Barbie Princess and the Pauper

Rating:
Summary: don't buy
Review: i have been trying to play this game with my four year old, and it is very frustrating. erika moves oh-so-slooooooooooow, it takes forever to get her to walk across a room. then, you must do the activities in order---if my little girl wants to "find the kitten", she has to start the entire game over to do it. same for "baking a cake", and all the other activities. you can't just click on something and do it.
all in all, it's very aggravating.


Rating:
Summary: Great Fun and Teaches Problem Solving
Review: My 4 year old daughter loves this game. She's 2 years below the recommended age, but with adult supervision and coaching is able to play the game.

This game builds on itself. You begin with easy tasks and progress to more difficult tasks that require a more mature thought process. I am able to discuss the problem solving steps with my child during this game and she is able to then deduct what she should do next.

Her favorite tasks are baking cakes, making stained glass windows, flags, and taking care of the kittens in this game. You are only required to do each of these tasks once. However, it is possible to go back and do these tasks multiple times (which my daughter does repeatedly).

This game is nice because it makes the learning process fun. My daughter loves the storyline and is anxious to get to the coronation of Erika. (I have to admit that I played the game through one evening after my daughter was asleep just to see what happened at the end.)

Anytime you exit the game, your point of progess in the game is saved. This means that you can stop at anytime and resume hours or days later where you left off. I love this feature as the game is lengthy. I believe there are 18 or so tasks to solve.

This game is just good, clean fun.

Rating:
Summary: Pretty game but it's got fatal bugs that kill the fun
Review: My daughters (ages 3 and 5) love this game and can mostly handle the quests/puzzles that the princess has to do however, as a parent I think they are a little mundane and I'm not sure that I would call them educational as there are no academic puzzles at all. However, what really aggravates is that the game has fatal bugs in it that as far as I can tell, cannot be worked around except by starting all over again. This happened once at the beginning where the princess got stuck in a state she couldn't exit but it did not matter too much then but now that my 3 year old is near the end, (according to the cheat-sheet) she has hit another fatal limbo bug - the princess has to go around trying to find some singers; To locate them, the princess has to sing notes to people she meets and if they reply in the correct way then she gives them some flowers so they will sing at the ball. Well, the little princess has decided to stop singing! The interface is there, the buttons are there, the people are there and she keeps on telling us to sing notes but when you click on the note places, although the mouse pointer changes, no notes come out! In addion, we've come across 2 fatal bugs where if you speak to certain people, or ask the scroll to read out a certain item, you get a cryptic error message about missing elements and the whole program vanishes to the desktop!

As far as I can tell there is no "patch" available on the web or even any kind of support site for the game, just fluffy advertising pages for the game itself. In addition, reinstalling the game completely did not help. I have the latest hardware and XP home so no there should be no excuses there.

Unfortunately, as the game only ever saves the last position, there is no way to return back to a last-known-good point. So, although this game gets 4 strs for fun, it gets 1 star overall because it's nothing more than a ticking time bomb of disappointment for your kids. Until Vivendi fix it or issue a patch AVOID!!

Rating:
Summary: 2princessesmom
Review: My daughters absolutely love this game-I thought it might be difficult for my 3 1/2 year old, but my 5 year old helped her along the way. As far as "bugs" that another reviewer said they had gotten-that is caused either by lack of memory in the computer or you need a new video card for the computer-we have 2 computers, mine and my husbands computer is fully loaded with everything we need and it is very fast. Our daughters computer on the other hand has quite a bit of memory and a good video card but when the girls use the game on their computer Erica walks much slower and hesitates when you need to hear her tell you something-but when it is played on our computer-Erica walks very fast and has no problem speaking when asked a question. Another tip about the game is make sure that you turn OFF your screen saver or that you have it set to come on at least 20 minutes or more (both of ours have a Flat Screen LCD Monitor)-I mention this because if the child walks away and the screen saver comes on and then the child goes back to play the game, the game window will be much smaller than before and there is no way to maximize the window again or even to exit out of the game without going into the task manager and ending the program that way. All in all the game is fabulous and very creative, it keeps the girls attention focused on the game, unlike alot of the other games that are out there. Best thing to do before purchasing the game CHECK YOUR COMPUTERS SYSTEM AND MAKE SURE THAT YOU HAVE ALL THE REQUIREMENTS NECESSARY TO PLAY THE GAME-READ ALL THE GAMES SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS ON THE PACKAGE DESCRIPTION-if you get it without doing so-the game will not play properly and either you will get stuck with an unusable game or you will end up having to shell out more $$$$$$ to upgrade your computer just for the game. Not to mention the fact that you will also have a very unhappy little girl on you hands.
I love the game and so do my girls-if you have all the requirements-I recommend you get it for your little princess.

Rating:
Summary: fun, challenging game
Review: My daughters are ages 4 and 6. They both LOVE this game! There are so many places to go and things to do. They play this game several times a week and still haven't completed it yet - so it hasn't lost it's charm yet. I bought the game as soon as it came out because they love the Princess and the Pauper movie and it has provided hours and hours of enjoyment! I imagine they will still be having as much fun with it months from now too because of all the creative activities in the game. They get to decorate cakes, design stained glass windows that are then put in the windows of the shops, they can wander all around the town and the woods. They have to find Erika's kitten lost in the woods by singing songs, and much more ... I have as much fun watching and listening to them play as they have playing the game!

Rating:
Summary: We all love it.
Review: My five year has been glued to this game for days now( aftr christmas) forget the interactive cat and spring for this. Believe me the cat IS NOT WORTH IT and this is.
Yes it moves a bit slowly---so maybe someone under the age of four would be bored.....But there are so many levels of things to do-and done so wonderfully, imaginatively---we all get in front of the computer and play!
where else can a child of four be enticed to weave i ask you??!?!?
I really is coool---and very girly.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent game!
Review: We love this game! It's fun and once the kids get the hang of it they can navigate around the kindgom quite easily, doing the various tasks and doing fun things like cake decorating, caring for the kittens, and making stained glass windows. One thing I really like about this game is that the voices and background music are soft and pretty - none of the usual hyper techno-sounds that accompany so many computer games.

Rating:
Summary: Begging to use the computer
Review: Well Santa hit the jack pot with this one. My 6 year old loves this game. She has been begging to use the computer since Santa brought it. She even got a barbie computer and this wins hands down. She can play the game by herself and if she has trouble reading anything she can click on the speaker icon and the computer will read it for her. Brilliant, on other games all I hear is Mommy, I need help. So this is perfect. It is even entertaining for me to watch her play. She figures out puzzles, listen to clues to her next task. It is a great game.