After several years, comes the second game starring the beloved Princess Peach, after almost twenty years. This time for the Switch, Nintendo offers us a theatrical adventure with many nuances and variety.
Princess Peach: Showtime! is available on Nintendo Switch.
For Peach, a good day that started with a plan of relaxation and entertainment ends in an unforgettable adventure. She and some of her Toad decide to visit the Sparkle Theater, a huge theater with many plays, a tempting promise to hang out and visit. Shortly after arriving, the witch Grape attacks and takes over the theater (and her works), trapping everyone present inside the building.
After all that kilombo, Peach meets Stella, who would turn out to be a very nice little star who acts as the theater's guardian fairy. The latter accompanies Peach on her mission to recover the theater, and allows her to use the power of Sparkle, which allows her to access various transformations depending on the occasion. Part of his mission will be to rescue the Sparklas from the theater, who would be like the protagonist actors of each play. If you're a little confused by the way things are named in this game, you're not the only ones, Stella, Sparkles, Sparklas, they all sound very similar.
The game introduces the Theets, puppets with round heads and a big nose that can light up (a la Rudolph the Reindeer). Within what they did for the Mario universe, I don't think they are the most inspired or the most interesting creatures, but it is an easy way to generate characters without having to design them much. Like Toads now that I think about it, but less expressive, not having a visible mouth. These are going to be almost 90% of the characters we meet in this adventure.
THEATER ROYALTY
Princess Peach: Showtime! It is an adventure game with some platforming, not entirely 2D, since the levels have some depth. The theater works as a huge hub where we can access the levels. Each of these represents a play in which, in one way or another, we will end up taking part.
The gimmick of this title is that Peach can take various forms, depending on the game we are playing. Throughout these levels she will be a swordswoman, cowgirl, pastry chef, skater, thief, ninja, detective, kung-fu master, mermaid and even an intergalactic warrior. Peach really can do anything. Each of these transformations changes the way we play, giving us quite a variety of gameplay in each stage.
The game is not going to bombard us with tutorials for every small or big gameplay change that each level introduces. Luckily, these are optional, and if we don't figure out on our own what needs to be done and how, with the X button we can check.
All of these variants allow the gameplay to escape the platform premise to other less expected genres.
The detective levels will have us solving mysteries, the pastry levels will have us decorating cakes, there are even ship sections, some stealth sections, and even fast auto-scroll running. This while we see the level as if it were a play, with a brief story, beginning, development and end.
Following the line of the franchise and this type of games, there was no shortage of collectibles. In each level we can collect special stars, in general as we advance we will obtain them, but some are optional and we can miss them. Obtaining these stars will tell us more or less where we are in the level. There is one Theet per level that is well hidden, which will give us a bow if we find it. There are also normal coins almost everywhere. Collecting all the stars and the bow of each level will reward us with a photo in the gallery.
When we are not with a transformation, we can use the action button to make a short attack with Sparkle power, which is also used to activate objects. Generally interacting with things gives us some extra coins. There are enough coins to ignore this if it weren't that the conditions of some stars in the levels are under making, for example, all the plants in a small section bloom.
There is a store on the ground floor where we will be able to buy outfits as we finish levels, generally they are new colors for Stella and some special prints for Peach's dress. In this we are going to spend most of the common coins that we collect
What I liked the most and the strong point of the title are the bosses. Once we complete the four levels of each floor of the theater, we will have to fight a boss to go up to the next. These are very well designed, they are fun fights and if you played any Mario games from the last few years, they more or less follow that design line.
DOES THE CURTAIN CLOSE?
Princess Peach: Showtime! It suffers from some small performance problems that are already classic on the platform, and that somewhat show Nintendo's increasing need to improve the hardware (When will the Switch 2 be released, friends?).
The game doesn't look as good as similar ones, which came out years ago and didn't have these problems (Odyssey without going any further, to give an example), and yet they present quite random framerate drops, making some cutscenes look ugly. It could be a little better optimized, surprisingly it worked better for me on the Lite than on the main console playing docked.
Another point to highlight is that the gameplay is very, very simple. We have a jump button and an action button, and that's it. This is without counting the “pose” button that only serves to access some secret areas. In some moments we won't even have to jump, with just one button everything is simplified. This is reinforced in some sections where we only have to press the single action button at the right moments, almost like a QTE, or mash it quickly for the same thing. The investigation and puzzle parts are also pretty obvious:
For the latter, the game is still fun and has a level of product quality that one expects from mainline Nintendo games.
Perhaps this simplicity is because this particular one is more aimed at boys as well. You can make something that is for children and adults alike, like this title, something contrary to what it does Foamstars, which ends up being something childish in another style, one that gives cringe to adults and children. Point for the Mario franchise on this.
The game is not particularly long, it can be finished in about eight or ten hours by playing without rushing. These types of games usually have many more virtual hours of play if we decide to complete them 100%. When I finished it I thought it would be a fun task, but it didn't take long for me to change my mind. The collectibles are not necessarily difficult to find (although there are some well hidden), the problem is that if we miss any, we will have to repeat the level from the beginning. There is no way to restart sections manually or choose parts of each level. Taking into account that each level lasts ten to twenty minutes, and that we cannot skip the scenes and dialogues, it makes it not very fun (and repetitive) to look for that star or bow that we were missing.
In my opinion, there is also not enough incentive to complete the game. Upon finishing it, we can continue playing and some new things to do are unlocked. A new seller will appear in the store, who will exchange the stars for decorations for the theater. And two new, quite demanding challenges are unlocked: the Hide and Seek and Boss Challenges. In the first we will have to replay the levels and find hidden Theets, basically replay almost the entire game at least to be able to find them all, and if we miss one, we will have to replay that level again. The Boss Challenges are especially difficult, each boss has up to three special conditions that we must meet, these include not receiving damage (usually common to all challenges) among other really screwed up conditions.
THE BEST
- A fun (albeit short) adventure that almost everyone can enjoy.
- A relaxed game to play without causing much trouble, ideal for the little ones.
- A lot of variety of gameplay that manages not to bore or overwhelm us.
WORST
- Some framerate drops at random times.
- To find the missing collectibles we have to repeat entire levels, something that takes time and discourages replayability.
- The gameplay is too simple.