does give you the strong Throw ability.
  • Box Boxer is very annoying with his constant grabs, throws, and stunlocking attacks. General rule of thumb is, try fighting him up-close and it won't be a fun time for you.
• Unintentional Period Piece: This game prominently features Kirby wielding a blocky pink cell phone with an antenna, instantly dating itself to the mid-2000s. Perhaps tellingly, no Kirby game released afterward features modern tech to this extent; even the one based around a high-tech invasion, Kirby: Planet Robobot, focuses on fantastic machinery like cyborgs and Humongous Mechas.
• Unfortunate Character Design: Bombar is a sentient jet plane that is supposed to wear a Scarf of Asskicking... but the sprite limitations make it accidentally look like a Slasher Smile.

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