The long-anticipated “Princess Peach: Showtime” for the Nintendo Switch was released on March 22, marking the first solo Peach game since 2005’s “Super Princess Peach.”
The story revolves around the Sparkle Theater, which Princess Peach enters at the beginning of the game. Things take an unexpected turn when the theater is taken over by the villainous Madame Grape and the Sour Bunch, as Peach must enter each play in order to return things to normal.
There are ten “plays,” each of which belies a new transformation. Peach can transform into a swordfighter, detective, patisserie, dashing thief, mermaid, figure skater, ninja, superhero, cowgirl and a kung fu artist. Each of these plays contains three stages — in the first, Peach enters the stage and discovers a new transformation; she then progresses through the story with her newfound skills and finally rescues the star actors of each play, also called Sparklas.
For me, these transformations are the star of the show. Each costume comes with abilities specific to the story stage; for example, both the swordfighter and ninja transformations require slashing through mobs, but the swordfighter has a dodge mechanic while the ninja needs to sneak around guards and hide underwater.
Surprisingly, I loved the fact that not all of the transformations were combat-related. The patisserie stage allows Peach to speed-bake cookies and ice cakes according to a pattern. Although the premise sounds simple, it was actually a little bit of a struggle for me to collect all of the stars for these levels, where the time limit works in tandem with aesthetics and accuracy to determine your score.
Peach’s mermaid transformation was my favorite, both because of the novelty of swimming underwater, and because of how charming the underwater stages are. There’s one rhythm game starring Peach as the main singer, and playing with the chorus of marine animals was very endearing. The combat is fun, but it was also very pleasing to enter a cute stage or two in between punching aliens and fending off mobs.
With thirty stages in total, plus four bosses and additional challenges, “Princess Peach: Showtime” is a fairly short game. Taking the completionist route, where I picked up every collectible in every stage, the game took me roughly twenty hours to complete. However, simply clearing the story would likely require less than half that time. For the $59.99 price tag, this game might not be worth the money to fans who just want to experience the story without maxing everything out.
“Princess Peach: Showtime” rewards a slower and more strategic gameplay. You may need to repeat stages in order to collect all of the stars, and you aren’t able to skip through dialogue. Although this was a little deterring at first, I started to enjoy reruns of each play later in the game. The enemies aren’t hard to beat by any means but because they have no health bars, you need to counter them or outmaneuver them in a variety of different ways.
The bosses also don’t have health but Peach enters the arena without any special transformations and you have to manage her health throughout the fight. You need to figure out how to beat each boss by using their unique mechanics against them, which include sneaking around, countering attacks, dodging or utilizing the environment to your advantage.
The “Peach” experience is very forgiving; if you die in a stage, you respawn with your progress saved and all of your health topped off. Dying near the end of a play or battle also prompts the game to ask you if you want to spend coins to end a stage, which I did once during a more frustrating boss fight.
If you’re looking for a game with gorgeous costumes, chill combat and the inarguably sweet Princess Peach character, picking up “Showtime” might be worthwhile. I wish it were longer, but with so much screen time for Peach I won’t complain much.
Rating: 4.5/5
