"Nintendo's Balan Wonderworld"
For a game so small and so simple, it feels odd having so much to say on it, but here we are. Nintendo has struggled to make Peach their own character for decades. There were a handful of games that came pretty close like the first 3 Paper Mario Games, Mario Odyssey, and, most related, Super Princess Peach. I have yet to play it, but the general consensus on that game is that it's "fine", but they were hoping Peach would get a game that would actually make use of her as her own character instead of making what can be somehow described as "2D Mario for Babies."
Well, here we are! This is that game! This is Peach's first solo game in 19 years and the first one that dares to make a unique gameplay style for her alone, similar to what they did with Luigi, Captain Toad, Yoshi, Donkey Kong, and Wario. This has all of the makings of an incredibly successful game that would spawn its own dedicated spin-off series that would get a new game every once in a while. And yet... after playing this game, It's become apparent how little this game offers. But I'm getting ahead of myself as there is actually a fair amount of stuff to appreciate.
The game as a whole looks quite good. The cutscenes are incredibly well-polished, I love the new character and costume designs, I love the animations of Peach's moves in her costumes, and I love the stageplay theming and the little details done to make it pop like how the camera moves and how the stage props show up, it sells us on the bit here. There are a couple of technical issues with this game I'll get into later, but on a purely artistic level, this game is quite strong and manages to make a unique impression. I also really admire the ambition to, like I said at the top, give Peach their own type of game that fits her as a character. There truly is no game quite like this one in the Mario series.
But that seems to be where the good things kind of end for me, so let's start with some of the more minor issues and slowly build from there. To keep on topic, yes, the game from an art direction standpoint is incredibly strong... however, it's clear that this game is struggling on this ancient ass system because not only is the resolution, even in docked mode, weirdly low but there are a couple of moments where the game chugs down to comical levels. It's most noticeable in cutscenes, costume transformations, and some of the bosses near the end of the game. So that's not great, but to round out the aesthetic gripes I have with this game, I don't think I like the game's music all that much. None of it sounds as bad as say, Yoshi's Crafted World (keep this name in mind. It will be important later), but none of it really jumps out as all that good apart from a couple of songs in the Cowboy and Mighty Peach segments.
If you're wondering how the game is narratively for some reason, don't bother. The extent of the story is that you get trapped in a theater with some purple guys who make everyone depressed and you have to make everyone not depressed (See? Just like Balan! Like I said earlier!). There is one minor story beat that happens later that had me sit up for a second, but it's quickly reversed so that's great. Looove that. Now, don't get me wrong, I was not expecting this game to have a super deep story. But some people pre-launch were hoping at least for something small and comedic similar to the modern-day Paper Mario games, but it seems to be a bit closer to Mario Wonder in this regard. Nothing special, but it doesn't need to be. However, this flaw seems to compound when I talk about the other issues this game has.
Princess Peach Showtime, weirdly enough, doesn't feel all that fun to play. Which is weird coming from.. a Nintendo-published platformer? It's like.. usually the one thing they get right. Peach's controls are sluggish, janky, and imprecise at points. The controls somewhat improve with a couple of the costumes like swordfighter, but it never feels all that fun to use. The only costumes that I actually had a genuinely fun time playing with were the Dashing Thief and Mighty Peach. All of these different costumes control very simply and just feel like the watered-down abilities of characters from other games, it doesn't make me feel like I'm "powered up" it makes me feel like I'm caught up to where I should be. (See? Just like- wait.)
Also, if you were hoping for a single costume that would have its own dedicated section in the game that wasn't already shown in the game's numerous trailers, then I'm sorry to disappoint you, but apart from one you get at the very end, every single costume you get has been shown in the trailers. I guess this is the fault of the marketing, and I'd definitely take quality over quantity, and these are all distinct enough to where I couldn't think of too many more to add, but at least hide them!
This game is also PISS easy. Not like normal Nintendo Easy where the games are still engaging, like so easy it becomes boring easy, without any way of making the game any more difficult for yourself. Now, again, I didn't expect Peach to be a "hard" game, but I at least expected it to be on the level of something like Mario Wonder or Luigi's Mansion 3, which were also easy, but they were also fun and engaging. This game takes the easy scale so far in the other direction that it just isn't that rewarding. You get 5 hit points (or up to 8, if you want), combat arenas and puzzles are incredibly simple, and bosses never pose as a threat and can sometimes be defeated after a single round. The ones that drag are the ones that are less fun and the ones that start to be kind of fun and interesting end so incredibly quickly that I feel like I'm getting edged out of fun gameplay.
The result of all of this; the lack of any challenge throughout the game, the sluggishness of the controls, the mega-basic bosses, the fact that none of the costume mechanics have any depth, and the nature of this game having only a few levels per costume but them being weirdly long, makes this possibly the single most boring Nintendo Published switch game. There are a bunch of switch games I personally think are worse, and this game does have a couple of redeeming qualities, but when you are making a video game for entertainment, then it not being entertaining means it has failed its job. I was initially going to give it a middling 5/10, but the longer I thought about it, the more the game's sleep-inducing gameplay and lack of direction kinda made me sad.
Though, it's not all that surprising. Through data mines of the game's demo, we have found that the game was developed by Good-Feel, the creators of Kirby's Epic Yarn, Wario-Land Shake It, and the two most recent Yoshi games. I didn't really like Crafted World all that much either, but at least my expectations going into it were already on the floor and it was part of a series I lost any and all interest in. This is a brand-new game. And one, based on those data mines, we can tell has been in the works for a while. Its code name "PJ037" hints it started development in between Yoshi's Crafted World "PJ033" and Kirby's Extra Epic Yarn "PJ040". Seeing as how the latter was revealed in September of 2018 and the Switch dev kits released in 2016, I think I can safely assume that this game has been in development since 2017, which would have been a whole 7 years of development. When you play the game with this assumption in mind, you can easily see the cracks of a long and tumultuous game development cycle in nearly every corner of this game. It feels like a game that was born from the idea of "Hey! let's make a peach game!" and they didn't know exactly what they wanted that game to be so they just tried to sample a bunch of small and basic minigames to see what stuck. It lacks any kind of direction or any interesting elements aside from its stageplay theme and some creative designs. It feels like it was supposed to be so much more, or at least something different. Let's hope that whatever they plan to do with this series next, whether a sequel to this or a brand new thing, they come up with a more solid direction for the game to take.
Because, frankly, Peach deserves better than this.
For a game so small and so simple, it feels odd having so much to say on it, but here we are. Nintendo has struggled to make Peach their own character for decades. There were a handful of games that came pretty close like the first 3 Paper Mario Games, Mario Odyssey, and, most related, Super Princess Peach. I have yet to play it, but the general consensus on that game is that it's "fine", but they were hoping Peach would get a game that would actually make use of her as her own character instead of making what can be somehow described as "2D Mario for Babies."
Well, here we are! This is that game! This is Peach's first solo game in 19 years and the first one that dares to make a unique gameplay style for her alone, similar to what they did with Luigi, Captain Toad, Yoshi, Donkey Kong, and Wario. This has all of the makings of an incredibly successful game that would spawn its own dedicated spin-off series that would get a new game every once in a while. And yet... after playing this game, It's become apparent how little this game offers. But I'm getting ahead of myself as there is actually a fair amount of stuff to appreciate.
The game as a whole looks quite good. The cutscenes are incredibly well-polished, I love the new character and costume designs, I love the animations of Peach's moves in her costumes, and I love the stageplay theming and the little details done to make it pop like how the camera moves and how the stage props show up, it sells us on the bit here. There are a couple of technical issues with this game I'll get into later, but on a purely artistic level, this game is quite strong and manages to make a unique impression. I also really admire the ambition to, like I said at the top, give Peach their own type of game that fits her as a character. There truly is no game quite like this one in the Mario series.
But that seems to be where the good things kind of end for me, so let's start with some of the more minor issues and slowly build from there. To keep on topic, yes, the game from an art direction standpoint is incredibly strong... however, it's clear that this game is struggling on this ancient ass system because not only is the resolution, even in docked mode, weirdly low but there are a couple of moments where the game chugs down to comical levels. It's most noticeable in cutscenes, costume transformations, and some of the bosses near the end of the game. So that's not great, but to round out the aesthetic gripes I have with this game, I don't think I like the game's music all that much. None of it sounds as bad as say, Yoshi's Crafted World (keep this name in mind. It will be important later), but none of it really jumps out as all that good apart from a couple of songs in the Cowboy and Mighty Peach segments.
If you're wondering how the game is narratively for some reason, don't bother. The extent of the story is that you get trapped in a theater with some purple guys who make everyone depressed and you have to make everyone not depressed (See? Just like Balan! Like I said earlier!). There is one minor story beat that happens later that had me sit up for a second, but it's quickly reversed so that's great. Looove that. Now, don't get me wrong, I was not expecting this game to have a super deep story. But some people pre-launch were hoping at least for something small and comedic similar to the modern-day Paper Mario games, but it seems to be a bit closer to Mario Wonder in this regard. Nothing special, but it doesn't need to be. However, this flaw seems to compound when I talk about the other issues this game has.
Princess Peach Showtime, weirdly enough, doesn't feel all that fun to play. Which is weird coming from.. a Nintendo-published platformer? It's like.. usually the one thing they get right. Peach's controls are sluggish, janky, and imprecise at points. The controls somewhat improve with a couple of the costumes like swordfighter, but it never feels all that fun to use. The only costumes that I actually had a genuinely fun time playing with were the Dashing Thief and Mighty Peach. All of these different costumes control very simply and just feel like the watered-down abilities of characters from other games, it doesn't make me feel like I'm "powered up" it makes me feel like I'm caught up to where I should be. (See? Just like- wait.)
Also, if you were hoping for a single costume that would have its own dedicated section in the game that wasn't already shown in the game's numerous trailers, then I'm sorry to disappoint you, but apart from one you get at the very end, every single costume you get has been shown in the trailers. I guess this is the fault of the marketing, and I'd definitely take quality over quantity, and these are all distinct enough to where I couldn't think of too many more to add, but at least hide them!
This game is also PISS easy. Not like normal Nintendo Easy where the games are still engaging, like so easy it becomes boring easy, without any way of making the game any more difficult for yourself. Now, again, I didn't expect Peach to be a "hard" game, but I at least expected it to be on the level of something like Mario Wonder or Luigi's Mansion 3, which were also easy, but they were also fun and engaging. This game takes the easy scale so far in the other direction that it just isn't that rewarding. You get 5 hit points (or up to 8, if you want), combat arenas and puzzles are incredibly simple, and bosses never pose as a threat and can sometimes be defeated after a single round. The ones that drag are the ones that are less fun and the ones that start to be kind of fun and interesting end so incredibly quickly that I feel like I'm getting edged out of fun gameplay.
The result of all of this; the lack of any challenge throughout the game, the sluggishness of the controls, the mega-basic bosses, the fact that none of the costume mechanics have any depth, and the nature of this game having only a few levels per costume but them being weirdly long, makes this possibly the single most boring Nintendo Published switch game. There are a bunch of switch games I personally think are worse, and this game does have a couple of redeeming qualities, but when you are making a video game for entertainment, then it not being entertaining means it has failed its job. I was initially going to give it a middling 5/10, but the longer I thought about it, the more the game's sleep-inducing gameplay and lack of direction kinda made me sad.
Though, it's not all that surprising. Through data mines of the game's demo, we have found that the game was developed by Good-Feel, the creators of Kirby's Epic Yarn, Wario-Land Shake It, and the two most recent Yoshi games. I didn't really like Crafted World all that much either, but at least my expectations going into it were already on the floor and it was part of a series I lost any and all interest in. This is a brand-new game. And one, based on those data mines, we can tell has been in the works for a while. Its code name "PJ037" hints it started development in between Yoshi's Crafted World "PJ033" and Kirby's Extra Epic Yarn "PJ040". Seeing as how the latter was revealed in September of 2018 and the Switch dev kits released in 2016, I think I can safely assume that this game has been in development since 2017, which would have been a whole 7 years of development. When you play the game with this assumption in mind, you can easily see the cracks of a long and tumultuous game development cycle in nearly every corner of this game. It feels like a game that was born from the idea of "Hey! let's make a peach game!" and they didn't know exactly what they wanted that game to be so they just tried to sample a bunch of small and basic minigames to see what stuck. It lacks any kind of direction or any interesting elements aside from its stageplay theme and some creative designs. It feels like it was supposed to be so much more, or at least something different. Let's hope that whatever they plan to do with this series next, whether a sequel to this or a brand new thing, they come up with a more solid direction for the game to take.
Because, frankly, Peach deserves better than this.
7 Comments
@Beramode
To be fair, it is a game that takes place in a theater where its inhabitants turn depressed due to an evil purple villain who wants to turn the entire world negative, featuring platforming combat that involves changing into multiple different costumes with different gameplay styles. In my opinion, while its nowhere near as awful as that piece of shit, it does share a lot of flaws with it (Being way too easy, a lack of polish here and there, not having that strong of a direction, only committing to having a story half-way, the costumes not having that much depth in their kits, etc.)
And in terms of, at least, the music, I think even Balan Wonderworld does that better, so uhhh take that for what you will.
To be fair, it is a game that takes place in a theater where its inhabitants turn depressed due to an evil purple villain who wants to turn the entire world negative, featuring platforming combat that involves changing into multiple different costumes with different gameplay styles. In my opinion, while its nowhere near as awful as that piece of shit, it does share a lot of flaws with it (Being way too easy, a lack of polish here and there, not having that strong of a direction, only committing to having a story half-way, the costumes not having that much depth in their kits, etc.)
And in terms of, at least, the music, I think even Balan Wonderworld does that better, so uhhh take that for what you will.
I'd like this review but mine was angrier and more rambling so I gotta give myself a chance here. Great stuff though!
@Kujin Thanks! Truth be told, I am not that mad at this game, as much as I am sad and disappointed that this is what this game ended up being. I also made sure to be fair here because the game does some things right. I don't hate this game, but I really wished it could be so much more.
Yoshi's Crafted World may not be that great but Woolly World totally is IMO. You should try it sometime and see if it restores your faith in the Yoshi series (and Good-Feel)
Beramode
1 month ago