I’m sure every girl has wanted to be a princess, at least once. The good news is that now they can be one in Disney Princess: Enchanted Journey.
Enchanted Journey lets you customize your playable princess character nearly head to toe. You can pick the skin color, eye color, hair style and color, dress style and colors, accessories (bow, hat, bracelets, earrings) and shoes. Give your princess a name and you’re all set to embark on an adventure targeted at and suitable for little girls everywhere.
You play as a lost princess who now returns to Gentlehaven Castle with a Pixie friend, who requests your help in ridding the Princesses’ realms from mischievous Bogs. The castle becomes the portal to the worlds of Snow White, Cinderella, Jasmine and Ariel. A game with Belle becomes available once you have completed all three chapters of each story.
The controls are very simple. The Nunchuk is used to move your character around, and you use the Z button to interact with people and objects. The Wii-mote is used as your magic wand. Flick it up and down to cast magic spells at the Bogs and turn them into butterflies. Hold it up and then swing it down to create a Magic Blast, it will hit all Bogs in range. Swing it left and right to do a Magic Twirl near sparkling objects, anything that needs fixing or anyone who needs help. In Snow White’s world, you use the Twirl to restore color to objects, but you must obtain the right color first, by twirling at a color point. You can also use the A button to jump and the D-pad to move.
In Ariel’s underwater world you must restore sound and voices to the merpeople. Snow White needs your help restoring colors to her world and help the Dwarves work as a team. You must also help Jasmine and Abu get rid of the gold mirages in Agrabah. Cinderella’s wedding plans are frozen in time, and your job is to restore time and keep everything on schedule.
The game offers you plenty of hints and explanations before you begin exploring or just before you start a mini-game. Mini-games don’t vary much in style, but they are fairly simple and the different themes give them a bit of variety. These games usually involve pointing the Wii-mote at the screen in the right area and pressing the A button.
One of the game types has you controlling whatever character or container trying to catch a certain kind of objects (for example, gems at the mines with the Dwarves). You just need to move from side to side and place your container under the falling objects. Another is a Simon Says game, but with different moves every turn instead of an increasing chain, like the chorus voice “tuning” with Sebastian in the Lagoon.
I really liked the look of the game. The graphics are sharp and vibrant, everything animates fairly well, even the magic wand particle effects are well done. The different realms have very distinct looks and the details are worth looking at, be it the little gem clusters in the Dwarves’ mines, blooming shrubs in the forest as you Twirl near them, bubbles and corals as you swim with Ariel, the majesty of Cinderella’s castle.
The multiplayer option is a great idea to have girls or a mom and daughter team working together to restore the different realms back to normal.
I’m not a little girl anymore, so obviously the game progression felt a little slow for me, with all the explanations and plenty of story sequences and dialogs. Still, I enjoyed my Enchanted Journey a lot more than I expected and I am sure every little girl gamer out there will too. Everything is bright and colorful, the voices are really good and the music is indeed magical.
I didn’t mind one bit being a girly girl for a while, to play a game where the Princess finally saves the world.
Special thanks to Kate Pagliara and Disney Interactive for providing a copy of this title.