Mildly enchanted.
I used to be an enormous fan of the unique Disney Magical World. It was a comfy mix of Disney characters and life sims like Animal Crossing and Harvest Moon. Regardless of the case, I had by no means performed the sequel when it got here out on 3DS in 2016. As such, this new, remastered, “enchanted” model of it was welcome. Sadly, Disney Magical World 2 didn’t hit me in the identical approach. That’s a wierd factor to reckon with – and it’s laborious to know precisely why it didn’t click on – however we’ll get to that later.
Disney Magical World 2 locations you in a hub world often known as Castleton. After you customise your character and arrive, you meet Disney mainstays like Mickey and Goofy and are proven round city. Right here’s your home, right here’s how quests work, right here’s the way you make furnishings and garments, et cetera. You’re additionally uncovered to the sport’s sticker system, which has you accumulate stickers through numerous duties, Mario 64-style, to unlock new areas and quests within the recreation.
It may be a bit of overwhelming at first as a result of there are numerous totally different little features to it and a recent participant received’t totally perceive what the sport is till they’ve performed a 2-3 hour tutorial (it’s brutal) after which play the sport themselves for an additional few hours.
In essence, it’s a life sim on guardrails. You hang around with Disney characters, make furnishings and garments to customise your house and outfit, work at a restaurant in a mini-game, and go to varied worlds primarily based on Disney properties to satisfy characters and see little tales play out. These worlds embody classics previous and new like Winnie the Pooh, Lilo & Sew, and Frozen. With the intention to add a bit of motion, there are action-RPG fashion ranges the place you shoot your magic wand to defeat ghosts; this will get you materials drops for crafting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOz9IO7w-qM
All of that is simplistic, and that’s advantageous. It’s polished, cozy Disney vibes for a target market that’s possible youthful than me. My largest subject is that to get to those recreation components, you might be studying dialogue field after dialogue field of Disney characters saying nothing of substance. This wouldn’t be an issue, however there’s simply a lot dialogue and barely any of it’s voiced. No matter pacing the sport may have had grinds to a halt.
The life sim features are additionally pretty restricted, and pale compared to video games like Animal Crossing and Harvest Moon. And when the gameplay doesn’t have a ton occurring, I’m questioning if children truly wish to sit by way of a lot dialogue (with so little of it being attention-grabbing) to get to the sport half. It admittedly lightens up as you get deeper into the sport, however I used to be fairly bored fairly shortly.
It’s not all dangerous – the vibes are as chill as I keep in mind. Castleton feels such as you’re strolling by way of the Magic Kingdom. A lot basic Disney stuff is squished collectively, the colours are vibrant, and the buildings have a pastelly, rounded look to them. The Change launch brings the visible constancy up just a few notches, and whereas nobody would assume this can be a native Change recreation, it seems to be good in its personal proper.
What’s humorous is that the whole lot I simply described is how the primary recreation was; 2 feels extra like an expanded Disney Magical World 1 than a sequel to it (this recreation has numerous the characters and worlds from the primary recreation). It could possibly be I’m simply in a special place in my life the place this isn’t what I’m on the lookout for proper now. But it surely could possibly be for another person.
I feel this recreation is ideal for a hardcore Disney fan who needs an extremely low-stakes recreation with very chill vibes the place you hang around along with your favourite Disney characters. Having this cool, cute Disney World has a powerful attraction to it, and the ultimate result’s a refined recreation. I got here out of this a bit of bored by the gradual tempo and restricted gameplay, however in his evaluation, Daan was extra, ehrm, enchanted by the title on 3DS. Your mileage might differ.