What happens if you take Animal Crossing and inject Disney into it? Well, outside of a modded Animal Crossing, you get Dreamlight Valley. A fun, though a bit tedious, game from Gameloft that sees you traveling to the titular valley in order to restore it and reverse a curse that caused the villagers to lose their memories living there.
Let’s get the negatives and main issues I have with this game out of the way first, beginning with the biggest problem: There is a lot of grinding and waiting in this game. A lot of the quests revolve around finding or growing specific items and, due to the real-time clock used, you will end up waiting for many items to spawn in, especially crops as some can take upwards to about 4 hours. While you can mitigate this by using special craftable elixirs that can speed up the process, that, too, involves grinding out items so it’s a bit of a lose-lose situation. Most of my time playing DLV was just either idling around and waiting for what I need to either grow or, in some cases, respawn so I can either mine it or harvest it and that’s if you can find the item you need as some either camouflage too well with the scenery or the color scheme looks just a bit too similar to another and you end up getting the wrong item you need. Grinding also affects unlocking quests as you’ll have to be at a specific Friendship Level, have completed other quests, and/or unlocked more areas of the Valley or other characters. For example, to get Daisy, you need to complete Vanellope’s (from Wreck-It Ralph) quest first and place a multiplayer portal. This begins Mickey’s quest and, from there, you can finally unlock Daisy, but only once you rebuild her house and this only happens if you have the gold for it. Yeah, this is another problem with the game but it’s not a huge problem; You need gold to unlock and upgrade the houses in your valley. I say it’s not a huge issue as the gathering of gold is easy and you can do it by just selling the crops you have and various gems and other items in your inventory at the various Goofy Stall’s, which is where you can buy various seeds, located throughout the valley. Gold is also used to buy customization items, more on that later, from Scrooge’s Shop. The problem is that a lot of items are a bit pricey, which means, yes, grinding for gold. Again, it’s not a major issue as gold is easy to come-by, but it is annoying.
My other issues are minor and may be a bit nitpicky but I still feel I should mention them. Firstly, depending on how you have your valley set up, some of the character’s houses can feel really out of place. While some of the houses do look good and fit within the valley and whatever biome you choose to place them in, some just don’t work at all. To bring up Vanellope from Wreck-It Ralph, her candy-themed home would look right at home in the Katy Perry’s Sweet Treats Stuff Pack for The Sims 3 but here? Not only does it stick out like a sore thumb, its aesthetic doesn’t fit anywhere in the valley, not even the main starting area. I ended up placing the home out of the way and in Sunlit Plateau as it was the only place I could sorta make it work (well, that, and I’m not the biggest fan of Wreck-It Ralph, but that’s not important to this review).
Another issue I have is obtaining pets. After you feed one of the many wild animals in the game it’s favorite food a couple times, you can unlock them as a pet that will follow you around and these range from foxes to squirrels to even capybaras in the Rift In Time DLC. The issue is, due to the real-time clock, some animals can only be seen at certain times of the day and if the animal you want only comes out when you aren’t playing the game, like early in the morning or late at night, then that can be frustrating if you want, say, a fox following you about. The other issue is feeding them as trying to figure out their favorite food is a bit of a hassle. For example, capybaras. I figured they would like fruit but, no, turns out they prefer cinnamon sticks. I only found this out from trial and error and don’t get me started on the monkeys from the DLC and their particular diet. But, even if you manage to find their favorite food, they won’t become your pet/companion instantly. No, you have to do it twice before they join you (or, in the case of the cobra, four days).
There is one other thing I should mention and, depending on the player, I do see this as being a bit problematic: Yes, there are microtransactions in the game via a currency called Moonstones, which can be obtained with real-world cash or, the easiest way, finding a Moonstone chest in the valley or voting on Dreamsnaps, which are photos taken by other players of their world using the in-game camera phone that you can vote on. But, thankfully, all the microtransactions are simple customization items like clothing and items for your home and valley and nothing to affect the gameplay on a whole (like elixirs and the like), with the only ‘game changing’ MTXs being a quest to make Ursula human and a small questline with Wall-E.
So, with those problems, you probably think I didn’t like the game. On the contrary, I actually enjoy playing this game! Personally and this will sound odd but hear me out; it reminds me a lot of Minecraft in a way, mostly from being able to just boot it up and completely find myself relaxed and in a sort of zen-like state enjoying this world as the world outside does its crazy thing. When a game is able to make me forget that the world is crazy, mad, insane for a while then I know I’m gonna enjoy my time playing it. Plus, the fact that it includes a ton of Disney characters I grew up with and enjoyed watching whenever they were on is awesome as well. You start of by meeting the second-best incarnation of the iconic wizard Merlin (Nicol Williamson from ‘Excalibur’ is, to me, still the best Merlin), before meeting the likes of Donald Duck, Goofy, Scrooge, and Mickey himself, along with characters from various movies like Maui, Nala (who I SWEAR they made her cuter here), and the best Disney character ever: Stitch! Once you get them to Level 2, you can assign a ‘role’ to them, which is basically a bonus for you. For example, if you assign the role of Gardening to, say, Minnie Mouse, then whenever you harvest your garden, you’ll get extra stuff from said garden. However, there is one character I like to give special mention to and that is the Fairy Godmother from Cinderella. Her various dialogues when you either talk to her or walk by her are just heartwarming and, most of the time, it feels like she’s talking to the player directly and not your avatar, if that makes sense. By the way, just a small heads up, her questline does delve into subjects that may be triggering to many, but, thankfully, the game does warn you ahead of time before you start this particular quest.
While most of the characters are unlocked by doing quests in the main valley itself and unlocking sections of the valley, the rest are unlocked by going into their respective realms in the castle. To unlock these, though, you need a surprisingly good bit of Dreamlight, which you get these by doing objectives in the Dream menu or by crafting them, the former being the easiest and the latter being a bit time-consuming. Still, the characters you get from these realms are worth the effort, like Wall-E and the aforementioned Nala. Characters can also unlock more customization options for your valley and avatar and this leads to a small nitpick I have: There really isn’t much in the way of male clothing in the game. Sure, there are some and it’s nice and all, but it really would be nice to have some, you know, proper male clothing and hairstyles. Again, what’s on offer is fine and all and I did make some nice custom shirts for my guy, but it would be nice for some more male clothing, you know? Otherwise, I really don’t have much in the way of problems with this game on a whole and I don’t mind the gameplay loop too much.
Earlier, I mentioned DLC and, as of this writing, there is one piece of paid DLC: A Rift In Time. Taking place on Eternity Isle, this DLC, aside from sounding like a Ratchet & Clank game, sees you going up against Jafar in a race to find the Spark of Imagination. While the core gameplay loop remains the same, you do get a new tool in the form of the Hourglass, which can find hidden items like parts to upgrade the Hourglass and Mist, which is Eternity Isle’s exclusive currency and can be used to upgrade your Hourglass or unlock new biomes in Eternity Isle. Outside of the Hourglass, the DLC includes five new characters, three of which are new villagers, those being EVE, Rapunzel, Oswald The Lucky Rabbit, and, the best character in the whole DLC, Gaston. I am not kidding, Gaston is probably one of the best additions to the game. His narcissistic personality and your interactions with him gave me the biggest laughs I’ve had in a long while! This goes double for his quests as they feed his ego perfectly and his animations. Trust me, just look at him when he sits in Remy’s Restaurant and try not to laugh.
I’d say the only thing I’m mixed on with this DLC is the new gameplay mechanic of Scramblecoin. The way it works is you place three pieces on a board, each with a different ability like Scrooge can earn you an extra coin when your move is done, and, in five turns, try to get more coins then the other player. It’s a decent little game and the characters do offer some challenge, but something about it just made me not really play the game much, unless I was doing it to get Mist, as the only prize you get are new pieces. I don’t know, you may like it but for me, I could’ve done either without it or a bit more complexity. I know Disney has that new Lorcana TCG out, so why couldn’t DLV do something similar to that?
I wasn’t really expecting to like this game as much as I did but I ended up logging close to 70 hours in it already and I don’t see myself quitting anytime soon. It’s rare for a game of this style to get me hooked like this but Dreamlight Valley did just that. Yes, this game won’t be for everyone and I can see some being put off by the grinding, but if you look past the grinding, you have a very relaxing and enjoyable life simulator featuring your favorite Disney characters. I mean, where else are you able to plant a garden with Stitch, go fishing with Donald Duck, mine for gems with The Beast (Side Note: if you want another good version of the story, look up the music video for Meat Loaf’s ‘I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)), and dig up treasures with Scrooge?
