Game review: Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream (Switch 2)

I have never played a Tomodachi Life game, so I did not know what to expect when Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream fell into my lap. My first exposure to this game was at Nintendo Direct, and I remember not being interested in its reveal because it looked like another Animal Crossing clone. 

Thankfully, after playing Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream for well over 30 hours, I was surprised by how much I came to love this game. The reason this game is so entertaining is that it's a comedy. There are so many funny cutscenes to watch, I don't think I have seen them all, even after 30 hours of gameplay!

The thing that makes this game so great is that you have the freedom to create your own population on a small island. Since I am a huge professional wrestling fan, I started to create a community full of past and present WWE wrestlers. 

The game uses the Nintendo Mii character creation for its character models. If you have heard of Miis before, they're little and cute versions of humans with no fingers and small limbs. Despite the small size, the character creation allows you to create both humans and alien-like beings. 

The first person I created in the game was Stone Cold Steve Austin, because he's easy to create, as he's just a white man with a brown goatee. After that, I created a ton of other wrestlers to join him, including Bianca Belair, Rhea Ripley, Ric Flair, The Undertaker, Kane, and many more!

As I mentioned before, the thing I like most about the character creation is that both humans and aliens can be created. This is because you have the freedom to add colourful non-human skin colours, as well as elf-like ears and more. 

Since I'm also a huge Dragon Ball fan, I also created Piccolo, who is green, and Majin Buu, who is pink. I wasn't skilled enough to do it, but I saw other people create many characters from The Simpsons. If you have seen The Simpsons, you'll know a lot of them have yellow skin colour!

The only disappointing thing about the character creation is that I felt I wasn't able to create really big wrestlers and do them justice. I wanted to make Yokozuna and Mark Henry in this game, but I gave up because there were no body shapes that fit their description. 

Outside of character creation, Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream is still a fun game on its own merits. There's really no quest marker or missions to show your progress in the game, because you have the freedom to choose what you want to happen to the characters. 

Since there were no actual missions, I made it my own personal quest to make all of my citizens happy and as part of a loving couple. The island you create has a limitation of housing only up to 70 people, so it was my goal to make everyone in love with at least one person. 

This goal was harder to achieve, mainly because you truly cannot control who your character falls in love with. Sometimes you can steer who they are friends with, but love at first sight can happen randomly. 

For example, I created myself on the island with the goal of falling in love with Olivia Rodrigo or Wednesday. However, I landed on the island, and the first person I fell in love with was The Rock!

Heihachi from the Tekken series had similar taste because he fell in love with The Rock's cousin, Roman Reigns. Despite these odd pairings, I did have one successful couple who managed to fall in love, buy a house, and get married. 

Brock from Pokémon and Xiaoyu from Tekken were the best couple during my playthrough. Not only did they fall in love, but they also had a baby daughter named Beatrice. It took me 20 hours to finally see the baby cutscene, but it was heartwarming to see. 

The funniest cutscenes in the game are when your characters get rejected. I remember Goku falling in love with Bianca Belair, but she denied him because she was already in a relationship with Rhea Ripley. Goku ended up being depressed for a long time after that! 

Aside from seeing many funny cutscenes, the game also allows you to design the island and houses. I gave The Undertaker and Wednesday spooky-looking houses, and they loved it because it fit their aesthetic. For other characters like my Mum, I gave her something more colourful. 

The other thing you can unlock in the game are gifts, food, and travel locations. I gifted Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo guitars, and they would play songs to other people on the island. The Big Show is another wrestler I created, and he instantly fell in love with the chocolate easter egg I gave him. 

Another cool thing about this game is that you can choose the topics that the characters can talk about. The game uses a phonetic voice synthesizer that can read what you type in. Since most of my characters were wrestlers, I got them to talk about WWE, AEW, and WrestleMania. 

As much as I loved playing this game, there were times I had to admit the cutscenes started to feel too repetitive. During my quest to see every cutscene in the game, there were many times I would see the same scenes and pieces of dialogue over and over again. 

Apart from the repetitive nature of the cutscenes, Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream is one of the funniest games I have ever played. If you have a huge imagination, you will get a lot of enjoyment out of this game. Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream is out now for both the Switch and Switch 2 consoles. 

Verdict: 9.0/10