Much to my shock, it is actually not the most unplayable offering of Sonic platforming ever made, maaaybe excluding a contender for one of the worst final levels in the franchise. That said, it’s just sorta dull with little to no challenge and I often questioned if this even needed to be a Sonic game in the first place while playing, because really, the only Sonic-ish traits to be found here are in the presentation: You got the blue hamster himself, Dr Robotnik, rings, a boppin’ soundtrack, and that’s pretty much it.

Going into this, I was expecting a relaxed, quirky little puzzle / job simulator game about sorting luggage at an airport. Level-5 also published Attack Of The Friday Monsters and the Professor Layton games, two IP's partially known for their quirky yet chilled vibes, so what could possibly go wrong?

- 2 hours and a half later -

Turns out, my buns got kicked harder here than in Sonic Frontiers' Final Horizon DLC, and the faceless manager is a natural at suplex-ing your confidence into mush, simply so through cold text bubbles of disappointment and frustration.

Would play again for the exhilaration and thrills.

Aight, I might give this one a chance another day, but today I’m abandoning ship for two smelly reasons:

1) The lack of checkpoints in fortresses. Believe it or not, restarting maze-like levels such as these with respawning enemies from the very beginning over and over again, literally losing every scrap of progress in them when you die (even during boss fights) isn’t fun, it’s tedious artificial padding

2) I wish all Eggplant Wizards a very d i e

This game will NOT fuel the angry gamer’s rage-o-meter to the point of smashing their controller at the nearest unfortunate wall, not even close. Peach Showtime is not a difficult game, which isn’t bad by default, but you might crave a challenge here and there in the later plays. That said… dude, Peach bakes giant cakes with glee during a zombie-ish apocalypse? She lifts and UFO’s with her bare hands and throws ‘em like dodgeballs? And she has boss battles as a figure skater on ice?? Those are only SOME of the crazy fun scenarios Peach finds herself in at this theatre’s many plays, and there are others I’m actively holding myself back from spoiling to friends who might wanna play this game. It kind of has the spirit and “expect the unexpected” factor of a Kirby game on that front

I’m not sure how much a theoretical second playthrough would be compromised without that initial surprise factor, but at least on a first playthrough, Peach Showtime is very much carried by it’s charm, spectacle and presentation. So much so, I’m still mentally processing that I had more fun in the 2 hours of Peach’s short detective gig, than I had in the 12 hours that Detective Pikachu snatched away from my life. I’m serious—

Didn’t wanna phrase it like this, but this very much felt like a detective game on autopilot. If you’re not chuckling at the cute scenarios of Pokémon co-existing with humans in an urban environment or processing some of the most stellar visuals for a 3DS game, you’re endlessly mashing that A button to effortlessly gather testimony and evidence from an all-star cast of forgettable characters, with really nothing special in the gameplay to make up for it, like the brilliant puzzles in Professor Layton or the hysterical court trials in Ace Attorney. Unless you wanna count stupidly easy QTEs as the substitute for those?… I don’t.

And there is no way to fail or get a game over. If you make a wrong accusation in the moment of truth, there’s absolutely zero penalty for it and you can just select every last option without thinking until you inevitably click on the correct one, meaning there’s zero incentive to pay close attention and avoid failing the interrogation like in Hotel Dusk, where one slip-up can either make the respondent distrust you or land you a game over screen. All the while a Pikachu with an overly gruff voice simps for coffee every 10 or so minutes.

As an unapologetic Professor Layton fanboy and Ace Attorney enjoyer who was looking forward to this game, man… I really wished it could’ve been so much more than just disappointing.