Reviewed by CL on 3/23/2006
Ever since the Mario series went to 3D with Mario 64, gamers have been waiting for the next great 2D Mario platformer. Super Princess Peach attempts to fill this gap but feels distinctly different and leaves you feeling unfulfilled. At the core, this is a simple 2D platformer like Super Mario World for the SNES. The main difference is that Peach, not Mario and Luigi, is the main character of this adventure. Furthermore, instead of using mushrooms, Yoshi's, and capes to increase your powers, Peach uses her emotions with an interesting "vibe" system. She has four main powers or Joy, Rage, Sorrow, and Glee. These give her the power to fly, burn stuff, cry a lot, and regain health, respectively. The main problem with this game is that it is just way too easy. You can take multiple hits before you die (a very rarely occurrence). If you fall into a pit, you just start back at the beginning of the area, not the entire level. All the enemies and bosses are complete jokes and with the exception of the last world, every level can be breezed through in a matter of minutes. Hidden in each level are three toads which you just rescue before you can face the final boss. Hidden is a kind of a stretch since most of them are in plain sight and the game even tells you when there is a toad in the immediate area. Also, it tells you specifically how to beat every boss so there is really no challenge anywhere in the entire game. This seriously detracts from the experience since there is never a sense of accomplishment. I felt like Nintendo was insulting my hand-eye coordination by presenting such trivial tasks for me to accomplish.
The game does have a lot of nice minigames that you can play which make nice use of the touch screen. The replay value is also fairly high because once you beat the game, you unlock a ton of new levels that you can visit and there are new items to collect in all the old levels. In conclusion, this is a pretty ho-hum experience because it is way too easy. I'd recommend it if you're a hardcore Mario fan but you can probably skip it otherwise.
