Princess Peach: Showtime! Review – Nintendo Switch OLED
If you’re an adult looking for your next new Nintendo game, Prince Peach: Showtime! might not be for you. If you’re a parent looking for a game to play with your family, read on!
Enchanting Gameplay in the Mushroom Kingdom
Nintendo games and characters will always have a charm to them that is very difficult to ignore, as a fan or not. Princess Peach: Showtime! takes you and the Princess to the Sparkle Theater, the best place in The Mushroom Kingdom for a budding theater enthusiast. Every play that is being put on, is another level for the Princess to explore. Each play has a theme that will unfold before you on stage.
The game is filled with charming graphics, bright colours, and cute new characters known as the Theets, and new bad guys known as The Sour Bunch (they’re really bad Grapes). There are only 2 Toads in the whole thing, so it is very far removed from a normal Mario Universe setting.
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A Theatrical Adventure Awaits
The Princess adventures her way through each play to help save the Theets and their plays from The Sour Bunch. To do so, she transforms into something that fits into the theme of the play. Princess Peach goes from her usual pink and floofy attire, to a swordsman, a cowboy, and even a baker. Each new Princess packs a themed punch, and there are 10 different Peaches, all with amazing costume design.
Simplicity in Gameplay
Princess Peach has a very basic “enter stage left, mash the attack button, jump a bit, collect rewards and continue to the right” gameplay loop, which is really not overly satisfying as a fully-fledged adult with other things to do. You use a whole two buttons throughout the entire game. The charm and cute graphics and levels wore off after about 4 hours in game, when monotony got the best of me. It is a truly short game in the landscape of other first party Nintendo games which have kept me playing for probably thousands of hours over my Nintendo fan-girl career, topping out at an 8-hour full game playthrough for me.
Monotony and Magic Mixed Together
While it had its moments of monotony, there was bound to be something new about the next play. Maybe we would be baking pies or entering into a classic wild west cowboy chase. Peach even has some Elsa in her, as we see her save a play as an ice skater. The fact that all of this plays out on the setting of a stage, using front and back space on every level to add another dimension to the gameplay (think Rayman: Legends) was great to see. The bosses were wonderfully designed, and I died only once to one of the late game encounters. If collectables are your thing, they do exist, but I have zero want to go back and find them. An eager child may think differently though.
A New Direction for Princess Peach
I feel that this is a wonderful place to let Princess Peach grow from, much like we have Luigi’s Mansion, I would love to see the Princess grow into a franchise of her own. Do I think this should be a fully priced Nintendo offering? No.
However, this game is absolutely the way to sit down with your kid and introduce them to gaming. It’s an easy, great looking adventure, with very little depth, that is easy to pick up and put down again. Soon you’d be able to introduce them to Pokémon, Mario Odyssey, and if you really hate them, Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.
