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I can't seem to gather clear thoughts on this game, so I'll just be writing this as opinions and points come to me. Excuse the lack of clarity. Anyway, I asked for Super Princess Peach for Christmas this past year somewhat on a whim, and overall I'd say it was a good move on my part. It would be a lie if I were to say that it was one of the better games I've played in my life, but it was still good fun.
What initially drew me to the game was the cuteness of it all. As you may have gathered from my previous reviews, that's something that quite enhances a game in my opinion. The graphics were pretty cute looking. . . it didn't have that awful blurriness that some games have when they're trying to go beyond the capabilities of the system. And that's about all I knew about it at the time. Well, I also knew that it was starring Peach, and I'd never played a game starring her before, so the novelty appealed to me in that respect too.
After playing the game, I must say that on the whole, I liked it. I'm glad they tried to incorporate some kind of storyline, even if it was kind of weird. . . and not included in the game too often. It gave the presence of Peach's umbrella some kind of point, which is important. As well, I liked the gameplay. As I always feel I should mention when it comes to DS games, it made fairly good use of the touch screen. And of course that always helps keep games new and unique from past experiences.
Aside from the umbrella, which I mentioned before, Peach has powers through the use of her emotions. Tapping one of the hearts on the bottom screen with your stylus (or fingernail as I've seen done) allows Peach to summon one specific power. The four are as follows: happiness - allows Peach to slowly renew her life. anger - allows Peach to burn thing in her path. sadness - allows Peach to produce a fountain of tears. and joy (allegedly) - allows Peach to fly for a brief period of time. (note, those aren't the official names for the emotions, I just sort of came up with it). Anyway, I thought this was a really neat aspect of the game, which enhanced it a lot. Plus this creates the added concern of running out of her 'emotion meter' power, as using those emotions drains the power. Luckily (since I don't like challenges very much), it's fairly easy to prevent from running out of power, as refills are available often, and it doesn't take many coins to buy a longer emotion meter.
And now what I disliked about the game. There were two main things, the first being the extreme repetition. Although there are many different worlds, providing new enemies and terrain to explore, the same format is used for each level. Players must always save three Toads in each level. Also, I don't have any logical way of explaining it, but it just seems like the levels are all very much the same thing, with essentially the same challenges. So yeah, it isn't that this format is bad, but after a while it becomes a little tiring.
Another significant problem I found with the game was the basic premise behind the emotion meter. I've accepted the fact that Peach is ridiculously ditsy and seemingly unintelligent because they have other female characters who aren't. However, despite her ditsiness, the emotion thing is still very stereotyping of all females. It's the concept of females being ruled primarily by emotions. You most certainly wouldn't see a game in which Mario was being controlled by his emotions, I'm quite sure about that. So yeah. . . it just seems a little offensive to me. That being said, I can still enjoy the game. What lessens the blow is what I said earlier, that Peach is really ditsy and stereotypical to begin with.
So yeah. . . overall, it's a pretty good game. If you aren't offended by the premise, and are okay with a bit of repetition (and that's just my opinion, you may not find it to be so), there's really nothing wrong with the game. It's kind of a new concept, so it'll likely be an experience you haven't had before, and overall it was quite enjoyable.
Overall - 6 out of 10
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