So I played the new Princess Peach game recently: Princess Peach Showtime! I figured I should try it out to take a break from some other grinds and relax a little bit. We will get more into that later, but I should start out by saying that the game is fun. It is a kind of silly fun where you just do your best job cosplaying and taking the stage. The plot is pretty simple. A bad guy taking the name of the absolute worst artificial flavoring ( I like grapes, just not like that.) takes over the shows at the theater and Peach must stop her evil scheme. However, even if the plot is pretty standard, some of the antics in this game did surprise me. For instance, there are ten main transformations that you use throughout the game for the different plays. Some are combat-oriented, some are puzzle-oriented, and some are a mix of both. The combat transformations are usually pretty straightforward. I don’t think you were expecting any complex combat systems from Nintendo, but I thought I would give you a heads-up. The puzzle ones, on the other hand, can be a little tricky the first couple of times. There is one in particular early on that had me doing multiple retries, but the puzzles aren’t usually that bad. Do note that each play locks in which style you transform into so you only need to use that one until the stage ends. Which is beneficial since you don’t need to switch pretty control schemes. Not that it would make the game that much harder.
Now this game is fairly linear with not much room for backtracking. The number of times I missed a collectible and needed to replay and redo a level was quite a lot. Especially since sometimes taking too many hits or missing combos can cause you to fail. Also, each level has at least one secret collectible hidden in a little bonus area that you need to find and they can be easy to miss if you aren’t careful. Especially when you are just fighting through enemies and get lost in the rhythm. Although you do not need every collectible to beat the game. You only need 100 Gems to beat the game and the game has over two hundred so you should be fine. Again, the game isn’t really trying to make things difficult for you. It is just trying to have fun while showing Peach off in fun new costumes.
So with all that being said, I enjoy my playthrough of the game. I may do a quick play every now and then if I feel like it. I do think that while there is a lot of creativity on display, the game does feel a bit limited. After all, you could probably get away with playing this game on an SNES controller with the amount of buttons this game requires. A bit of an exaggeration, but with all the style the game has going for it and the number of cool moments you take part in, I do wonder if we could’ve had more. Again, I did enjoy the game. I do want more games like this in the future. Maybe not exactly the same style, but I do want to explore more with Princess Peach in future games. After seeing what she can do in this game, I am convinced she just plays along with Bowser’s kidnapping schemes out of boredom. I don’t want to spoil anything, but she can handle herself just fine. Have a good night everyone!
That Casual Gamer Guy 