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difficult to play at first

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: March 11, 2007
Author: Amazon User

My daughter was really excited for this game. She has all of the other Barbie CD rom games and plays them all the time. None of the games come with instructions, which is usually not that big a deal. This particular game was really difficult to navigate (even for grown-ups), especially at first. I don't think I would recommend this one.

Good Game, Poor Design

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: April 02, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Well, I like many others found many bugs. The game overall has many good points and many bad points:

Good Points:
1) Graphics are pretty good
2) Dancing is great but after finding 12 princesses gets old as I wish there was a way to bypass
3) Fun challenging end games besides Twyla which is a total pain
4) Lots of levels

Bad Points:
5) Never was able to save and come back. Save worked while computer session was on but didn't work when shut off
6) Twyla game is a pain. It took me many tries and there is not much help. There is no way a very young child can get it as it took me more than 1 hour to overcome. I don't remember how many flowers I needed but it was a lot like 8 or something
7) Voices are annoying as they don't sound at all like the real princesses
8) Navigation is extremely hard. I have to sit with my 5 year old and navigate while she jumps but I don't have to with any other Barbie game.
9) Takes about 4 hours to get through from beginning to end if you know what you are doing and with no functional save (at least for me), this is a long time to sit with a 5 year old on your lap.

For those of you who haven't been able to finish. You need to get all 11 princesses and then go back to the one garden (I can't remember which one) and a secret path opens up when you are on the last one. I must have looked for an hour to find the 3rd princess in this garden and finally skipped it and came back after I had found all the rest. To get the last princess and bottle of elixer takes a very long time but good ending.

I am 10 years old and *I* like it!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: April 27, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I like the game. But I think it's for younger people maybe five to eight years old, not ten. It's good for patient people because every time you start a new archway it tells you how to play, when you probably already know. I think it's kinda fun because you use the arrow keys and space bar instead of the mouse.

Parts are very difficult and frustrating

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: April 30, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Not for kids [..], except that parts are so easy that they will frustrate [...]. The "twyla" part is not difficult, it's just poorly programmed therefore furtsrating even for adults, as the keys don't respond quickly the way they should. Navigation in general is very frustrating, very slow, one must press dozens of keys to simply advance a bit at times due to bad directioning in the program.

Imagine your [...]REALLY looking forward to the game... and then dumping it in frustration three hours later. Besides, the game contains neither the music nor the voices from the movie.

Not Easy, But we did Finish it!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: July 13, 2007
Author: Amazon User

My 8 year old was able to do most of the game herself. I would not recommend this game for anyone younger, as it requires good eye-hand coordination.

The program had 3 problem areas for her. First was an invisible game. The graphics just were not there. I managed to play the invisible game and get past it for her. (This is not an easy thing to do.) Second was a Twila game. Very difficult to figure out and maneuver, but I did manage to get past it for my daughter. The Third and most frustrating was a program loop at one spot. If you manage to get past the spot with no mistakes, it is not a problem, but if you make a mistake you have to quit the game and restart. It restarts fairly close to the trouble spot, but not close enough. It took us about 30 minutes to get past it, with no mistakes.

I would not recommend this game because of these trouble spots. If they were to fix these areas, the game would very nice for children with good eye-hand coordination.

Too hard for young gamers, annoying for older gamers

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: October 14, 2007
Author: Amazon User

My six year old gets frustrated often playing this game, and I know when she sits down to play it, I have no chance of getting anything else done because she'll require constant help, after which she'll usually have a complete meltdown, frustrated because she wants to play the game, but frustrated because she can't.

Activision here attempted to create a 3D game using Barbie, as she wanders around various paths collecting gems and completing tasks - major tasks that help unlock the 12 princesses in the game. In essence, this is a "platform" game that works in 3D space. Follow paths, jump over obstacles, jumps onto moving platforms and elevators, etc. (If you remember when the Mario series went from 2D to 3D, you'll understand what I'm saying.) Unfortunately, Activision chose to use the 3rd-person view, where you are looking over Barbie's shoulder (and can see her entire body), as opposed to making it 1st-person, where you would see the world through her eyes.

As a result, you have to use the arrow keys to move Barbie around, and pressing the left, right, and down arrows changes her body's orientation so that she's turning in 3D space. This is hard for a child to control, and it's even frustrating for an adult (who games quite often on a console!). You can't see the whole landscape until you turn her around and the camera follows her.

The larger issues:
1. the camera angles that follow Barbie around are terrible, it takes forever for the camera to catch up, and as a result, you spend more time trying to line Barbie up with a jump, platform, gem...and then sometimes she gets caught on an edge of something and you can't move
2. you can't really judge depth -- meaning you really don't know when to jump, and usually end up falling into water or off the edge of a cliff. Fortunatley, Barbie doesn't have any lives, so you can repeat the same sequence over and over and over and over...which is really fun
3. instructions are weak, and sometimes it's really difficult to figure out what you need to do. Other times, the narrator tells you everything you need to do -- but all of the instructions are given as one long spoken set of instructions, and you can't begin the task or activity until it has completed. So if you already know what to do, you still have to wait for it to finish.
4. there are no maps to tell you where you've been or where you need to go, and the paths that Barbie wanders are like mazes -- tough for young children. When my daughter asks for help, I don't know if she's headed in the right direction or not. Directional arrows would have been nice.
5. sometimes when you fall off a ledge, the game respawns Barbie facing in the wrong direction, so if you're not careful, you end up going back to where you started, and only then do you realize you've made a mistake
6. There are 12 princesses...so this game is quite involved, and quite long. And quite repetitive.
7. we experienced errors after finding the first princess. The error was addressed incorrectly on Activision's support site, and only after uninstalling the "full" installation from my computer, and reinstalling it in the "minimal" configuration was I able to prevent the error and continue the game. Fortunately I knew where the "save" file was stored, so my daughter didn't lose her progress.

This is a poor, poor showing for a Barbie game, and I'm really disappointed in Activision for putting out such a poorly implemented product. This isn't worth $20, and I don't even think it's worth $10. Save your child(ren) and yourself some frustration and buy something else.

Great game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: October 19, 2007
Author: Amazon User

We bought this game for my 4 year old and she loves it. We have had it for almost 6 months now and it is still her favorite game. She has played it and finished it almost 5 times now. She has many computer games and likes to visit sites on the web that have childrens games but prefers this to any other.

The only reason I didn't give it 5 stars is because she calls me to help her with several of the harder parts of the game (throwing flowers on the lilly pad, and catching flowers for Twila). I cant tell you how many times I have had to do these, but they only take 5 minutes and then she is back to happily playing the game. Still, its enough of an irritation for me...so I can only give the game 4 stars.

too hard for a 6 year old, disappointing!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: December 26, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This is the worst Barbie game we have seen. My six year old was very frustrated (and I was too after several attempts at helping her). She usually plays games similar to this on her own, but there was no part of this game she could play alone. The instructions are poor and the kitty catching the flower game is impossible and extremely frustrating! I wish I would have read the other reviews before purchasing this game. We are very disappointed and after several hours, I'm sure it will never be finished. I think my daughter has given up and is sorry that Santa would bring her such a hard game. Do not purchase this for a young Barbie fan, or you will be the one playing it and getting frustrated too!

Brought my daughter to tears on Christmas morning!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: December 30, 2007
Author: Amazon User

If I could give this game a zero I would. The game starts out good with nice graphics and all, bt very quickly goes down hill. The child has to complete tasks to find the princesses. The first task is to make a little kitten jump and duck to catch flowers, but if you miss you loose all your flowers. My daughter tried for over 30 min. Then I tried for 1 hour, the my husband tried and my son (a game fanatic) tried. None of us could complete the task. I had to try and explain to my daughter why Santa would bring a "mean game". The purpose of the game is supposed to be fun for the child, not frustrating for the whole family. Don't buy this game and warn everyone you know not to buy it. Lets stop any more children from crying because of this awful game!

too hard to use the arrow keys

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: December 30, 2007
Author: Amazon User

My four year old does very well with a mouse, and sometimes she needs my help. This game she just wanted me to play and watch, becuase it was too hard for her. She doesn't like it and got frustrated, I have already ordered the rapunzel as recommended by other reviewers

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