Disney Dreamlight Valley: The Beautiful Mess.
Industry Greed at its finest.
(Photo screenshot by Nia🫧)
Good evening, guys. I hope you guys are having a fantastic day. Because sadly, I’m not. It saddens me to be here talking about this game in this capacity, anyway. I love this game, but it’s my love for it that I feel it’s finally necessary to speak about it completely objectively without rose-tinted glasses for once.
All right, guys, sorry for starting this one with a rant, but as always, for context: Disney: Dreamlight Valley (Also, if you’re starting to see a running theme of the games having the most problems usually being attached to larger companies and or franchises than you’re catching on smarty pants :) Anyways, was released on December 5, 2023, by Gameloft and developed by Gameloft Montreal.
So let’s finally see Why I keep having to rant at all(lol), Why this game is ‘Industry Greed at its finest,’ and Why, despite everything I’m about to say here, you should still play the game.
(Photo screenshot by Nia🫧)
(Photo screenshot by Nia🫧)
Why I Keep Ranting.
While I have been joking since the beginning of this post, I will get serious for a second with you guys.
I was playing the game this time around for a post for you guys. I have played this game on my own time to exhaustion, 70 hours or more on my initial playthrough on Nintendo Switch. This time, I’m playing the game in Apple Arcade via 11in. iPad Pro. Although I had already played the game, it did not allow me to transfer over my already established saved progress, so I had to start over.
While annoying, I didn’t mind. I saw this as a perfect opportunity to make a “Beginners guide” or “Top 5–10 tips and tricks for Disney Dreamlight Valley”. While initially, I was playing the game with no problems, I ended up running into one major one, and the reason may shock you. On Switch, I paid $20 for the game,$20 for my first moonstone pack, and $5 for my second, so this is $45 in total, not including the A Rift in Time expansion pack. HOWEVER, It is available for $7 a month, DLC included. That’s pretty absurd, especially when the game is $39.99 regular price on the Switch.
With all this being said, my friends, all this is why I’m ranting about this game. And keep in mind, guys, this is just the tip of the iceberg if you guys can believe it or not.
(Photo screenshot by Nia🫧)
Why it’s ‘Industry Greed at its finest’
Now, this is a topic I’ve wanted to get into for a while now. Games more and more over the years have been released in an incomplete state or ‘undercooked,’ hence the saying ‘needed more time in the oven. The most recent example I can give outside of this one is Marvel’s Avengers. Marvel was released on September 4, 2020, by Square Enix and developed by Crystal Dynamics.
The game initially sold well. However, critics and the gaming community alike did not maintain playing, resulting in a commercial failure, and as of 2023, the game is no longer supported by the company. The game’s most glaring problems: The game launched unfinished with repetitive missions and a lack of characters at launch, The gameplay was oversimplified in comparison to older games using the Marvel franchise, and finally, the live service model forced excessive grinding in gameplay that already wasn’t fun in the first place.
All of this was just the tip of the iceberg of problems. Honestly, this was utterly unacceptable from a AAA Studio with a $220 million budget and a $60 initial price tag. Disney Dreamlight also struggles with repetitive missions, unnecessarily simple objectives, or absurd material requirements that the main characters won’t even help with. In addition, the game showed characters like Eve in your memories in the base game, but she was not available at release. One of my favorite video game reviewers, GCN on YouTube, always said, “You should never show anything in a game that the players cannot use.” I agree with this sentiment because it’s like a false advertisement.
Finally, games like Halo: Combat Evolved, released more than 21 years ago now with a young team at the time over at Bungie, were expected to release complete and successful games. Guess what? This game was ride-or-die for them. If they failed, there would be no more Halo or even Bungie as a company. Hell, these guys ended up working themselves like crazy to almost exhaustion. While I don’t condone this, they made the sacrifices they did to give us the start of a fantastic franchise, so if they could do it with limited resources, why can’t others with more do the same?
(Photo screenshot by Nia🫧)
Why you Should still play it.
In the intro, I genuinely love this game, you guys, and despite its problems, the game is developing with excellent bones, hence why I’m telling you guys to play the game still. If you’re a cozy, farming life sim with adventure and some of your favorite Disney characters, then this is the suitable game for you. Hell, it’s the reason I still play. The game’s addition of characters and even new regions is welcome. Mainly because the characters are well-written for the most part, and each of them is consistent with their movie and or show counterparts. Finally, all I’d recommend you don’t buy is any skins or such; they are wildly overpriced. Also, if you can play it on Apple Arcade, it’s the cheapest way to play, including the DLC. Finally, and finally, if you do have friends, I recommend playing with them to help get through their tedious grinds if you’re up for it.
(Photo screenshot by Nia🫧)
(Photo screenshot by Nia🫧)
Conclusion
I hope the game continues to get supported and fixes its significant glitches and the like. As I said, the game has good bones. Hence why, I’m sad it released with the few problems it did. I won’t entirely stop playing the game. As I said earlier, I love it, and I will probably be writing about one of the two topics I mentioned in the earlier section. Also, I apologize; this post was supposed to be up yesterday, but I had a double shift. Hopefully, there will be no more interruptions to this week’s challenge. Finally, to keep up with me this week with one new post every day, please turn on the email notifications, and as always, I’ll catch you guys in the next one ;).
