Princess Peach: Showtime Review

Princess Peach Showtime is a weird game to review since it's basically a mini game compliation featuring Princess Peach, I knew that going in but that's what makes the game difficult to actually judge. What I find the most interesting about Showtime and it might sound odd but it shares a striking number of similarites to Sony franchises, it has the mini games of Jak 3, the costumes that gives special abilites of Sly 4 and Ape Escape 3 and it has the over the top and whimsical theater aesthetic of the PS3 game Puppeteer. In a sense, Showtime is interesting to me is that it's one of the most Sony 1st party inspired Nintendo game so despite me not being as big of a Nintendo fan as many, the Sony connections does tickle my curosity.

Enough of that, what is Showtime even about? Like I said, it's a mini game compliation where the titular character will dawn different outfits that grants her different contextual abilties and powers to that stage. There will be stealth themed levels with Ninja Peach, Detective levels with Detective Peach, some rhythm themed levels with Skater and Mermaid Peach, a grapple hook centric platformer with Thief Peach, a Kung Fu style melee brawler and fighting game with Kung Fu Peach and a superhero auto scrolling flying levels and brawling with Superhero Peach, there's a few more where that came from but basically if you ever recall playing Ape Escape 3 where the levels and constumes you get refrence a movie or genre of fiction, that's basically Showtime.

This is kind of where Princess Peach Showtime is greatest strength but at the same time it's weakness lies. It's a mini game compliation much like the aforementioned Jak 3. Jak 3's problem lied that the titular character had a good movement system, on paper interesting combat and the hoverboard but never leads into any of these things since it's too busy shoving in minigames that has nothing to do with the interesting stuff where Showtime's gameplay mechanics and systems are mostly simple and never has much in the way of complexity, for example, you will primarily being using two face buttons in Showtime which are B and A, the former is all your contextual commands related to that specific costume, like stealth attack, inspect, grabbing, punching and the latter is to jump. That's pretty much it. It has GBA style controls on a controller where it has 4 face buttons.

Due to this, Showtime can very much feel in of itself an episodic TV show in terms of gameplay structure with a loose overarching plot and as a result, every mini game will vary widely depending on what your tastes in games are which was a problem I was predicting was going to happpen when I saw gameplay. For example, I like stealth games so Ninja Peach I found to be my favorite, I liked how the stealth had easy to read sightlines and it was nice to see a game attempting stealth in today's day and age without a scripted takedown animation when attacking enemies from behind. On the flipside, I wasn't big on Detective Peach since I'm not big on solving mysterious in games and point and click style of game in general since to me, those games are just mashing the interact button until you move on to the next sequence but if you are the opposite of me you might dislike stealth and like point and click.

On top of this, the game is pretty easy, and I don't mind easy games but outside of maybe the pastery minigames I never really found Showtime to be challenging in a way I found stimulating. The hard parts of the game is getting the collectibles in the hope you will have enough to unlock the boss rooms later in the game, the requirements aren't steep, thankfully but I argue the only way to get any challenge for someone who has played all the genres of game Showtime attempts to have is to 100% the game, I don't do that but it might be something worth considering if you find the game too easy.

I do like the visuals and asethetics even if I think Puppeteer on PS3 did a better job at selling on the whimsical theater feeling with full on voice acting and the puppet like visuals, at the same time, Showtime does look decent enough. I just kind of wished it leaned into the asethetic more.

This is where I start being positive, as much as I harped on the game, I might've found the first video game I ever played where I could reccomend to someone who hasn't played games before, as of now I don't talk to many people who aren't gamers but if you really want to get someone into games, Princess Peach Showtime is probably the best game to introduce to someone the ins and outs of playing games even the final boss feels like it was both an on rails shooters and a bullet hell game for people who don't play those genres actively so if you are looking for that "specific" game to get a relative or friend into video games, Showtime is by far the best option I can think of just as long as those people aren't picky about specifics things.

Overall, decent game but aimed at a specific audience.