You are a young girl just minding your own business in your backyard when suddenly a talking rabbit bumps into you and runs past.  When you catch up to it, you see a portal to another world.  When you step in, you are magically transformed into a princess in another realm with enchanted castles and more bunnies who can speak.  The talking rabbit tasks you to use your princess magic to redecorate the castle and bring back its former glory.  And you can play some mini-games, too.  This is the only way to re-open the portal back to your world.  And so begins your adventure in Pretty Princess Party for Switch!

When you start, you’ll be able to design your princess’ look, dress, etc.  Then after a tutorial, you can explore the castle and surrounding areas.  In the castle are empty rooms with a plaque out in front.  In each of those rooms you are tasked with filling the room with furniture, but you must use certain types of decorations listed on the plaque.  When you do, you’ll get a jewel that you can use to bring color to a stained glass rose in the middle of the castle. When you get enough, thorns blocking the path to more rooms in the castle will disappear, and you’ll be able to decorate more areas!  This part of the game is very much like Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer.  As you complete tasks, you’ll earn a type of currency which you can use to buy more furniture recipes in a room in the castle (as well as more dresses and hairstyles and such for you).  You just summon whatever furniture you have a recipe for when you decorate.  Kind of a strange power for a princess to have, but maybe you’re the princess of Home Depot or IKEA or something.

You can also visit the outskirts of the castle and surrounding town, talking with the bunnies, helping decorate their homes, and this is where you play most of the mini-games.   By playing these games, you’ll level up certain attributes which lets you unlock and buy more furniture recipes.  Some mini games include horseback riding, decorating cakes, picking flowers in a hedge maze, or archery practice where you shoot targets with a cursor.  You can also play these mini-games separately with up to four people as well.

Pretty Princess Party is an all right game, but it does have a few little problems.  In order to find out what furniture you need to build from the plaques to each room, you must hire out an archeologist bunny who can decipher the writing on the plaques for you, and it takes 30 minutes for him to do so and you can only do five at a time!  Very annoying.  Also, certain mini-games are surprisingly hard for a kids’ title, and some of the text is too small to read in handheld mode.  But if you have a little girl who loves decorating houses in Animal Crossing, she may like this game, too.  I also like the fact that you can save at any time pretty much after the tutorial.

Kid Factor:

Pretty Princess Party is rated E for Everyone with an ESRB descriptor of Mild Cartoon Violence.  I guess you do bump into the bunny at the beginning, and can shoot arrows at targets in the archery mini-game.  But I don’t know if that really counts as violent.  Reading skill is a must for all the text, and younger players may find of some the mini-games too difficult.

Tags: Game Reviews