If players have ever wanted to live in Disneyland or Disney World and befriend beloved Disney characters, Disney Magical World 2: Enchanted Edition offers such an experience. Similar to Animal Crossing, Disney Magical World 2: Enchanted Edition sees players move into a new town, Castleton, right next door to Mickey Mouse, and will gather, fish, and craft furniture and clothing to make the city their own. Along the way, they will meet their favorite characters, collect Stickers that can be used to unlock different areas, and complete favors for their new friends.
Disney Magical World 2 is, at its core, a life sim. Players will explore six Disney-themed worlds through portals, including the world of Disney's Frozen, the Hundred Acre Wood with Pooh and friends, and Hawaii with Lilo and Stitch. In addition to spending time with characters, they can purchase materials, furniture, and clothing from Scrooge McDuck's department store, run by Huey, Dewey, and Louie. They can also gather materials around the world and from fishing and craft furniture at Chip and Dale's workshop or Daisy's Boutique. They will receive a job from the King to run a café in town in which they can set the menu, host parties with their Disney character friends, and earn extra coins to purchase new items. They can also delve deep into the Castle Vaults for a dungeon crawl to earn rewards, experience parades, star in dance performances, and watch fireworks displays.
There are a lot of great ideas in Disney Magical World 2, from the player character learning to wield magic from the legendary sorcerer Yen Sid so they can traverse dungeons and complete quests for residents, to the Sticker system that creates guided, but not mandated, progression into new worlds. Living, working, and making friends in such a large-scale crossover world akin to the Disney Parks could be incredibly fun for Disney fans of all ages. Unfortunately, these ideas don't ever ascend to anything particularly new or innovative. Dungeons and quests are repetitive, combat is simple yet unwieldy, and the Sticker system becomes more of a nuisance that pulls players right out of the immersion just as they begin to get invested in gameplay. Disney Magical World 2 is clearly aimed at younger gamers, and while it tries to bring some Disney magic as an intro to the life sim genre and gaming in general, it needed a bit more polish to be truly great.
Though players can technically go wherever they want in Disney Magical World 2 (following completion of an extremely drawn-out tutorial), they have a very limited number of choices for a life sim. They will need to have earned a number of Stickers by completing activities around town to unlock new areas. There are set recipes players can use to craft furniture and clothing, typically tied to a Disney character theme, and the game lacks the design tool options of other life sims that allow for greater freedom and customization. The gameplay feels elongated by the presence of simplistic fetch quests, entirely too many loading screens, and odd, lengthy zooms or intro cinematics to provide an opportunity to take screenshots of quest items or new characters.
Multiple technical issues hold Disney Magical World 2 back significantly. All the characters in the game have incredibly stilted and jerky animations, coupled with dead-eyed stares that can be extremely unsettling. The random NPCs around town never move around or feel alive the way they do in other life sims and only act when the player character approaches and interacts with them. For a game that has over 100 characters and many more Nintendo Mii-style NPCs, the world feels very empty and liminal. In addition, players are routinely coaxed to take screenshots throughout the game, but a pop-up appears after every image taken, preventing them from getting multiple shots in a row of cutscenes where angles rapidly change and good shots may come and go too quickly to capture.
The Disney characters in Disney Magical World 2 are only partially voiced, and while they at first sound pretty true to character, some repeated catchphrases for each line of dialogue don't necessarily sound like the character and can break immersion. The soundtrack is also incredibly repetitive to the point that it was both noticeable and obnoxious enough to warrant muting the game entirely.
Disney Magical World 2 is a great crossover idea that fundamentally understands the childlike wonder of visiting the Disney parks but likely needed a little more time to develop. There are elements of multiple game genres present in the various minigames around Castleton, from action RPG combat and roguelike dungeons to rhythm games, sports games, and farming sims, and, while that means there is likely something for everyone to enjoy, it does create a somewhat disjointed experience. Though Disney Magical World 2: Enchanted Edition is clearly a game aimed at younger audiences, it could still have used more polish; after all, Animal Crossing, for example, is also for gamers of all ages, and it implements many of the same ideas with far more sophistication. For what it is, Disney Magical World 2 is a fine introduction to gaming for kids, but it could have been much more.
Disney Magical World 2: Enchanted Edition is available for Nintendo Switch. A code was provided to Screen Rant for the purpose of this review.