Review: PRINCESS PEACH: SHOWTIME! It’s a lot of fun for everyone

At the end of March, Nintendo released Princess Peach: Showtime! This game was developed by Good-Feel and is the second game focused on the famous video game princess. You can purchase a Nintendo Switch copy from your favorite retailers, including GameStop (affiliate link), or from the eShop if you’re a fan of the digital versions. If you’re wary of purchasing the game, you can download a free demo that features two of the first levels that are a great introduction to what you can expect from the game. Nintendo provided me with a copy to review, but all thoughts below are my own.

Join Princess Peach as she steps into the spotlight in her own single-player action game! While Princess Peach attends the Sparkle Theater, the evil Grape and the Sour Bunch take over the show to stage their own performances. Together with Stella, the theater’s guardian, Peach must save each show and transform to match the performance, becoming Swordfighter Peach, Detective Peach, Ninja Peach, Patissiere Peach and more. Each transformation changes the action and brings its own abilities that allow Peach to best save every play and close the curtain on Grape’s evil plans.

Since Princess Peach: Showtime! was announced, I was thrilled. It looked like a lot of fun and the demo confirmed that it would be. There are many things I would like to praise about the game, but first I want to get the negatives out of the way. First, I feel like I would be inauthentic if I didn’t mention the performance issues. During cutscenes and loading screens, performance can drop in terms of framerate (loading screens were particularly bad in my experience) and there also seemed to be resolution drops at times. Thankfully, these issues don’t extend to gameplay. That’s all. This is the only aspect of the game that I consider a problem. If I’m being picky, I was a little annoyed that my progress from the demo wasn’t carried over, but it was only two levels, so it’s not a big deal.

Just because I’ve only seen one issue worth talking about doesn’t mean there aren’t valid reasons to dislike the game. The gameplay isn’t very deep, the levels aren’t very long, the mermaid’s voice doesn’t match her speaking voice at all, etc. However, I never expected any of this (except maybe that siren voice thing) to come from Princess Peach: Showtime! and I had a great time.

In this way Princess Peach: Showtime! works is that each floor of the Sparkle Theater has four shows you can star in, and each show has you take on one of 10 different roles. Complete levels, free the Sparkla (the original comedy stars captured by the evil Madame Grape) through special levels in the basement, and then face Madame Grape herself. There are also tons of minigames and collecting to do that extend the length of the game if you want. I want to make it clear though that this is not a long game if you just play through the story. My 7 year old son completed the game in about five days (with his parents’ help) and that brings me to another great aspect of this game.

There are some tools to help struggling players progress through the game. The first is the heart charm which is simple and gives you three extra hearts. You can get it by talking to a Theet (the cute yellow guys who run/act in the Sparkle Theater) near the center of the first floor or after failing a level enough times he will ask you if you want to use it. You can always talk to Theet on the first floor to remove the heart spell. Another tool they have is that if you fail a level enough times, they will allow you to spend all the coins you have earned to automatically pass the level. This is going to be a little controversial, but I don’t think it’s a bad thing because you can always reject that suggestion. My daughter sometimes felt frustrated playing and this helped her finish the game, feel accomplished, and gain confidence while playing.

Let’s get back to the gameplay of Princess Peach: Showtime! As I said before, it’s pretty simple as you only press two face buttons and sometimes use the right trigger. A is the universal jump button and B is the interact/power button. Just because it’s simple doesn’t mean it isn’t fun and rewarding. The first level is Swordfighter Peach who uses a counterattack while fighting and has a nice long window to activate it for more casual audiences.

Speaking of the different transformations, it’s funny how different they feel. Many of them revolve around some sort of combat to defeat the Sour Bunch, but there are also transformations like Detective Peach where there is no combat. The variety of gameplay definitely helps it not get stale and each one feels unique. My personal favorites are Ninja Peach and Dashing Thief Peach. A quick note about Sirena Peach is that her singing voice sounds drastically different than her speaking voice and that bothered me for a while, but it seems to match Sirena Sparkla’s voice, which helped me feel better because I think the idea is that Spark more or less merges you with Sparkla’s spirit and so the fact that Sparkla and Peach have the same singing voice made more sense to me at that point.

There is also a small detail that in my opinion deserves to be highlighted. In the Sparkle Theatre, Peach can slide down the railing! This is a very small detail that shouldn’t have been included and yet it’s really fun and shows attention to detail.

I want to talk about the impact it had Princess Peach: Showtime! he had at my house. My daughter has been semi-obsessed with Mario for a couple of years now. She loved playing various Mario games (including Super Mario Odyssey), playing with Mario toys and even dressing up as Mario. Mario was his favorite character in the series and, for a while, his favorite character in anything. After playing this game, she said that she likes Peach as much as Mario. I didn’t expect this response. This game has helped my daughter see Peach in a different light and I’m willing to bet she’s not the only one.

I really enjoyed my time playing Princess Peach: Showtime! and also my daughter and my wife. In less than a week, two of us completed it and I think it’s worth playing. The transformation design is really good, the gameplay is fun, and the only problem is some performance issues that only occur in cutscenes. It’s not a long or complex game, but I highly recommend purchasing it.