YMMV / Kirby Fighters Deluxe

• Abridged Arena Array: Not quite to the extent of other fighting games but at least two stages, Springy Hand Land and Castle Lololo, are completely banned from Kirby Fighters 2 tournaments. Springy Hand Land for having absolutely obnoxious stage hazards (though, similar to Super Smash Bros. tournaments, stage hazards are usually turned off) and Castle Lololo for having a very annoying stage layout that is not conductive to tournament play.
• Character Rerailment: After King Dedede and Meta Knight spent much of their later appearances (since about Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards for Dedede and Kirby's Return to Dream Land for Meta Knight) more-or-less as Kirby's sidekicks, Fighters Deluxe brings the former back to his roots as Kirby's rival, with Fighters 2 doing the same for the latter.
• Difficulty Spike: Fighters 2's Story Mode starts off easy in the first two chapters and it starts much the same for chapter 3. However, the last three battles of that chapter throw some nasty surprises unsuspecting players' way. First, floors 13 and 14 have your opponents at lvl. 12, quite a jump from the lvl. 6 and 7 opponents from previous floors. Since the rivals and the stage itself are randomized for both floors, you might get unlucky and deal with long-range abilities to face off against and a really unfavorable stage like Springy Hand Land that will end you if you're not paying attention. Second, the chapter 3 Summit shows you that bosses resist lots of damage like there's no tomorrow, necessitating picking up lots of Attack Stones in-between battles before getting there. Third, the Item Room's randomized item choices might screw you over if you don't get the items you want for the upcoming battles. Fourth, the Chapter is the first to introduce Score Statues, that do their best to entice you to pick them up, only to find out you should've chose a different item instead. Finally, every time you do fail not only is your score deducted slightly but you can't skip the pre-fight intro and pre-boss cutscenes, making you waste even more time to try again and attempt to succeed. It gets even worse in the Final Chapter where not only are there 50 battles in a row to deal with, but losing three times means restarting the chapter from the very beginning.
• High-Tier Scrappy:
  • Gooey is quite notorious. First, he has a highly diverse moveset varying from the flame-base approach attack, the ability to turn to stone, and an anti-air parasol. But what really solidifies his position is his strength in the air and a powerful and spammable laser attack while doing so that can reach across the entire stage. Combine that with his unique ability to stay in the air for as long as 10 seconds and move quickly at the same time, and Gooey can just stall out the vast majority of his opponents in the air. While not totally unbeatable, he does invalidate a good portion of the cast by himself.
  • Magolor is without a doubt the king of the zoner playstyle in this game, with tons of strong projectiles and big hitboxes to make him frustrating to approach. But to add insult to injury, he also has an excellent teleport move to escape once the opponent does get close, negating the standard zoner weakness of struggling when an opponent gets in. And he can act pretty quickly out of the teleport too, making it very hard to challenge. Magolor also serves to invalidate a large portion of the cast.
• Ho Yay: The story mode of Kirby Fighters 2 involves King Dedede and Meta Knight teaming up to challenge Kirby together as rivals, though it's not hard to also read them as a Battle Couple. The second real fight against them refers to the pair as "Sworn Partners", one of their attacks is to spin around in the air while grasping each others' hands, and the end of said fight includes Dedede weakly reaching out for Meta Knight's hand before they both collapse in defeat. But that's not all; in the final chapter, titled "The Partners Who Shook the Heavens", Dedede and Meta Knight make themselves stronger against Kirby and his buddy by using the Mask of Dark Bonds. The narration following the battle describes their power as "genuine, flowing from their deepened bond", and that due to this they would have been powerful opponents even without the mask. The credits sequence after this also depicts Dedede tripping and falling on the ground as he walks away in defeat, whereupon Meta Knight lands beside him and tenderly offers him a hand, which he accepts.
• Low-Tier Letdown:
  • Hammer Kirby, shockingly. Normally one of the more legendary Game Breaker abilities in the main series, it suffers heavily in transition to a fighting game. This is because his best moves are either nerfed (his hammer swing has its invicibility gutted) or just not useful in a fighting game environment (his famed Hammer Flip that decimates bosses proves about as useful as a Falcon Punch when fighting less predictable opponents). As a result, Hammer Kirby's aggressive rushdown playstyle just falls apart, especially against the many projectile-based or other range-based movesets in the game. Furthermore, in Kirby Fighters 2, the addition of King Dedede, who can do most of what Hammer Kirby can and then some but still suffers from many of the same drawbacks, further reduces reasons to play him.
  • An even worse case of "suffers in transition to a fighting game" is Beetle Kirby. The biggest problem is the signature move, Rocket Horn Dive that is crazy strong in the main series, had its invincibility removed and was made to be much slower and punishable. All of Beetle Kirby's other moves are either short range, or highly punishable, while having very few combos to go with it. As a result, it's rare to see him used.
  • Bell Kirby. All his attacks are slow, often have poor range, and have extremely poor combo-ability that even applies to his seemingly potent jab combo which is easily invalidated through directional influence. But his most glaring weakness is that he literally cannot dodge in exchange for his unique "Bell Block" mechanic, leaving him extremely vulnerable to gobbles/grabs.
• Memetic Mutation: For the second game: "Bandana Waddle Dee can finally be in Smash" ^Explanation Bandana Waddle Dee is a highly requested character for Super Smash Bros. ever since its fourth game. As Kirby Fighters is basically a more Kirby-centric "Smash-like" game, the fact that B.W.Dee is announced to be playable makes it the closest thing the fans can have him playable in Smash Bros.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • In 2, some players aren't too happy about the fact that players cannot freely change the color of their characters like in the previous games. Instead, a character's color is locked to which player slot they are, which uses the same color palettes from Kirby Star Allies. What doesn't help is that not only does this leave out colors for Kirby that were in previous games (such as Red or Purple), the same color rule applies even if there's only one of a unique character, which strangely did not apply in Star Allies.^* For instance, even if there's only one player or CPU controlling Bandana Waddle Dee in a match, he will not have his default appearance if the player controlling him isn't Player 1.
  • Unlike in Super Smash Bros., where items are acquired using a command, the items in this game (just like in other Kirby games) are acquired through immediate contact, so it's easier for enemies to grab recovery and immunity items. It's especially irritating when they grab them after you launch them.
• Tear Jerker: Kracko has a unique pause description in Very Hard mode of Kirby Fighters Deluxe's single player mode written from his POV. What they had him say almost makes him sympathetic in a way, which could explain why he's such a Wake-Up Call Boss in most of his appearances. Good job HAL, you've turned one of your franchise's most punchable bad guys into an officially canon Woobie.
  “YOU...! Did you think I'd forget? The time you smashed into me with your Hi-Jump! That time I was betrayed by Helpers! Or when I was replaced by that mechanical cloud! I-I... Sniff... there's something in my eye...”