Disney Dreamlight Valley – Analysis

I wouldn’t say I’m one of those people who loves The Disney. Certainly, I watch new films as they come out, and I have some merch Disney, and Disneyland Paris it was my first vacation destination after starting work, and my favorite video game series of all time is Kingdom Hearts…

Okay, maybe I like Disney. Another thing I like is what has recently been called cozy games, games with a specific aesthetic that seek to bring comfort to those who play them. And obviously, liking these two things, I had already heard about Disney Dreamlight Valley since this was in early access.

But I never bought it. I had several opportunities, without a doubt, and friends who recommended the game to me, but still, I never did it, until the opportunity to do this analysis arose. And for anyone who knows anything about the game, the reason should be obvious: microtransactions.

But let’s start at the beginning, and talk about the concept of the game.

At the Dreamlight Valley, you are a person with magic who ends up there by chance, in a valley that was once full of magic and familiar characters from various Disney films, from the most nostalgic to the most recent, but which has now been invaded by Oblivion. The few characters that still roam the valley do not remember their Leader or their friends, and it is your responsibility as a player to free the valley from Oblivion and forge new bonds of friendship with all these characters.

The way you do this is by using magic points, known as Dreamlight, to make dark brambles that block certain parts of the valley disappear. And how do you get this Dreamlight? Doing good deeds, of course! Talk to your friends in the valley (read: Disney characters), pick fruit, cook, give gifts, grow vegetables, mine, fish, take photos, decorate the valley and even change clothesall are valid options to acquire more Dreamlightdepending on the tasks available at the time.

With this, you develop friendships and increase the valley, and even little by little discover the mystery of Oblivion… but what actually is the objective of the game?

Well… it’s the decor. It’s about being able to develop your own valley, with the characters and decorations you want to put there. You can decorate your character with clothes and accessories. And it is also the simple activity of relaxation and creation. There is no defined objective.

And this is where we start to run into some problems, in my opinion. I played the game on the Switch, and unfortunately, it’s clear that this was not the console this game was planned for.

Start right away with performance from the beginning. You loading screens They take a long time, not only at the beginning of the game, but whenever someone changes areas. The game itself works well overall, but sometimes it gets a little slow in areas that are busiest with objects or characters.

O Disney Dreamlight Valley it does not have voice acting, which isn’t a problem for me, as I mostly play these types of games while doing other things like watching videos, but other players may prefer it if they did. It also has a power system that seems almost useless. When a person sees a power system in front of them, they almost immediately expect that they will have to wait to charge it, in order to prevent a player from always playing. But the energy system in this game is not like that. After the energy is used up, the player just has to eat something or go inside his house for a few seconds, and he will have full energy again. It seems like a system that was implemented at a time when the game was expected to be free-to-play with a limited energy system, but later, with the game being paid for, it was implemented in this way that only causes more unnecessary work on the player’s part.

But the worst part of all, for me, is the decoration system. As I mentioned before, decoration is one of the main objectives of this game. If a person decorates their own valley in their own way it is supposed to be what attracts the person to the game and keeps them playing… so why is the decoration system so horrible?!

The system works as if the cursor controlled by the analog stick was a mouse. Slight problem: one stick A console and a mouse don’t exactly have much in common. One allows for small, slight adjustments easily, the other sends your cursor to the other side of the map with a small tap. And using the D-pad doesn’t help either, because instead of allowing you to adjust objects with a grid, it’s just another way, even more obtuse if possible, of using the cursor!!

And this kind of PC-approachfirst is visible in everything, from the menu navigation, where for example, to see what the characters’ gifts of the day are you have to scroll all the characters linearly, right down to the way you have to position the character to pick up the flowers from the ground!

The Switch is, for me, the main console where I do my cozy gaming. It’s a console that goes with me everywhere, which is perfectly suited to these types of simple, low-risk games… and seeing that the creators of this game left this console (and all others) so low on the list of priorities compared with the PC it is very disappointing.

But let’s move on from the bad things to the good, namely, the microtransactions that I was so worried about that it didn’t even occur to me to buy the game:

Yha, they’re not that bad.

Everything in the store can be purchased with the premium currency of the game, including, surprisingly, the mission pass premium. And, even more surprisingly, completing the mission pass actually gives this premium currency as a reward, forming a closed cycle in which there is no need to spend money unless a person really wants to buy everything that is available in the store.

If I think it’s normal or good for a paid game to still have a premium currency pay with cash and a store to spend it? Of course not. But I have to admit that it is still much less offensive than I expected after playing other more predatory games.

In the end, Disney Dreamlight Valley It’s a game that surprised me positively when I was expecting worse, and that surprised me negatively when I was expecting better. I like the atmosphere, walking among Disney characters, but the lack of a story and a more solid objective than the decoration, especially when this is combined with such a weak system, leaves me disappointed.

TL;DR: A good game if you want something with familiar characters to relax without thinking too much… but perhaps the Switch isn’t the ideal console, although it should be.