Capsule Review: Disney Magical World
A life sim set in a crossover Disney universe. Your Mii-based character moves into a town populated by Disney characters (and other Mii-like townsfolk) and explores connected worlds themed after particular Disney properties, undertaking quests and doing favors for beloved Disney characters. There’s a real-time day/night cycle, but it’s just cosmetic and doesn’t block off any of the game’s content. There’s a seasonal cycle too, with special holiday-themed events throughout the year.
The content is well-dressed busywork without a lot of depth but with a good variety of activities, including exploration and some surprisingly nontrivial combat, material-gathering and fishing, furniture and outfit crafting, farming crops and managing a cafe, rhythm-minigame-based dancing, and plenty of customization options (I want some of those shirts in real life). It’s also consistently warm and loaded with treats for Disney fans.
If you’re nostalgic about Disney, it’s a good way to relax after a long day. But after a few hours, you’ve seen all there really is to see. The rest is a matter of checking things off a list with the late game getting increasingly grindy and luck-based. Honestly, the second game is better and I’d recommend skipping this first one and going straight to the sequel.
I Stopped Playing When: The game has one hundred stickers to collect, serving dual purpose as an achievement system (stickers are rewarded for meeting certain goals) and as a progress gate (new areas become available as you collect a certain number of stickers). Getting them all is more or less beating the game, though there is more cosmetic content (outfits, furniture, etc.) to collect. Once I’d collected all the stickers, I was ready to put the game down - I’d enjoyed it at first but the last few stickers had been a pain to earn and the remaining content looked just as painful to hunt down, so I quit.
Three Stars: Good. I liked the game enough to finish it (or just play it a bunch, for games that don't end). I recommend it to most genre fans.