A new festival of battle is about to begin! Test your limits with...The Ultimate Choice! Kirby and friends will face off against a gaggle of super-spicy bosses in their unending quest to gobble up everything in sight!”
— The Ultimate Choice Pause Screen Description • Kirby Star Allies
The Ultimate Choice is a sub-game in Kirby Star Allies similar in concept to The Arena sub-games from previous games in the Kirby series. This one is different from The Arena sub-games, as the difficulty can be selected.
The player can select Kirby without an ability, a Copy Ability, a Friend, or a Dream Friend; pressing X when selecting a Copy Ability will allow the player to become the Friend instead. The player can also add up to three more friends, which can be controlled by other players or CPUs. Before starting and after every round, Kirby and his friends will be taken to the rest area, with six Maxim Tomatoes in Sweet Breeze. On higher difficulties, some of the Maxim Tomatoes get replaced with Energy Drinks, one for each extra difficulty level, culminating in six Energy Drinks at Infernal Crisis. Depending on the difficulty and the boss defeated, treasure chests containing Picture Pieces appear after defeating a boss.
If playing on the Soul Melter difficulty, all healing items will be replaced by regular tomatoes, and if playing on Sizzling Threat, Fiery Showdown, and Infernal Crisis, maximum stamina is reduced, even more so at the Soul Melter difficulty. The player can use amiibo to get picture pieces and food items in the rest area or during battles (except when they are on the Star Allies Sparkler). However, like in Kirby: Planet Robobot, using amiibo functionality even once will put the amiibo insignia next to the player's clear score after completing The Ultimate Choice.
If playing on Soul Melter EX, maximum stamina is the same as in the first four levels of difficulty, unlike the previous high difficulties, and healing items will be two of each three foods: Maxim Tomatoes, regular tomatoes and Energy Drinks.
The higher the difficulty level, the more points are awarded for clearing The Ultimate Choice. Completing Soul Melter EX unlocks the option to change Kirby's appearance to his original design (used from Kirby's Dream Land to the Super Famicom remake of Kirby's Star Stacker).
Depending on the difficulty, what bosses will be faced and how many bosses are fought will vary. All bosses are fought in the same order on each difficulty setting and each difficulty adds more bosses onto the order. This linear concept carried over from Kirby: Planet Robobot. The rest area starts out in a beige room similar to the Dream Palace, but as the difficulty rises it can eventually transition into a fiery, darker setpiece. If playing on Soul Melter EX, the rest area is first shown as the dark variation seen on the last four difficulties, but as the fights progress, it transitions to an even darker, decrepit scenery, with a visible hole in the wall showcasing red, black and green skies.
From Fiery Showdown, mid-bosses use their harder variants found in Far-Flung - Starlight Heroes, and The Three Mage-Sisters fight as per their rematches. In Soul Melter, Void Termina uses a new coloration, and is slightly harder than its Story Mode counterpart. In Soul Melter EX, The Three Mage-Sisters are fought using their Retaliator[1] forms from Heroes in Another Dimension but their battles remain the same as their rematches otherwise, and Void Termina becomes souped-up once more, with another new coloration and a further difficulty increase.
Plays when fighting Goldon & Silvox in Soul Melter and Soul Melter EX. This refers to how Goldon & Silvox fight similarly to Lololo & Lalala, and how Decisive Battle with a Mighty Boss is a remix of Castle Lololo.
"Ordeal: Save This Kingdom!"
Plays when fighting against Kracko in Soul Melter. This refers to Kracko's appearance as the first Ordeal boss in Team Kirby Clash Deluxe.
"Ordeal: Save This World!"
Plays when fighting against Twin Kracko in Soul Melter and Parallel Twin Kracko in Soul Melter EX. This refers to how Tougher: Kracko is the last quest in the Empyrean before the Decisive Battlefield is unlocked.
Jingles
"Defeat"
Plays after being defeated.
"Broken Heart"
Plays in the Game Over screen. Only the initial jingle is heard.
"New Mode Unlocked!"
Plays after clearing any difficulty from Sweet Breeze to Infernal Crisis.
"All Big Switches Pressed!"
Plays after clearing Soul Melter.
"Kirby Perfection!"
Plays after clearing Soul Melter EX.
"Kirby Dance"
Plays after unlocking the Dream Button.
Results Screens
"The Road is Long... / The True Arena"
Plays in the Game Over screen.
"Friendly Field"
Plays in the results screen for any difficulty from Sweet Breeze to Infernal Crisis.
"Max Happy Town!"
Plays in the results screen for Soul Melter.
"Welcome to Dream Land"
Plays in the results screen for Soul Melter EX.
Related Quotes[]
“
How much can you take? Find out in The Ultimate Choice. It's now unlocked!”
The face Kirby makes while highlighting the Soul Melter difficulty is a reference to the Kirby: Right Back at Ya! episode Frog Wild, where it matches the possessed Kirby's expression.
If the difficulty is set to Soul Melter EX, Kirby will have Void Terminas inner core's, Void Soul's, and Void's "normal" expression on his face.
Grand Mam is the only boss that appears in Story Mode that does not also appear in The Ultimate Choice. This is because her battle requires the Fire ability and an ability with the slash property (ie Sword or Cutter), which may make the fight incompatible with certain Copy Abilities and Dream Friends.
The hot sauce bottle
The hot sauce bottle used to increase the sub-game's difficulty has the Jambastion insignia on it.
Before unlocking Fiery Showdown/Infernal Crisis, the color scheme of the sub-game's logo is primarily yellow. Before unlocking Soul Melter, it becomes primarily red. After unlocking both, it changes to primarily black.
In Soul Melter (EX), if Player 1 is playing as a Dream Friend that has completed Guest Star ???? Star Allies Go!, the Morpho Knight (EX) battle will use the battle music associated with that Dream Friend.
After clearing The Ultimate Choice, a message, which varies depending on the difficulty chosen, will appear proclaiming the player's victory:
Sweet Breeze through Sizzling Threat: Victory!
Fiery Showdown and Infernal Crisis: Huge Victory!!
Soul Melter: Incredible Victory!!!
Soul Melter EX: Truly Incredible Victory!!!
The "intensity gauge" setup of The Ultimate Choice is very similar to the custom difficulty modifier systems in Kid Icarus: Uprising and Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U. It further mimics these games by showing increasingly infernal and more threatening visuals on the difficulty selection menu as the level is increased, with the Soul Melter visual depicting how Kirby looks after being possessed by the Demon Frog; in the Soul Melter EX visual, Kirby is given the same face as Void Termina's inner core/Void Soul/Void. In this way, Kirby Star Allies can be considered the first Kirby series game to show distinct influence from games directed by Masahiro Sakurai that were developed after his departure from HAL Laboratory.
Kirby is only allowed to throw Friend Hearts in this sub-game during the battles against Morpho Knight, Void Termina's core, Void Soul, and Void as they can be used to recover friends who are bewitched by these bosses' powers.
The code used to unlock Soul Melter EX ( + + ) is the same one used in Kirby's Dream Land to unlock Extra Mode.
When Player 1's health is depleted (and no one revives them in time in multiplayer), the jingle from Kirby's Dream Land will play instead of the usual jingle.