Princess Peach Showtime review: Super fun, even though it's for kids

radiotimes.com:

You’d be mistaken if you thought that Princess Peach: Showtime! was the iconic regal character’s first ever title role.

To claim that would do a disservice to the 2005 DS game Super Princess Peach, not to mention Princess Toadstool’s Castle Run from 1990 that launched on the *checks notes* Nelsonic Game Watch.

That being said, Showtime is definitely the first Princess Peach solo outing on Nintendo Switch, and for that alone it really is worth celebrating. On top of that, it’s a super fun game and it does an important job at the same time.

In terms of the fun factor, that’s baked into the game’s core concept, which sees Peach visiting a theatre that’s in trouble. A whole load of different stage plays have been taken over by an evil force, and Peach has to take on a variety of roles in order to save the day.

If you enjoyed seeing Mario turn into an elephant in last year’s brilliant Super Mario Bros Wonder, you ain’t seen nothing yet! The game designers on Showtime have come up with a whole raft of fun transformations for Peach to go through.

Sometimes, Peach will need to be a Zorro-like swordfighter to slash her way through baddies. At other points, she’ll need to be an ice skater, a ninja, a patisserie chef, and a bunch of other things that we don’t want to spoil for you here.

The upside of this is that the game never sits still for a minute. No level you play will be quite the same as the one you just finished.

And if you use this game to introduce a young child to gaming, they’ll actually come away with an understanding of all sorts of different gameplay genres, with the ninja segments being stealth-based and the swordfighter bits being more action-focused, and so on.

That being said, more savvy players might begin to notice that, whichever outfit Peach is wearing, there’s only really one or two buttons you ever need to worry about pressing to dispense her varied skills.

The control scheme has been simplified to such a degree that grown-up players might not feel