Tamagotchi Plaza was revealed during the March 27th Nintendo Direct earlier this year, announced for Switch and confirmed for Switch 2 as well. Now, I haven’t owned or used a Tamagotchi since the late ‘90s, but I can appreciate that the brand still has its fans and there’s even connectivity between the game and the modern Tamagotchi Uni toy. That said, the simplistic, repetitive gameplay on offer in Tamagotchi Plaza represents a far cry from the joy of raising a digital pet, and it’s a hard sell no matter how you feel about the brand.

The premise of Tamagotchi Plaza is that you are trying to get the king to award the Tamagotchi Fest to Tamahiko Town, which is where you find yourself. After providing your name and birthday, you select a Tamagotchi assistant to serve as your avatar as you walk around and visit the various shops to help them out and earn money and reputation for the town. At times, the prince will come by to offer encouragement and signal that you are making progress towards the town’s goal. By helping each shop to succeed and grow more prosperous, you increase the chances of Tamahiko Town winning the bid to host Tamagotchi Fest. Unfortunately, some frustrating choices make such an objective one that I can’t imagine many players will have the drive to complete.

For one, none of the mini-games that you play at the dozen shops offer any sort of tutorial. There may be some brief feedback given during each one or at the conclusion, but typically you’re left high and dry as you attempt to discern what the game is asking you to do. Some of the activities, like the sushi restaurant, the glasses store, and the manga studio, are particularly in need of an explanation or demo that would showcase how to succeed in their tasks. For another, you are neither punished or rewarded monetarily by how well you perform in the mini-games. A one-star rating yields as many coins as a three-star rating, and it’s hilarious to hear the light scolding from the shop owner or customer as you still charge them the same 30 to 60 coins for a job poorly done. If you earn enough three-star ratings from customers, you get an opportunity to spend your coins to upgrade that particular shop.

From your mayoral-looking home base, you can select a different avatar Tamagotchi, upgrade the four centralized park spaces of the town, or check on the town’s chances of scoring the Tamagotchi Fest, which increases at a snail’s pace. The progress is all the more glacial due to the repetitive nature of each mini-game, and really they’re all that Tamagotchi Plaza has to offer. You can “collect,” and I use the word loosely here, over 100 different Tamagotchi, and each new one appears in a journal with updated photos of them as you have further interactions. Only sometimes can you even elicit any type of dialogue or reaction from them, and so the enjoyment comes only from their appearance in town and any familiarity you might have with them from things like the Tamagotchi Connection: Corner Shop games on Nintendo DS.

For a high point, the Switch 2 performance of Tamagotchi Plaza is solid, with no noticeable issues during my playtime outside of a tiny bit of pop-in. There are a couple of mini-games that can be enjoyed with a second player in local co-op, and the sushi restaurant actually forces you to use the Joy-Con 2 in mouse mode, which is both fitting but also a fairly miserable affair. If activities like making and serving sushi don’t drive you mad, the cutesy but grating sound effects likely will.

Tamagotchi Plaza isn’t an experience I would recommend on Switch or Switch 2, and I struggle to find many redeeming qualities outside of its colorful world and quirky-looking citizens. The mini-games are much more often boring, repetitive, or inscrutable than fun, and the gameplay loop becomes recognizably thin within the first 30 minutes of the game. From what I’ve seen of the DS titles, there’s more charm and incentive to revisit or play through those than this modern reincarnation. While I’d think that younger players might be able to get into Tamagotchi Plaza, the lack of mini-game tutorials/directions is certain to push them away instead. No amount of Tamagotchi nostalgia would be enough to make this plaza a place you want to visit.