Review: Princess Peach Showtime!

Available on: Nintendo Switch

Cost: €59.99

Genre: Action Adventure

Developer: Good-Feel

Publisher: Nintendo

Princess Peach is getting her own solo adventure and for the first time, she isn’t the damsel needing rescuing! Use the power of Stella’s Ribbon to use different transformations, each with their own unique abilities to save a host of stolen theatre shows from Grape and his evil plans in this delightful adventure game where Peach is centre stage.

Story

Princess Peach: Showtime! takes place in Sparkle Theatre within the Mushroom Kingdom. While Peach and a pair of toads plan to spend an afternoon watching live shows, the performances are disrupted by Grape and her wicked Sour Bunch, causing chaos in the theatre. Here it is up to Peach to defeat Grape and the gang with a variety of side scrolling levels from fighting aliens with Mighty Peach to baking cookies for ravenous gang members with Patissiere Peach.

There are 10 different Peach personas each with their own special talents to succeed each level. Within each level are also coins to collect that can be used to purchase new dress patterns for Peach and new ribbon colours for Stella, was well as numerous Sparkle Gems to collect to unlock the boss door. Within each round of the theatre there are 4 or 5 levels each with a different Peach costume, and then a final boss to defeat and clear the theatre level to be open again to performances.

Gameplay

With 10 different styles of play from riding horses at highspeed to lasso enemies as Cowgirl Peach, to finding clues and solving puzzles of missing paintings as Detective Peach each style is imaginative and well thought out. I expected more explanation with how to play each style and was wary there would be hefty tutorials, however each style is well thought out allowing simplicity for ease of understanding the rules and mechanics of each style. The controls are smooth and work well with the changing level styles.

A younger age range is definitely the intended audience for the game, the levels aren’t particularly challenging. Most enemies take one hit, and you play each level with 5 hearts, and if you choose to equip the Heart Charm this will raise your heart level to 8 meaning you can take up to 8 hits before being knocked down. I didn’t mind this as a feature, especially for younger audiences to have the option to decrease the difficulty with extra hearts, and for more advanced gamers they can just choose not to use it.

The main challenge is for the completionists aiming to collect all Sparkle gems, but with 2 or 3 replays of each level even the most well hidden sparkle can be found quite easily.

The bosses follow the similar 3 hit structure of most Mario games but each Peach persona has a different skill to beat the boss. There are also a few mini games, or rehearsals, which I have to admit I found quite addictive to complete, playing as Dashing Thief Peach to fly through the sky, avoid enemies, collect gems and win trophies and new dress styles.

Graphics and Visuals

Where Princess Peach: Showtime! shines is in the game design. Each of Peach’s unique costumes are vibrant and charming, while the level designs themselves are well themed and filled but background enough to allow Peach to be centre stage.

I found myself excited to see what the next new costume would be, and each time I unlocked a new Peach persona I was sold. Figure Skater Peach was a particular treat of a level, and it was magical to skate Peach around the ice rink to dance with the other Theets to a sparkling performance to defeat the Sour Minions.

I did find myself delighted by the little quirks of each character, and while I did enjoy some styles more than others, I thought all had originality, I picked up the mechanics quickly and it made for some really fun levels. A fun quirk with Ninja Peach was the ability to hide from enemies behind grass or swim underwater with a bamboo shoot as a snorkel to sneak past the Grape gang.

Longevity

The main story takes around 8 hours to complete, which I did find disappointingly short. However this does fall in line with other Mario titles taking ranging from 7-15 hours. There is replayability, it was rare I got all Sparkle gems on the first try. Unfortunately on replay of the levels there’s no option to skip dialogue, and when some of these levels run up to 10 minutes, this can be a bit tideous to replay the same Mermaid Peach song again just to get that one outstanding Sparkle gem. But once all collected, I can’t imagine there would be much of a draw to pick it up again, as most of the fun for me was unlocking the new Peach styles, and once that’s done, some of the sparkle is gone.

Conclusion

While the simplicity may be a downfall for more seasoned gamers, I felt completely charmed by Princess Peach: Showtime!. The Princess Peach costume transformations where imaginative and delightful, and I was excited to unlock each one and play the different level styles. The gameplay is simplistic but I didn’t see this as too much of a downside given that the intended audience is for a younger age group. As a “My First” adventure game I think Showtime should be a big hit. Enjoyable levels, original bosses and playing as Peach in her first leading role where she is no longer the damsel in distress was a cathartic experience and evolution of Peach’s character. There may not be a great deal of replayability in the game, but the 8 hours of story are extremely enjoyable, exciting and entertaining so it would be a definite recommend from me.