In 2005 Super Princess Peach was released for the DS. It obviously starred the classic princess who normally gets captured by Bowser, this time having to rescue Mario and Luigi. It was the first time she starred in her own game, wasn’t the first time she was playable but this was her as the lead now. Despite that game having unlockable teasers involving the past of the umbrella she had hinting at some future villain, nothing ever came of that. Now nearly 20 years later Peach has a second game to her name.

Best way to explain the game is to start with the plot this time. Peach heads to the Sparkle Theatre with her toads, but shortly after arriving it comes under attack by a shadowy villain called Madame Grape who imprisons all the lead actors and takes over all the plays. So that’s the way the game plays out.

Peach goes through different plays and taking the role of the lead actor. Each of these has 3 acts as individual levels. The first part will start with Peach as her normal self before unlocking a new costume that is used for the rest of them. Part 1 starts with you as regular Peach till unlocking her costume which you use for the rest of the level. The second level you use the costume right from the start, and after beating those two you unlock the finale of that play in the basement that sees you free the actor.

But you can’t just do that all in one go. Since I mentioned there is a basement that hints there are multiple floors. Each floor has 4 plays on it, after beating them all you get to fight the boss of that floor to open up the next floor and the next 4 plays, keep doing this and free all the actors to get to the final boss.

Thus you get as you play through the game 3 levels for each costume. The costumes such as Swordsman, Mermaid, Ice Skater, Martial Artist, Ninja etc. They all have different playstyle. While some such as Swordsmen and Martial Artist have a focus on action, some like Patisserie and Detect are more focusing on mini game elements. These then can be very hit and miss when it comes to the main collectable of the game the sparkle gems.

Each level has a number of them to unlock, some can be found just by going through the levels normally but most are hidden around the plays. Problem comes with the fact that while there is an option to skip scenes, that’s only for the big animated ones like the transformations. There are plenty of smaller scenes through each level that when playing through a second time to find those gems you missed, you still have to sit through in full. While for the more actiony ones where it’s just a matter of finding where the missing one is fine. On opens like the Patisserie where they are locked behind doing the mini games almost perfectly, having to go through everything to get to that annoying challenge again just irks you so much that you soon dislike having to redo the levels again no matter which it is since you fear having to do it a second time just because of some minor element you missed or didn’t pull off perfectly right.

There are unlockables in the form of different default dresses for Peach and her little starry companion for this game Stella. But since the Peach dresses are only for her default outfit, once you hit the second act of the plays you’re not going to see them anywhere outside of the main lobbies.

Once you beat the game you can use the excess sparkle gems to do up each floor, but the only post game challenges are a sort of hide and seek with ninjas and challenges for each boss fight with no real unlockables outside of some final dresses and being able to do up all the floors completely as some sparkle gems are locked to the boss challenges.

So would I recommend this game… erm, I’m not sure. It’s probably best if you just play through the main game and NOT try and get all the collectables. Using all the different styles of play is most likely more fun than stressing out trying to find where all those sparkle gems are which sucks out all the fun from playing the game. As when not doing that, the game is far more enjoyable.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐