Customer Reviews

Disney's Princess Royal Adventure

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

At first glance, Disney Princess: Royal Adventure for the Gameboy Advance looks like a new game where you can play as the six most popular Disney Princesses--Snow White, Cinderella, Aurora, Ariel, Belle and Jasmine. This first impression would be wrong.

Royal Adventure is set up like a traditional RPG, in which you play Lily, a girl who works at Castle Bright, a castle which, oddly enough, has the ability to talk. All is going well until the six tiaras needed for Castle Bright's traditional Ceremony of the Crowns have gone missing. The entirety of the game consists of Lily's epic quest to locate the six tiaras. However, that is much easier said than done.

Every single character will send Lily all around in circles asking her to perform tasks for them, which she always does. The dialogue is completely unnatural. For instance, someone will say he's sad and Lily will "Aw, no one should be sad. Music always makes people happy! Let me play a song to cheer you." After a mini-game, the person will respond "Thank you, Lily! I feel much happier now." Aside from cheesy dialogue, Lily is basically treated as a servant. No matter how much of a stereotypical "Mary Sue" princess she looks like with her pink gown, she is certainly not treated like one. Every single person she asks for help solving the tiara mystery requests a favor from her.

Whether it's walking back to the other side of town to get someone their lunch or going through the forest to visit someone's friend, this game will have Lily running around in constant circles. It takes several hours to play, but the only reason for that is the constant running back and forth. Not a single person gives her a direct answer when she asks if they know about the tiaras. Instead, they will first ask for a favor and then go all the way across the world map in the exact opposite direction to ask someone else who knows about it.

There are several mini-games interspersed throughout it, including a memory game to find library books with the same cover, a clothes matching game to match hats, shoes and dresses, a gem game in which you need to fit the correct gem into the correct slot based on the shape, a music game in which you have to press the right note button at the right time, and a puzzle game to put pictures of the Disney Princesses back together. The most fun of these is probably the puzzle one because the artwork is so adorable, akin to the princess artwork featured on the cover.

None of this sounds like it involves the Disney Princesses at all, so where do they come in? Well, in between running around the world to do favors for people, Lily eventually discovers six secret passages, each of which lead to one of the six princesses' worlds. Once she meets a princess, that princess will tell her that her animal friend has gone missing. Upon finding and returning the animal, the princess will give Lily a special item and two very cute artworks will appear--one of the princess with her animal friend and one of her giving Lily the item. The artwork is probably the best reason to play this game, so if you don't care about that, then there is no reason to play the game. Fortunately, after meeting a princess, the artwork is availble to watch whenever you want in the "Extras" section of the main menu.

Overall, this game is needlessly lengthy and involves a ton of repetitive tasks. If you like the princess artwork don't mind several hours of running back and forth for no apparent reason, then you shouldn't have too much of a problem with this game. However, you should be aware before playing it that the main heroine is extremely passive and does whatever she's told, not exactly a good heroine for girls who prefer to think for themselves. The artwork is nice, and if you enjoy the mini games, it has a little replay value because they are all accessable to play individually from the main menu after playing each one in the game. The game itself, however, does not have much replay value because it really isn't worth that much running around just to see a few cute princess pictures.

Once again the ESRB ratings show just how worthless they are. The target audience for this game is likely the three to six year old girl. Unfortunately the game involves a tremendous amount of reading, which pretty much rules out most of the target audience. I sat with my daughter for an hour playing this lame game, reading huge volumes of stilted dialogue for her. While the game requires the ability to read, the manual dexterity required of the player is minimal - boring for anyone who's spent any time around a GameBoy.

Avoid this game at all costs.

My 8 year old got this game when she was 7 and she loved it. It kept her buisy for hours! When she beat the game she started over to do it all again.

I agree that there is a lot of reading for 6 or younger, however, the reading is easy for my child.

Your child can get by without reading. The place they want you to go lights up on the map until you get there. So if you show your child how to do that, the game can go on without your help, or with min. help from you!

Product was in great condition. It works well and it was a fun game for the kids to play, even me.

I read the reviews beforehand. Bought it anyway. Way too hard for a non-reader. My daughter is 5, and she can read some sight words. So unless you have a prodigy reader..this game is not for your child. Even then, your child would probably not be interested in a simple game like this. This is meant for a reading child...very boring game. The Dora Around the World or the other princess game is a much better pick.

This game is alright if you know how to read. I bought it for my 5 year old daughter and she is just learning to read. I do not recommend this game for children that can't read. If I knew that it required a lot of reading I would not have bought it.

very good attention of the supplier and the quality of the product is good