Tamagotchi Plaza Game Review – Game Review

When I first got ahold of Tamagotchi Plaza for my Nintendo Switch 2, I was shocked to see the little doodads I used to carry around in those plastic egg toys as full-blown video game characters. My surprise made more sense when I realized that I wasn’t just utterly out of touch with the video-game landscape, particularly when it comes to collectible alien friends that live inside your pocket. It turns out that Tamagotchi Plaza is the first console game from this long-running franchise to make it out of Japan in nearly two decades. So, booting up Tamagotchi Plaza was something of a nostalgia trip for me, and I was interested to see how you could develop an entire video game out of a concept that was pretty rudimentary even back in 1999.

As it turns out, Tamagotchi Plaza isn’t a pet simulator at all. Sure, you’ll meet dozens of the bleep-blooping little goofballs as you explore Tamahiko Town and build up the city, but the Tamagotchis here are all independent residents with their own lives and routines. To serve the town and get the place ready for the imminent Tamagotchi Fest, you will have to earn your keep the old-fashioned way: by getting a job and going to work.

Tamagotchi Plaza is a mini-game collection, at its core. The town management elements that occur as you upgrade the square and enhance the shops are hardly complicated enough to form the basis of an entire game; they act more as set dressing to gently encourage you to participate in the real meat of the game, which is repeatedly grinding away at one of its fifteen different “shops,” each of which comes with a mini-game. Though the shop activities differ, the routine is the same the whole way through: you guide whichever Tamagotchi you pick as your second-in-command to a different store and wait for customers to arrive. You work at each shop to your heart’s content, and as soon as you’re done, you scoot on over to a different one. If you do a good job, you earn Gotchis to invest back into the town. If you don’t do so hot…well, we’ll get to that in a second.

First, I’d like to start with the positives. Tamagotchi Plaza is aimed at little kids who may or may not be playing with a parent, and it certainly has the perfect vibe for what might be a child’s first real video game. The graphics are bright and pleasant (especially on the Switch 2), the controls are as simple as can be, and the soundtrack is mostly pleasant muzak that keeps everything feeling very low-key. The Tamagotchis are interesting and cute to look at. A simulated mobile phone serves as your menu, and you can easily keep track of all the different buddies you meet as the game progresses.

When it comes to the presentation, just about the only major complaint I have is related to the synthesized voices of the Tamagotchis. It’s mostly harmless gibberish – imagine the “Mwah-mwah-mwah” sounds that the characters made in the old Banjo-Kazooie games, and you’ll instantly know what to expect – but the higher-pitched vocalizations are likely going to aggravate anyone older than five sooner rather than later.

Minor gripes aside, though, the presentation is good. It’s a cute game, no question about it. It’s when you sit down to play the game that the bigger issues rear their heads. For one, the mini-games are a very mixed bag, and that’s assuming you’re a part of the intended audience for them to begin with. Any experienced gamer is going to find all of these games to be extremely simple and repetitive. The “Rap Battle” shop is the most basic version of a rhythm game imaginable. The tailor has you picking simple shapes from a list to match a pattern for a shirt or other outfit. The gym is a simple, quick-time event where you gently tap the L and R buttons back and forth. You get the idea.

For an adult, it will be hard to stay interested in any of these mini-games for more than just a few minutes, much less the hours you will be required to repeat them to unlock everything. The weird thing is that, for as simple as they are, the games aren’t exactly foolproof entertainment for kids, either. I don’t have children of my own, so I couldn’t test this out firsthand, but I am convinced that a lot of kids are going to be stumped by the complete lack of tutorials here. On the one hand, there is no penalty whatsoever for failure, aside from the fact that you won’t always earn any Gotchis, so each of these games is simple enough to figure out through trial and error, but it’s a little ridiculous that a game meant for such a young audience wouldn’t be a lot more clear and direct with its instructions.

Take the Tea Shop, for instance. When a Tamagotchi arrives, they simply give an order for tea, like “I want a Hot Chocolate Afternoon Tea!” You then have to pick from all sorts of decorations and additions, such as a tea stand, additional fruit, beverages, and sandwiches, with none of them being labeled. There’s a drink that I think could be hot chocolate, though it looks more like a mocha latte to me, but what about the other stuff? As far as I can tell, it comes down to matching the colors of the ingredients, or at least simply getting lucky and picking the one thing that kind of matches the request. Every other element is completely superfluous. Hence, my “Hot Cocoa Afternoon Tea” became an obscene buffet of submarine sandwiches, hamburgers, bonsai trees, and drinks that may or may not have contained chocolate. I got maximum points for that one.

Switch 2 players get access to a few exclusive shops of their own that take advantage of the Joy-Con 2’s mouse-control features. These games are ever-so-slightly more involved, such as flinging ninja stars at targets or gripping the Joy-Con 2 in special ways to mold sushi. While I was impressed by the creative implementation of the mouse functionality, the games don’t add all that much to the proceedings. The sushi mini-game, in particular, was another one that was actually quite frustrating at first because of how little it explained what to do.

I don’t think Tamagotchi Plaza is a terrible time, and it might well serve parents who are looking for a way to introduce their young ones to video games. You just want to make sure you know what you’re getting: a cute-enough package of several different mini-games that aren’t much more complex than what you might be able to find on the App Store, or in one of those old Leapfrog tablets. It’s not the kind of title that I would recommend to people who aren’t planning on playing along with a little newbie, that’s for sure. It may have the cozy and chill vibes that a lot of gamers crave these days, but there’s a difference between “pleasantly simple” and “a literal children’s toy that will put most adults to sleep.” Tamagotchi Plaza is the latter, I am afraid.