Princess Peach's First Own Game!
Through some odd, and I mean like...really, really odd...twist of fate, the Princess will meet up with this magical umbrella, named Perry, before she takes off on her adventure. Perry quickly becomes essential to Peach's journey, as she uses him for everything. With the umbrella, Peach has a few attacks and moves she can perform. Her main attacks are jumping, whacking, and sliding. With most enemies, you can whack them with Perry and they will be thrown off screen instantly. However, it is usually more valuable to jump on an enemy, flipping them over. Once you do this, you can pick them up and toss them as a weapon, or press down on the D-pad to absorb them using Perry. This is helpful in refilling your Vibe Meter.
Your Vibe Meter is very important in the progression of the game and should be kept full if possible. The Vibe Meter allows you to use Peach's emotions on the bottom screen. Peach has four different emotions: Joy, Rage, Gloom, and Calm. These emotions each have multiple functions that can facilitate different goals. The Joy emotion allows Peach to create a cycle around herself, to float upwards; the Rage emotion surrounds the Princess in flames; the Gloom emotion makes Peach cry; while the Calm emotion revives Peach's health. These emotions can all be easily chosen by tapping the desired heart/emotion on the touch screen.
Also, there is this store, and you can purchase many things from it, including three new moves. These include allowing Peach to use Perry to glide in the air and float for a short period of time; be able to perform a ground pound; and the ability to shoot a charged shot from Perry.
Other things that can be bartered from the shop from using your hard earned coins, are status-enhancing items, music, puzzle pieces, and extra levels in mini-games.
The status-enhancing items increase the size of your Vibe Meter and add hearts to your health meter, as well as a few extra things.
You can find some of the songs, puzzle pieces, and mini-games in the actual levels, but for the rest, you must purchase them from the shop. The songs are just like a Sound Test in most games, although you have to purchase each song if you want to listen to it.
There are multiple puzzles that you can play and attempt to solve, saving your fastest time, but before you are allowed to test your skills, you must collect all the pieces for that puzzle. You have to buy about half of the pieces, while the others are scattered throughout the eight worlds that Super Princess Peach has to offer.
There are also three mini-games, each of which must be found in the world of the game, and each of which have ten levels. All the extra levels must be purchased from the shop of course. Like most of the items you must purchase, the price increases as you move up in each section.
The other features of the menu, of which you can select at the world or level map, are the Glossary and Bonus sections. The glossary is pretty cool, as it displays all the enemies you have come into contact with. It is quite a long list too, as there is a large variety of enemies; mostly familiar ones that have been in numerous Mario games. It is nice to see the return of some classic enemies. Also, the enemies are effected by emotions, so some of them will be crying, or happy, or angry, which alters their attacks and movement. It is important to be aware of this fact.
The Bonus section is kind of lame. It merely shows you Perry's dreams that you have unlocked, each of which is unlocked after you beat a boss in each world. These dreams slowly reveal the truth behind Perry's current circumstance.
Like I briefly mentioned, there are eight worlds, each of which have five or six levels, plus the boss level. Each world is very unique and different from each other, including, but not limited to, a lava world, an ice world, and a cloud world. Each level is fairly lengthy, with multiple routes thanks to excessive warp pipes.
There is a task you need to accomplish in each level, although you do not have to do so to progress from level to level and world to world. In each level, there are three Toads that need to be rescued from their pink box prisons. You must simply find them and destroy the little box they are in. A lame part, is that while you do not need to find any of the toads to progress in the game, you MUST find them ALL in order to play the final boss in the game. So, if you are like me, you will find yourself replaying a few levels in order to find those two or three toads that you need in order to beat the game....stupid...little...turds, I mean, Toads. Yeah, it's a little frustrating.
Anyhoos, at the end of each world, you must fight ze boss; sock le blue, in perfect French. Before you actually fight the boss however, you play in a little mini-game in which you control the outcome using your stylus and touch screen. In other words, these little levels before the boss are centered around using the touch screen. Unfortunately, there are only three real different levels, so with eight worlds, you will be replaying the same themes a couple times...
The bosses themselves however are all very cool and different from one another, requiring different techniques and strategies for defeating.
Other than that stuff, some cool features worth mentioning are that there are three save files, you can save at any point, even mid-level, the game is rumble pak-enabled, and the title screen will display either night or day, depending on what time of day it is. It has no effect, but ya know, it's cool...sorta.
So, that's about it really. The game has been said to be very simple and too easy. I do not really share that view, as many of the levels are not all THAT easy, and some are frustrating, however using the Joy emotion to fly distances can be used to "cheat" and create shortcuts for yourself from doing certain things, which definitely can make some tasks very simple. But overall, the game is not a breeze, and will require the one to play for numerous hours in order to complete each world, so the gamer will find much fun with playing through each level, as well as replay value with the mini-games and puzzles that are available, and always can be replayed for a higher score.
And it's ok...if you are a guy, you CAN buy the game without too much flack from retailers. I mean, it's not THAT embarrassing...mostly...