moonlit witch of scarabs

After Theatrhythm Final Bar Line came out 3 (what? 3?? that can't be right) years ago, my most wanted game changed from that, to a new Tomodachi Life. So of course, I was right there along with everyone else when that first announcement happened. "Never kill yourself" indeed.

Now, I've had this wondrous sequel in my hands for a few months, and with the semi confidence that I don't think the game is getting anything else (which admittedly is disappointing), I wanted to do my little wrap up.

Me When I Make Mii

So, my dream for this game was for it to have Miitopia's mii maker. That thing was AMAZING, you could do so much with it. It just needed better hair cause default mii hair is meh and the wig system in Miitopia was kinda... not great. Tomodachi Life didn't end up going with the Miitopia maker, but it did still vastly improve on the base system we've been rocking since the Wii.

The hair system in this game is the best we've literally ever had. You have the premade hairstyles, but also a bunch of new ones added on, and they kept that bangs/back system from Miitopia while making it actually fit with the style of miis and also way less limited. In general, I really appreciate the increase of options in the base maker, as well as the customization of each of said options. Allowing you to add sparkles or remove sparkles from eyes was huge, this basically doubles or even triples the base eye shapes if you're creative enough. You can have ears! There's also all the colors, which is always very appreciated. 3DS Tomodachi (which I know ISN'T the original one but I might just refer to it as the original anyways cause it's what we got in America first) let you do wacky hair colors with an item which was nice, but I didn't get to make blue people. I love blue people. I can make blue people here.

However, this is a difference from Miitopia that I didn't care for. Miitopia let you, with its makeup system, have a different nose color, or even face color from the rest of your skin. This was great for me, who likes to keep that base mii style (generally) while also keeping the miis functional. I didn't get that here, which kinda limited some of my options. King of All Cosmos with his giant fuck-off orange nose? I couldn't make it work. This is where the face paint system would come in. Unfortunately, uh.

I don't like the face paint as much as I do Miitopia's makeup, and the big reason for that is the lack of layers. Miitopia had layers on everything. Eyes, back of face, front of face, eyebrows, whatever you name it. You could adjust all of these separately, and I LOVED it, cause I could essentially create a mii that would animate properly. Minecraft villager with square eyes that actually close. Strong Bad with his rectangle mouth that can talk. I don't get that here. Sure, the face paint free drawing is a lot better than the strict shapes cause you can do whatever, but I feel like it's a lower skill floor with the consequence of a lower skill ceiling. Overall, the mii creator here is better than the past, but still not exactly what I would have wanted.

The last bit of making a mii is the personality and stuff. Number 1 best thing? Sexuality and gender choices. Thank GOD. I myself am pretty default in my settings, but (basically) all of my friends aren't. So it was really nice to be able to fine tune everyone as needed. The way they did it with the selections? Perfect. No notes. Personality sliders have one less slider, but I didn't really care on that loss, honestly. I also didn't miss having to come up with a last name for people, but I'm sure some did. So overall, that part of the maker was great.

Me When I Watch Mii

When it comes to the game beyond creating miis, I like to describe the approach of this entry as Mad Libs. They really put it on you to make the funny situations for the miis. You make lingo for them to randomly say. You make custom items and treasures and places for them to live in and interact with. Having two miis become friends over boobs? Hilarious. This mii is drinking scary juice and eating a darkburger. Amazing. These miis are literally just throwing whatever lines you have set up at each other. This is all great! For a bit.

However, my biggest problem with this game is... despite the Mad Libs nature of it, there's not that many prompts. After not very long, I got tired of seeing the same things over and over again. Oh, the restaurant is being robots. Again. This cutscene really is just throwing random words into the mix. Here's... the same dream where they fall over the island... again... I think I've made my point. When you have a game where the gimmick is "put your funny creations in a premade prompt", I just feel like you have to have MORE prompts to keep this fresh and funny. For a game like LTD that I've been waiting for FOR SO LONG, it kinda sucks that it got old so quickly! Some might say "well Jared you pretty much no-lifed the game playing it literally non stop for the first week, you're asking to drain it of content!" and yeah, I guess! But I feel like even still, I don't think I should have seen pretty much EVERYTHING the game had to offer me by then. I could have only played a little bit to extend it out, but that conflicts with another aspect of the game.

Capitalism. Ok, kinda. You need money to buy cool things for your miis! Food, clothes, living spaces, you know. The original had this as well. I don't have a problem with capitalism; in fact, the main reason I still log in every day is to grab my donations and buy new clothes and food and stuff to complete the item collection (a mission I had for the original but never did. I will get it done here!). However, if you want money, you have to play the game. You have to solve their problems, play their minigames, whatever. Which means you don't wanna just do like 2 things a day to keep the mad libs fresh. You're either gonna have jokes be funny for longer, or you get to unlock things at a reasonable pace. It just doesn't match up.

I'm being really critical of this game. It feels bad. But man! I really wish there was more in this game! It feels like they put everything into the "create your own whatever" at the cost of. Content at all. You'll see people always upset over the loss of the Concert Hall. I was personally missing out on Quirky Questions (which was Mad Libs so that kinda just became the whole game), it stinks that there just wasn't. More. Not even plans of an extra content update or anything.

I Need To Be Positive For A Moment I'm Sorry

Something I really like about the customizable open ended nature of this game is the island builder. Since the miis have their own houses instead of all being shoved in an apartment building, you get to make like, neighborhoods and stuff! I loved this. I probably switched my island arrangement around like 5 times before I finally settled on my current setup (which I even now was like oooooo what if I move everything around). At least for me, it really appealed to that organization loving part of my brain. "Gonna put everyone from this here and then these people go here and ooooo put the supermarket in the middle and then make a shopping part" I absolutely loved it. I'm not an Animal Crossing master or anything where I can make these gorgeous vistas that seem like they're modded, but I think out of all the customization, this was my favorite.

Also, minigames! I've already kinda gone on a bunch about the lack of content, and I do think the minigames also got hit by this, but this is the positive section, so we are putting that away now. Bowling was easily my favorite new minigame. Whenever they ask to play no repeats I say fuck off but bowling? Every day of my life. It's short and sweet and I can figure out the best points, it's a joy. I also really liked the "something's on my mind" game. It's just some quick little mashing with an extra bit of mad libs (Ganondorf is thinking about Arnold Palmer, as he does), but it's the zoom in and the grand choir when you win that really do it for me. The best change in minigames though (other than getting rid of sneeze) is the proposal game. Instead of a kinda random "tap at the right time" game, it becomes a full on vertical shooter. It's less stressful since you can just mash to finish it, but it's also more involved than shooting your shot perfectly, and it has more ridiculousness since it's a fucking shooter game for marriage. Absolutely loved that change.

The way this game handles relationships is really nice. Since I tend to make like, groups of characters (beyond my own personal friend group), it's cool that I can manually introduce them to each other to really get things going instead of waiting and praying for ANYTHING to happen (which does still happen but at least I have SOME agency in getting the ball rolling). I also loved the addition of adding in what the IRL relationship is, which yeah, you can make sure to use for real life couples (or to make sure siblings don't fall in love), but I really liked when siblings were labeled. That's such an important dynamic to me that I didn't think would be thought of!

My Personal Island Experience

Usually in these posts, I like to have screenshots of my characters or whatever, but since this game has disabled sharing (which I will accept because it let us make the miis say fuck so it's a worthy sacrifice) I can't put a clean photo, and I'm not gonna post a terrible phone capture of my TV screen here. But, here's a fun little list of story arcs and bits;

Omnath, Locus of Mana, existing on the island before any human life, and seeing the growing life, wanting to fill the final color of mana in his heart; love.

The island's favorite food being the "Fucked-Up and Evil Green Cake"

Me somehow finding my FF MMO characters all in love with me at once, having me convinced I somehow fell into a harem anime

The Straw Hat Pirates docking into the island's harbor, spreading the wonder of Finding the One Piece (also Franky and Robin getting married the only good ship)

Jack Garland attempting several times to break into someone else's confession, and failing each time. I don't think he wanted love I think he just wanted to recruit people to kill Chaos

Umamusume learning about what a "horse" is

Ramattra and Thundercracker moving in with each other out of a shared love of robot liberation... and maybe getting something more out of it?

The Prince of All Cosmos never being seen without his Katamari, which got a movie and game series based off it

My Alliance characters struggling to keep fucking anything together while the Horde is successfully making the strongest found family you've ever seen across the street

Minecraft being a unifying force of friendship

Omnath, in his quest for love, develops a crush for Gold Ship. He gifts her a tuna, but he is washed aside as she gets distracted by El Condor Pasa. However, when that relationship falls apart, Omnath gets a second chance, and succeeds in his greatest romance

Zoro, Baiken, and Raiden creating the "one eyed samurai" club

Despite concerns from board-certified dieticians, Golbez combines Blue Mana and Red Mana for the win, discovering what we all knew; Izzet is some bullshit

Strong Bad becoming friends with Xal'atath, referring to her as "Hot Purple Lady", and also falling in love with one of my OCs who is DEFINITELY just going to steal all his money and dip

I raise my child right, exposing her to Final Fantasy at all moments of her life

The emergence of the Anger Crystal, or what I can only assume, as it seemed like every fucking day for like 2 weeks 1-3 fights would happen constantly, ruining friendships everywhere and I think actively making me want to play the game less because WHY ARE YOU ALL FIGHTING I WANT YOU TO LOVE EACH OTHER

As of now, my goals are trying to get the proper groups moving in with each other (which is very frustrating at times GET IT TOGETHER ALLIANCE) and completing the item catalogue. Golbez and Baiken just started fighting today so the Anger Crystal is alive and well in spreading its plague of hatred. I really hope it calms down?????

I Wish There Was A Streetlamp Here... Or Maybe Just... More In General

Something I want to give this game is that it came during a pretty needed time in my life. Depression has been hitting heavy, and then I get the game I've been waiting for, for so long in my hands. It did bring a whole lot of happiness. But then as time goes on, that's where the game's shortcomings started to highlight themselves, and I think because I was so excited, my disappointment hit harder. I really would love for them to add something else later down the line! Cause I do love Tomodachi Life, and I did have a lot of fun with it the first couple weeks. It just didn't exactly have the lasting power it really needed.