I generally don't care for in-game recognition of specific members of the community. In jokes and memes that aren't about specific prominent figures so much as common remarks about the game's oddities are okay, though.
Hm.... That depends on the person. I prefer a good story and gameplay and while I don't think the Klonoa spinoffs aren't bad, I think that the more puzzle-ish aspect of them kind of ruins the flow of the game, especially since the second game iirc has a harsh ranking system that almost demands that you do perfect on the stages to get an S rank.
Gradius V is indeed a good game, but I think that it was a bit too mechanical for my liking. Doesn't make it a bad Gradius game at all, but eh... it wasn't as good as the awesome game that was Gradius Gaiden. If it stemmed to more on what the previous games and not much tech, then I would appreciate it a lot, especially since I'd rank it as one of the most active Gradius games of all time. Talking about this reminds that I have to make a list regarding that, specifically.
1.3 had laid the grounds for Terraria for what's to come, and for how expansive it was since 1.2, I can 100% agree that the game should've ended off as the last major update. While I don't mind the additions that 1.4 made, playing Journey or Classic (even expert to an extent) on the newest version makes the game feel a bit like it's giving too much of your hand. Take this with a grain of salt though, as i spent more time in modded Terraria than in Vanilla 1.4.
You definitely have a different mindset that I have, and I appreciate it a lot. I know that Terarria is all about it's community, but I personally believe that they're doing it a bit too much now that it's making what used to be it's own game into a sorta fangame.
I'll give you Kirby's Adventure being on par with games like Mario 3 in terms of ambition, but by the SNES I view it as no different than what most franchises did with sequels. Kirby was never anything special in that regard. I just don't see how Kirby's attempt to iterate on itself are above and beyond what most franchises were doing at the time by the time you get to SNES. KA1 laid a foundation that throughout the past 30 years hasn't changed all that much and that may as well have been the first game in the series with how is set the blueprint that everything after it would iterate from.
On an objective level yes. If a franchise goes from routinely being excellent to just being great, that technically counts as worse right? I gave RE as a personal example earlier of a franchise that I still love, but don't think reaches the heights of quality and uniqueness that it once did.
SS expanded movesets weren't just "a couple new moves" but rather lite fighting game movesets that redefined the way you engage with the core mechanics. The simpler copy abilities in Adventure and DL2~3 are sort of situational and the pacing is completely different as you are forced to work with more limitations in these games. Also that kind of moveset was very rare in SNES platformers, most of then having one or two moves, so 20+ abilities with 4~8 moves each is no small feat. Add on top of that its very unique minigame structure and great co-op feature (maybe after wii era this doesn't seem like a big thing, but I can barely think of snes coop platfomers, let alone that allowed it seamlessly) and yes you have a very ambitious game. I really think you underestimate the amount of work and thought that went into this title.