Kirby and the Forgotten Land: How to Beat Gorimondo

Kirby and the Forgotten Land isn’t just a fun adventure through wildly interesting settings, it’s also one of the cutest games to come out of the Nintendo lineup. However, that doesn’t mean your adventure will always be a walk in the Waddle Dee park.

The bosses in Kirby and the Forgotten Land are well-crafted, challenging fights meant to test your usage of Kirby’s copy abilities. Beating the bosses in this game will mean paying attention to the movements of the boss as they telegraph their next attack. With that said, let’s take a look at Kirby and the Forgotten Land’s first big boss, Gorimondo.

Heal Up

When you first enter the stage, you might be carrying some of the damage you took in a previous level. If you are, you’ll find a large stack of bananas (naturally) to the right of the escalator. Keep in mind that if you’re playing in Wild Mode, you’ll have less health than in the game’s default mode. Every little bit counts. Once you’ve healed your wounds, you’re ready to begin preparing for the fight.

Selecting Your Copy Ability

While you’ll enter the stage with whichever ability you had been using before this, there will be three additional copy abilities for you to choose from.

• Ice – A little tricky to use, but worth a try. Kirby can skate around the arena, avoiding many of Gorimondo’s ranged attacks. However, damaging Gorimondo will require you to get up close. Once close enough, you can use your breath attack to deal sustained damage, eventually freezing Gorimondo in a large block of ice. Once the ice breaks, you’ll want to put a little distance between you and Gorimondo before he has the ability to retaliate.
• Bomb – This is as close as you’ll get to having a ranged option in this fight. If you can manage it, Kirby has the ability to run and “bowl” a bomb toward the enemy. The bomb will either hit Gorimondo and explode or sit near him for a while until it explodes on a timer. While you’ll spend a lot of time dodging the rocks Gorimondo throws around, you won’t have to concern yourself with avoiding his stomps.
• Sword – This is your most up close and personal option. There also happens to be a stage objective (worth one Waddle Dee) for defeating Gorimondo with a sword. When fighting with the sword, you’ll want to keep Kirby on his toes. You want to run between Gorimond’s legs (also an objective worth one Waddle Dee) to avoid swipes, jump to avoid stomps, and swing sword to deal damage.

The good news is that any of the available abilities are viable against Gorimondo. Which one you choose is completely up to you and the style of play that you enjoy the most.

Note that if you’re hit during the fight, your copy ability will be knocked out of you. Not to worry, you can try to suck it back up if you’re quick enough. If you don’t manage to recover your copy ability, you still have options. Gorimondo’s attacks will generate stars that you can suck up and then shoot back at the boss. This isn’t the most pleasant or efficient way to take down Gorimondo, but it will do in a pinch.

Part 1 Of The Fight

In the beginning of the fight, you’ll have a few moves to worry about. If you’re at a distance, Gorimondo will throw boulders at you. You’ll want to avoid these as you move up closer to attack with your copy ability. Once up close, you’ll have to worry about Gorimondo’s swipes and stomps. Both can be avoided by jumping at the correct time. If Gorimondo manages to hit you with a swipe, he’ll most likely grab you between his fingers and squeeze you, dealing sustained damage until you wriggle out with the left joystick. If Gorimondo doesn’t grab you with his swipe, he’ll leave behind a row of stars you can suck up (if you’ve lost your copy ability) and throw back at him to deal damage.

Part 2 Of The Fight

Once you’ve taken Gorimondo below half of his health, he’ll change his tactics. In this part of the fight, he’ll use a spinning attack that you’ll need to run away from. Fortunately, his spin attack leaves him dizzy at the end, allowing you a small window to close the gap and get in close and deal some damage.

This stage of the fight is a rather rinse and repeat dance of moving away until Gorimondo becomes dizzy enough for you to take advantage of the opening. Once you’ve defeated Gorimondo, you’re free to collect the cage of Waddle Dees that he drops! If you find yourself having a particularly hard time with the fight, you can always try bringing in a friend with co-op, though they won’t be as powerful as Kirby.

Now that you’ve gotten a feel for the fight, you might want to attempt saving every Waddle Dee available in this stage. To do so, you’ll have a checklist of objectives to complete.

• Clear the stage.
• Slip through Gorimondo’s legs.
• Defeat Gorimondo with the sword ability.
• Clear within 2:00.
• Clear without taking any damage.

These extra challenges may be frustrating, but they’re necessary if you’re trying to collect every single Waddle Dee in the game. Remember that you can come back to these fights. Throughout the game, Kirby gains the power to evolve his copy abilities into stronger versions of themselves. If you want to take on these extra challenges, it might be worth evolving those abilities and coming back later.