We waited twelve years in silence without a single word of acknowledgment from Nintendo about a new Tomodachi game. After a long wait, Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream is finally here. It ushers in a new era of getting to drop in your favorite Miis and watch their lives turn into the most random, potentially chaotic mess you’ve ever seen this side of your TV.
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I’ve been a fan of Tomodachi Life since the 3DS version brought the series stateside. It’s very refreshing how much this new Switch game is what I’ve always loved, just with new cutscenes, outcomes, and features that I could’ve only dreamed of back then, mind the pun. Some of these features have managed to keep the game fun even as I approach 200 hours in it.
10 Cutscenes with Multiple Endings
What Will Happen This Time?
In the 3DS game, cutscenes in Tomodachi Life typically either played themselves straight or just had some predictable endings. The most variation we got was that some Miis either wouldn’t become friends right away or they wouldn’t make up after a fight. Living the Dream changes this, and there’s a good handful of cutscenes that have different outcomes.
When one of your dating Miis asks the other Mii how much they love them, there’s a chance the second one returns their huge feelings and becomes a skyscraper with them. Sometimes, when they cook together, they might burn the meal. There are even two “endings” for the “game-clearing” objective! I want to stick around and see how these events play out when they happen, and it’s nice to see Tomodachi Life improve on its more repetitive aspects in this way.
9 Shop and Market Restocks
Godspeed On Collecting Those Interiors
I’ve fallen into the trap of booting up my Switch 2, seeing Living the Dream’s icon, and opening it just to check my shops. Where & Wear and Fresh Kingdom food mart update daily, so there’s at least one new thing depending on players’ luck and collection size.
One of the changes Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream makes is that the interior shop doesn’t update daily anymore. It updates weekly, resetting on Mondays. There’s a total of 272 interior sets this time around, and some of them are locked behind the Wishing Fountain’s seasonal changes. If you want to see all the interior design options Living the Dream has, much less every other item in this game, you’ll have to check it out pretty regularly. I, for one, don’t mind. I always make sure to end my day by grabbing a Night Market Mystery Bag.
8 Mixing-and-Matching Interior Parts
Make Things Feel More Like Home
Speaking of interior design, once you get the ability to make your own custom interiors at the Palette House, the game will let you change the interior wallpaper and flooring of T&C Reno’s sets, too. This means that you can keep the furniture of one set and give it the wallpaper and flooring of another one without having to make anything yourself.
I love this feature because it really helps let all of your Miis stand out. Even if all of your residents have the same interior furniture, you can mix-and-match colors, wallpapers, and floors to completely change their vibes. If you want to have the Sparkling Stars furniture with Sugar Rush’s floor and Stormy Set’s wallpaper, you absolutely can. Let your Mii enjoy soggy biscuits under their feet.
7 Random Cutscenes While Wandering
What’s Up with Hugh?
Sometimes when you check on a Mii, you’ll hear a noise as a “what’s up” notification appears. After this, one of Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream’s cutscenes will play. These cutscenes are different from the ones you get when you force two Miis to talk to each other. Some of them even deal with specific QuikBuild items on your island.
These cutscenes can happen at any time as long as you’re hovering over a Mii, and that’s what makes it fun. You can have a people-watching session interrupted by a surprise. Or you could just pick someone to talk to in the Mii menu and get the little “what’s up” at the bottom immediately. It’s a big improvement from just supervising apartments in the 3DS game.
6 Little Quirks
Get a Little Quirky With It
When a Mii levels up, you have the option to give them a Little Quirk. These quirks change how the Miis behave in certain situations. Some Little Quirks affect things more than others, like making Miis walk differently or finish sentences with a certain face. Then, there are some you forgot you handed out, and they make you burst out laughing when they happen.
Little Quirks do a great job at making even the most mundane parts of Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream enjoyable. Everything seems normal until a Mii comes floating by while standing still like cardboard. Mii feeding time gets surprising when some of them can eat a whole crab instantly. One random quirk changed the game far more than I expected it to, and it even has a cutscene attached. Your mileage may vary with it, though. I find it funny, but others might find it gross.
5 Detailed Mii Customization and Face Paint
Make Anything You Want If You’re Clever
If there’s anything that the last decades of Miis have taught us, it’s that the best of Mii customization is only possible if you can break the system. I’ll just come out and say it. I’m a life-long Sonic and anime nerd. I tried to be as creative as I could, and I still had to fill in the blanks with my mind to picture the characters I wanted getting involved in the mayhem.
I’m sure that’s enough to vouch for how much Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream’s face paint and other changes to Mii-making are complete game changers. I broke out my 3DS game to hold over the wait for the Switch title, and the glow-up between the Miis I had on 3DS versus my Switch is astounding. Sure, sometimes a Mii has some bald spots with face paint, but I’ll take that compromise and have them look like themselves over something that doesn’t.
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4 Area-Based Mini-Games
Anything But Plates in Shadow Quiz, Please
Playing mini-games with your Miis has always been an important part of Tomodachi Life’s gameplay loop. Winning games like Pixel Quiz and watching dreams are the biggest way to collect treasures. Like any true sequel would, Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream adds some new mini-games into this mix. Some of them depend on the Mii’s location, like Poke the Ferris Wheel, Latte Art Quiz, and Bowling.
Naturally, these grabbed my attention as a veteran of the series. I haven’t won at Poke the Ferris Wheel yet, but I’ve always been good at watching shuffling cups in those kinds of games, and I’m determined to get a strike in Living the Dream’s Bowling some day. These games are refreshing and preferred to having to guess which plate silhouette is which in Shadow Quiz. The only catch is that these games seem rather rare, or at least I keep missing them when my Miis ask for them.
3 Palette House
Just Make Something Up
Like I mentioned before, Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream has a lot of interior sets, hundreds of treasures, and double that for food. Clothes items are in the thousands thanks to all the color options available. If all of these options don’t suit your taste, or you just want something ridiculous, Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream literally invites you to just make it yourself.
You can make clothing, treasures, landscaping blocks, interiors, house exteriors, and objects to act like buildings to place around your island at the Palette House. Even if you manage to collect all the items in the game, you can still make more to have even more fun with your Miis. Or you can not use the Palette House to its full extent by having an unfinished project sit there for ages because you decided to try and make a replica of an arcade in Akihabara. No? That’s just a “me” thing? Oops.
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2 Level-Up Goods
Sometimes You Just Need New Toys
Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream has a pretty limited pool of goods this time around. There’s only 11 goods to unlock via the Wishing Fountain. At least the goods on offer add their own life around your island in the most unexpected ways.
I’ve given out at least one of each good available, and my Miis are still using their goods in ways that crack me up. I’ve watched Miis crash dates by playing their guitars. I’ve had breakdancers dance anyway with a Mii that can do ballet. I’ve even had a bunch of Miis block a bridge I built because a breakdancing couple wanted to have fun, and three people gave them guitar backing music. Miis also surrounded those Miis by playing with their own goods.
Sometimes a Mii without a good will join in with a frying pan or a stick just because. It’s incredible what they’ll do, with the item or not.
1 Island Lingo
Watch Your Profanity, Or Not
Leading up to the game’s launch, it was kind of upsetting to hear that Living the Dream had no built-in sharing features. When the demo dropped, though, understanding why wasn’t hard. We all found out that it lacked a filter entirely pretty fast, and that was a game-changer when island lingo ended up being a huge part of the game.
This feels like a natural progression for Tomodachi Life, though. Quirky Questions, Judgment Bay, and even the Concert Hall gave players free rein, even if it was filtered, to have their Miis admit to and sing about whatever amuses their creator. Those modes seem to be left out in favor of island lingo. Island lingo can turn any moment of just checking on Miis into a double-take surprise of how the conversations change with just a few words. With a bit of ingenuity, this makes it so your Miis will never run out of things to talk about, for better or worse.
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Author: 360 Technology Group
