How is that a bomb? And does anyone even really care about the critical reception of a Kirby game?

You have high standards if a game falling in the 70s is considered 'bombing'. Plus, I associate a game 'bombing' with sales, rather than metascore. Lesser scoring games can still sell well, after all.

Then I guess games like Kirby's Epic Yarn should have been given a 70 instead of an 89 overall :P

It all depends on the reviewer's perspective. Do they mind relatively easy games? Do they dock games that are too hard like Dark Souls?

I mean, Pokemon ORAS was once docked by IGN with one of the reasons being "Too much water" when it was nature of its original game, Ruby and Sapphire.

It's all on the perspective of the reviewer. Not every reviewer thinks the same way as you may view a game.

I think if they priced it more reasonably, people would be less harsh.

Why is it high standards to expect consistent quality from the franchise? Do you think fans should settle for a game that is substantially worse than expected because it’s not terrible?

So, for example, Pokemon games are comparable to Kirby games in that they generally score around the same as Kirby games. Do you think fans have standards too high of the first outing of a mainline Pokemon game on Switch is merely a 73%?

The only reason the game is yellow in Meta is because the expectations of this title were way higher than that of Robobot or *insert Kirby game here*  it introduced a bunch of hype mechanics but didn't implement them properly + lack of content + lack of difficulty- coupled with the novelty of being one of the first new AAA titles on the system.

So yeah, this game had no chance with critics. But I'm pretty sure HAL didn't have much time to develop this game, so I don't care. At least they're giving us free updates, like Splatoon 2 is doing to compensate for the mediocre launch content.

what kind of free updates? i haven't heard about this

cool  my kids have been pestering me to buy it but i have been hesitant spending 60 on this..but knowing it has free updates is certainly nice to hear

I mean high standards in the sense that a general score of 73 is considered 'bombing' for a game. in the 70-80 range, a game would still be considered 'good'. Even games in the 60 range can still be enjoyable. It's not a matter of settling for something that is 'lesser' than previous games, but enjoying, or not enjoying said game, and look forward to the next game.

Reviews are just guidelines. Ill still pick this up because its Kirby