So my love of/addiction to the Animal Crossing games that have appeared on the Nintendo DS is no secret, so when I learned about Disney’s Magical World I quickly hit pre-order because how much fun would it be to world build with Disney characters?
Magical World is another in a series of life simulation games that we have seen on the 3DS, or at least that is how it get’s billed. But it is really so much more than that, but I’ll get to that in a moment. One of the most exciting things about this game from the very beginning is the fact that you get to use your own Miis as characters. That means that you are not limited to light skin tones and generic body types like you are in Animal Crossing and that I won’t actually have to leave my character outside in the sun for hours everyday for days on end to even get her to look remotely like me. Score one for H.A.N.D. (developer).
Magical World starts out with you being placed in a setting that looks very much like Disney World. You find yourself in the city center chatting with none other than Mickey Mouse himself. You learn that there are things to do and more importantly people to talk to in order to get the experience that you need to open other areas of the game to you. But in this game rather than getting actual XP you earn stickers for completing tasks and the price of entry of each area is designated by stickers. By talking to the people and Disney characters walking around you not only learn when new things are available to purchase in shops, but you also get the chance to help them by finding flowers, fruit, and plants that they (and you) need to make new items in the game (because here your money isn’t good enough you also have to have the materials to make shop items).
Are you seeing a pattern here? Grinding and fetch quests! Magical World is really more of an RPG trainer for young geeklings than it is an Animal Crossing type simulator. At least one hour in. I “hear” that there are more Farmville/Cafe World segment that let’s you make dishes in the town cafe to keep the place stocked and then folks come in and eat and you come back to collect your earnings. With enough stickers you can also open up Pooh’s garden where you can (presumably) grow all of the things you need to make dishes in the cafe (ala Farmville) rather than just searching them out in the wild.
A couple of things to take note of if you plan to play this game with your own geekling, you can only have one character per 3DS. You can switch to other Miis, but progress picks up where you left off and they continue to play in your version of the world. Also note that while the game claims that basic reading skills are necessary you really do need a pretty good reader to play this game because they need to be able to read recipe cards and dialogue with all of the non-Disney characters that you come into contact with. Only the Disney characters have voice acted dialogue. But if lap co-op is your thing this is a definite blast…even if your kid does put your Mii in a Minnie Mouse dress with a big ass bow on her head.
At $30 Disney’s Magical World really is worth the price of admission. It has the addictive qualities of both Animal Crossing and Facebook resource management type games without having to bug your friends or wait for (or buy) more turns in order to keep playing.
