My Little Pony: A Maretime Bay Adventure Review (PS5)

Can’t we all just get along and not have me do your chores for one day?

I know not a lot of people want to make it puplic that they like My Little Pony…but I really like My Little Pony. Specifically Generation 4, where my favorite pony is Fluttershy. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to let go of G4, but I did give the G5 movie a go (totally not a day before I played this) and I really liked it. It was a cute, fun movie, I liked the characters, it handles its themes pretty well, and it’s in the perfect spot between being great for kids and older fans. Oh and Izzy is my favorite. Tell Your Tale and Make Your Mark? Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

My Little Pony: A Maretime Bay Adventure follows the new Mane Five sometime after the movie (and what I suspect is after the first Make Your Mark episode). As the title suggests, today is Maretime Bay Day, but the main difference of this year’s is that earth ponies will be celebrating it with unicorns and pegasi! Everyone has their store booths open, though they can only trade rather than sell their goods, activities are set up for everyone to try their hoof at (which more or less are being handled by some of the Mane 5), and magic is as strong as it was back during the Mane 6 days. Well…okay that last part is a bit of a lie. It turns out that somepony isn’t too happy about everypony getting along and has set out to ruin Maretime Bay Day. Messing with the activities so nopony will be able to do them and ruining paintings so arguments will arise again. If you want the magic to not switch off again, you need to find out who is doing this.

This game is pretty low stakes. Well, I guess the threat of magic turning off is some sort of threat, but that’s about it really. After you grab your bag from the naughty bunny that stole it, you’ll basically be doing favors for the other ponies as well as their chores that they don’t want to do (even though it’s their job). They’ll ask for you to do something, like herding bunnies back over to them, or grabbing something for them, like a smoothie or paint, before you either get an item you need to progress or be able to progress. With the main way you’ll be progressing is completing the minigames and fixing the posters someone drew on with paint. I really do wish this was more than a fetch quest game. It’s on brand having you help others, but it’s not enough for the price this game is asking for.

You do get to talk to the other Mane 5 throughout the game though, and sadly most of the voice actors from the movie didn’t carry over. Some did do a good job, but some didn’t (Izzy is the one you’ll probably notice the most). I do like the interactions between everyone though, even though a certain pony stole my skates. I found the controls pretty okay and it admittedly grew on me the longer I played (which…makes me wish we got a better, longer game). It takes a bit to get used to, but I never really had any moments where it stood out as annoying. You also get skates around halfway through the game, letting you travel faster but not being as precise as you would just being on your hoofs. Honestly, I mainly traveled on skates once I got them and the only time it made things difficult was trying to skate over logs and jumping on short platforms (which is only in like one place).

There are only a couple minigames here that you’ll play. There’s the herding minigame which will have you herd bunnies to the score post, but they have the tendency to escape from you and jump into holes. And later you’ll have crabs, which follow you but will stay if they go over mud. This is an easy minigame, but it’s the hardest out of them all (bunny and crab herding was the only one I didn’t hit all the score goals for). Then there’s the dancing rhythm minigame where you basically hit the button that it asks for once it’s over the beat circle. And then lastly, two on rails running/flying one, with one having you fly through hoops and avoiding hot air ballons and the other chasing the culprit down. Strangely enough though, the obstacle course (or well, that’s what I’m going to call it) that you have to do to go Zipp’s flying on rails minigame isn’t included.

You can play the minigames through the main menu once you play them in the main story. However, the only change is that you can switch the character you’re playing and can play with another person. This was pretty disappointing as I was expecting at least a couple more levels (like how the obstacle courses) and especially different songs for the dancing rhythm game (I’m really surprised they either didn’t or couldn’t put in the songs from the movie).

Often times, I also felt the minigames went on a tad too long, specifically the on rails flying one and the dancing rhythm game. This is probably because there isn’t any change to them unlike say the herding minigame where it gets a bit harder each time you finish a level.

One of the minigames also has a weird segway to them. Pipp is in charge of the dancing rhythm minigame and she asks for you to find and bring back the dancer that hasn’t arrived yet. Well, some fetching items later, the dancer doesn’t end up going back so she can talk to her crush Hitch (which I don’t think she did?) and going back to Pipp will have her just enlist you. Which all I have to ask is…why not just have Sunny fill in for the dancer in the first place.

Other than that, there are stars, or Magic Bits, that are scattered around each area that you can collect. Most of them are in the overworld where you have to collect and use your earth pony magic to instantly grow sunflowers to bounce on, but some will be given through uni-cycling buildings (basically decorating them) with Sunny’s alicorn magic and getting all the score rewards in the minigames. Collecting the Magic Bits will unlock some clothing items that you can have Sunny wear (and some of them are based on story completion) while you complete the main story.

Verdict

A Maretime Bay Adventure is an okay game. It was fun playing through it and having everyone interact with each other again, as well as having Sprout here considering he’s weirdly forgotten in Tell Your Tale and Make Your Mark, even though the game was pretty low stakes and really is just you doing everyone’s job/chores for them. I can also bet kids that loved the G5 movie will also like this game as well. However, I do not recommend getting this for the full $40 price. At most $15, but not $40. It took me less than two hours for me to 100% complete this game and there just isn’t enough to justify the price (especially considering the only thing that is added to the minigames is being able to play as different ponies). I’d definitely wait for a deep discount (or maybe a price decrease) or just rent it like I did.

Though this game does make me sad that we never got an official G4 game considering how popular it was (and still is). I do think there is potential in a My Little Pony game, especially since there is a lot of lore you can work with, but I guess the only hope is in fan games.