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Introduction:
Princess Peach Showtime! Takes place within the Sparkle Theatre, a popular destination for theatregoers in the Mushroom Kingdom. Aside from the pair of Toads accompanying the Princess on her interrupted vacation, Showtime! Steers away from the familiar Mario world, replacing the overused enemies with new antagonist Grape and her wicked Sour Bunch. While the Sour Bunch feel somewhat generic, it's refreshing to experience a Peach focused adventure free from the main series' tropes of Bowser kidnappings, flagpoles, and Super Mushrooms. Nintendo has given Peach something entirely original and reminds me of Luigi's Mansion giving Mario's brother his own identity, and I genuinely hope this marks the start of an ongoing series for Princess Peach!
The show Must Go On!
In “Princess Peach Showtime,” the graphics and level design are beautiful, and I felt really immersed me into the different themes of each level.
The graphics are vibrant and colourful, including amazing costumes for Princess Peach to wear and beautifully detailed environments on each of the levels. The themes vary from glittering castles to an underwater concert.
The levels have a diverse range of challenges and obstacles for players to overcome from platforming sections to rhythmic puzzles, each level is thoughtfully designed and I personally enjoyed the mermaid levels and the baking levels a lot as they felt far more.
From Swordfighter Peach to Detective Peach
In “Princess Peach Showtime”, the costumes and level themes are crucial for the theatre environment. They can go from whimsical fairy-tale landscapes to vibrant musical stages and each level feels independent from each other and are extremely detailed.
The costume themes are incredibly intricate and allows Peach to dress in some amazing outfits from a sword fighter to a mermaid and help the levels feel more immersive. These costumes not only are beautiful, they also add unique abilities and bonuses that work closely with the levels.
Each level has been incredibly fun from mystical castles to bustling cityscapes. Each level has hidden secrets and some have rhythmic challenges that help the levels feel different from each other. My personal favourite levels were the ice skating productions as I felt they were loads of fun!
Boss Battles and Collecting Sparkles
The boss battles in “Princess Peach Showtime” are fun and test your skills and reflexes and are all uniquely themed around each boss. They are creative and imaginative bosses that can range from an electrical snake (which I found very challenging) to a cat.
The battles themselves are action-packed and fast-paced, with needing to dodge attacks and timing your moves to unleash powerful attacks to chip away at the boss’s health.
Another element to the game is collecting sparkles as they are the key to being able to progress further up the theatre and unlock the boss battles on each floor.
These sparkles are scattered throughout each level, appearing in various locations and often hidden in cleverly designed spots. You need to explore each levels environment by navigating obstacles and solve puzzles to collect these sparkles throughout.
Sometimes, collecting the sparkles is not easy as they can be well hidden and require precise timing and platforming skills to reach them. Additionally, certain levels may contain special challenges or puzzles that must be completed to access the hidden sparkles, adding an extra layer of difficulty.
Customisation
The dress customisation feature allows players to choose from a selection of incredible patterns which some are themed around the different themes/levels. They can range from a disco ball pattern to an stripe pattern.
In addition to customising Princess Peach, you can also accessorise her friend Stella to change the colours of her bow, which can also be themed around the different levels for example the swordsman is red and blue.
Summary:
Princess Peach Showtime is an exciting adventure game where players can explore colourful, fun themed worlds with Princess Peach and solve rhythmic challenges and fight enemies. I found the customisation of Peach’s dress and her friend Stella’s bow colours to be a fun feature to play around with. I also found my favourite levels to be the bakery themed levels or the ice-skating themed levels as there was very little fighting in the “classic” style but instead using the theme to fight the enemies for example in the ice skating level, being able to skate on the ice and skating into characters to be able to fight the enemy. Overall, I found this game to be easy (which I prefer) and suitable especially for kids to play, but could be a fun and relaxing adventure for older people to play!
