Review: ‘Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream’ is full of goodness

Here’s where things stand for me now Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream island: I’m married to Dua Lipa, I only added her to the island because I wanted her to date my friend Nick, who has a job. Nick, at the cowboy wake, played guitar and sang at our wedding because he’s a good guy who will never let jealousy ruin a friendship. Meanwhile, my friend Curt has a devastating crush on Sonic the Hedgehog, but so far it remains woefully underwhelming. Stewie Griffin and Eric Cartman are also in love, but neither party has confirmed it yet. I wish them the best.

Mostly this is the way The Tomodachi Life on Nintendo Switch go. He made a bunch of Miis (you know, the weird little guys you played as Wii Sports 20 years ago), do a small amount of care every day to keep them happy and open to new things, and whatever comes next depends on them. Although it sometimes doesn’t sound like a game in the traditional sense, there’s no denying how much fun it is.

As the long-awaited follow-up to The Tomodachi Life on 3DS (released 2014), Living the Dream it has big shoes to fill. While not all of the great features of the 3DS game have made the journey to the Nintendo Switch, Nintendo has expanded on that game’s vision in some cool ways to make this a sequel worth waiting for over a decade.

I hope you like landscape design

Since Living the Dream introduced a much larger audience than the 3DS game 12 years ago, I think there are a lot of people wondering what it is. Let me explain everything I can.

In Living the Dreamthe main task of the player is to cultivate and maintain an island full of Miis. You can support yourself, your friends, or your favorite fictional characters, celebrities, or athletes. Each Mii has a unique personality set by the player through a series of personality sliders (“Loyalty” and “Respectful” are at the end of one slider, for example), and this determines how they behave and who they can befriend. Feeding them their favorite food, giving them stylish clothes, and otherwise fulfilling any common requests they make will fill up the happiness meter, prompting island expansion and other fun unlocks.

And that’s great! The bones of The Tomodachi Life they haven’t changed much since 2014, but many things around the edges have been updated to make them Living the Dream more customizable than the last game. Perhaps the biggest change is that you can now customize the grid-based island to make your island look the way you want. This also opens up another way to unlock collectibles, as things like potted plants, trees, vending machines, and certain travel areas are now locked after leveling.

I have to admit that this is not something I am passionate about in any game. I just don’t have a good eye for interior or exterior decoration. That means, Living the Dream makes this very easy to do and the stakes are low enough that you can safely ignore them if you want. One of my favorite features is that, whenever it’s time to place a new structure or item, you can press the “Mii’s Choice” button to have the game place you wherever it makes the most sense. Or, sometimes, it will place a vending machine on the beach. Either way, I don’t have to think too hard about it.

Nintendo has made a very good decision not to include a research filter of any kind in Living the Dream, so while I will refuse to share some examples, I can guarantee that you can make them talk about anything you can enter in that text forum.

Another cool new feature is the ability to create objects, clothes, and even physical features for Miis by simply drawing with the cursor (or, in handheld mode, the touchscreen). Also, I’m not an artist, so this is something I haven’t done much, but I know for sure it will open up a whole new level of misguided nonsense. Living the Dream it’s getting wider.

Even if it’s not something I want to spend a lot of time on, making Mii Island a tangible and customizable place is a great move. Living the Dream. People will be fine with it, and I can’t wait to see Mii metropolises for dedicated players, even though they won’t be able to easily share them online. More on that in a second.

Voice synthesis does it The Tomodachi Life big

Imagine this, but with the strangest robot voice you’ve ever heard.
Credit: Nintendo

The original game of The Tomodachi Lifeat least in my eyes, it’s not really attractive here. That means, it is something a fun and rewarding loop that can remain engaging for hours, while never asking the player to spend more than 30 to 45 minutes playing at a time. One of the best features of the Living the Dream that you’ll simply run out of things to do before each session hits an hour, unless you have an ungodly number of Miis on your island. They will stop making requests and start working for themselves. You can stay tuned, or you can come back later. It exists Animal Crossing-Features of a real style watch, so there are reasons to log in at certain times of the day. But, thankfully, I’ve never once felt obligated to plan my real-life schedule around it The Tomodachi Lifewhich is what turned me off Animal Crossing.

In fact, though, it’s the secret sauce that does it Living the Dream function is the text-to-speech robotic voice that all Mii use to communicate. They will often ask you questions that you can answer in a text field, and then repeat the answer out loud in all sorts of different situations. I told a Mii that I like Bruce Springsteen, and now all the Miis on my island are talking about the Boss a lot. Nintendo made a very good decision not to include a censorship filter of any kind Living the Dreamso while I’ll stop at sharing specific examples, I can guarantee that you can make them talk about anything you can enter in that text field.

I’m not kidding when I say that the reason I play this game is just to sit and listen to Miis’ speeches. Their voices sound ridiculously unnatural and refreshingly honest in a world full of artificial AI garbage. There are definitely some of your Miis that try to mimic human speech, which makes it even more interesting. Yes, you have full control over their voice’s pitch, depth, and tone, to make them sound indeed weird, if you want.

This is most evident in the form of comedy skits that your Miis will freely perform for your entertainment. Sometimes, a Mii will ask you to help them befriend another Mii by asking for a chat topic. Type anything, and they’ll have a nice Mad Libs-style conversation about it. Voice synthesis in The Tomodachi Life It’s not new to this entry in the series, but it’s key to what it does Living the Dream It’s so much fun to log in every day.

I wish you could use the share button

You can draw anything you want, but good luck sharing it on social media.
Credit: Nintendo

In Living the DreamMiis have never looked crisper and high definition. There are more cosmetic options here than the Wii had, so if you’re creative enough, you can make a virtual facsimile of anyone. Nintendo also made the admirable decision to make this part of the Switch 1 instead of locking it to the more expensive Switch 2. Unfortunately, this means the game is locked to 30 frames per second and currently doesn’t use any of the Switch 2’s unique features, such as mouse control, which would have made painting and landscaping much easier. The frame rate thing doesn’t really matter in a game like this, but there’s no real crappy mouse support.

However, nothing is more annoying than the lack of a true share button. In Living the Dreamyou can hit the Switch share button to capture screenshots and video clips of funny moments, just like you would in any other Switch game. However, Nintendo has disabled the ability to upload images directly to the mobile device. This means that getting screenshots and videos on the console and logging into social media is impossible for the average user.

There is a loophole that involves putting the photos on an SD card and uploading them to the computer that way, but most people won’t do that.

My friends and I do this on weekends.
Credit: Nintendo

I think I understand Nintendo’s thinking here. If the share button worked normally in the game with no search filterthe internet will be flooded with horrifying images and videos from misbehaving Miis, a bad look for the most family-friendly publisher in games. Unfortunately, there are a lot of funny screenshots I took that I can’t even include in this review because I can’t currently get them off my Switch.

Finally, I’ll also mention that I don’t think you can write songs for your Miss to sing in this game, like you could in the 3DS version. I may not have worked out the arcane way to use that feature, but as far as I know, my favorite part of the 3DS version has been removed. It’s sad.

Even with those troubling limitations, Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream it’s pretty much what I wanted it to be in every other respect. It’s a different, more low-key kind of “cosy game” than that Pokémon Pokopia. Rather than focusing on big building projects, you’ll spend more of your time indoors Living the Dream make funny little talking dolls that look like your friends and bring them together until they fall in love, or they don’t. Most importantly, I literally laugh every time I play it. Most video games can’t claim that.