Girls can extend the experience of Barbie as the Princess and the Pauper with this charming software title from VU Interactive and Mattel. It's time for the coronation of Erika as queen, but Preminger is still scheming on ways to prevent this event from taking place. Fortunately, Anneliese and Erika aren't about to let anything get in the way of this important event.
Just as the kingdom is getting ready to crown Erika as their new queen, Preminger informs the girls that he has found an ancient scroll of law, the Book of Royalty. This scroll lists all the important qualities a queen must have before she can rule. It's a very long list, and it's only a few days before the coronation! The girls will need all the help they can get to finish everything on this check list.
The Book of Royalty is the game's task list, with each task listed one at a time with a short explanation. In order to move on to the next task, the prior one must be completed. Typical tasks involve helping the various inhabitants of the village and castle by finding a cat, collecting apples, decorating a cake, making banners, delivering flowers, and other similar jobs. One of the last tasks is very humorous, and involves finding the correct singers for the coronation ceremony. There are some bad singers in this village! Every so often, a room in the castle will need decorating for the coronation, and girls will be able to change the colors of the room and add stamps, too.
While the majority of the activities are of the paint and stamp type seen a multitude of times before in creativity games, many of these are exceptionally well-crafted and are very engaging. For instance, the banner activity combines a jig-saw puzzle where players match the pieces of fabric to the banner's shadow picture, then choose the colors for the banner. After that, they also get to add a variety of stitches in different colors, too. A cake decorating activity combines a recipe game with the actual cake decorating, which offers many decorating options, and some cute cake shapes! There is a virtual pet game, which is too cute, but could use a few more toy options. However, the cat and its taste in toys and food changes each time, so it's still pretty fun. If players get a cat that wants to dance, the result is quite hilarious!
The adventure is interesting, and girls will thoroughly enjoy helping Anneliese decorate the rooms, and assisting Erika with the villagers. Most tasks require that Erika do quite a bit of traveling back and forth between the castle, the village and the forest, but the signs posted along the way keep players from getting lost. En route to these areas, there are two critical thinking games that reset for each new task, a pattern matching game involving choosing the correct stepping stones across a stream, and a "water pipes" type of game, where different shaped logs have to be fit together for Erika to cross the muddy path. There are also three interactive, simulation type games, where Erika has to help saw logs, hammer horseshoes and spin a spinning wheel. These activities cleverly involve the players, so that they feel they're really helping the people. Like the other activities, these simulation games can also be played as stand-alone games on completion of the adventure, but aren't that fun to play outside of the adventure.
As stated above, the task list is a very long list, and is one of the few drawbacks to this game. I never thought I would say this in reference to a children's game, as most err on the side of brevity, but this game is a bit too long for young children. There aren't too many activities, but the adventure itself is long and takes a lot of time to finish. There are at least sixteen tasks (I forgot to note the final number when I was finished, but it was soon after I hit sixteen). I'm an adult, and I was getting a little tired of the adventure by the time it was done. However, most of the activities can be played over and over again, and kids can take a break and just play the games when they're tired of the adventure.
Other clever features of this game involve using the cakes, banners, stained glass windows and flower arrangements as decorations all around the castle and village, by looking for special locations where they can be placed, and the ability to earn one special decoration for each of the main activities by finding ten roses, at certain points during the adventure.
This Barbie game is one of the better ones, and ranks along with Barbie Horse Adventures Mystery Ride and Barbie of Swan Lake. There are a ton of things to do, and each activity is very well-designed, with not only attention paid to the look of the activity, but with even the sound effects imparting a physical "feel" to the placement of objects and colors. I only have a few criticisms to offer, in that while the main activities can be played over again, for some reason the rooms cannot be redecorated. Also, the game can't be restarted under the same name, at least not under any option that I could find. Instead, players will have to choose a whole new name to begin again. The music at times is annoyingly loud in spots, but can't be turned down independently of the voices. And, as stated above, the adventure may be too long for younger players. One last note, the age range of 5-up is a little misleading, in being too broad. A more realistic age range is probably for children ages 4-8. The activities are easy enough for most 4-year-olds, if they can sit long enough for the adventure.
A great creativity title, and one that will definitely appeal to Barbie fans and any girl that's seen the movie. Boys can certainly have fun playing, too, if you ostensibly buy it for their sister. While the adventure is the same each time, there's enough variety in the activities that most young children will enjoy playing again and again. A good choice for families with young children.
