Disney Dreamlight Valley

Let’s get the stuff I enjoy about this game out of the way first.
⚪ The storyline is immediately engaging, and you WANT to find out what is happening.
⚪ The look of the game is fitting, and it all feels connected with the different ‘biomes.
⚪ There is a healthy mix of Classic and New Disney in this game; it leans more towards newer Disney, but that was expected.
⚪ Lots of small collections are scattered across and your rewards are more storyline and some pictures from the films.
⚪ I love how most people in this community have collectively come to the decision to have massive farms so that you can just continuously make money quickly.
⚪ I like that you must talk to different characters to get the different bonuses (for mining, farming, foraging, crafting, fishing etc) and the more you work up your relationship level, they can produce more valuable items, though this isn’t 100% all the time.
⚪ I like that every ‘biome’ is decorated with a theme: snow, plaza, forest, darkness, desert plains, elephant graveyard.
⚪ The different buildings are well themed to each character and the outer design of the buildings themselves are cool as well.
⚪ The repetitive cycle of the game is just as addictive as the ones from more established games such as Animal Crossing, Harvest Moon and Story of Seasons.
Now, onto the things I have issue with.
First things first, the animations break all the time.
Through out my many hours in this game, characters would just break in their walk animations and just glide passed me and, sometimes, they would be dominating in a t-pose as they did so.
The animation problems are heightened whenever it comes to characters or animals that swim or fly.
Both Ariel and Ursula are often wading within rocks or popping their heads through the bridges and the swimming animations alone are just so incredibly lazy and janky.
This goes mostly for Ariel.
Story quests, while fun, get completely overrun by boring and irritating friend quests.
Games have side quests, yes, but this game makes you feel as if you’re about to do 50 exams.
A lot of the quests DO NOT work properly and are still bugged to the day of writing this review.
Take the Ursula quest.
This quest is so broken that it resets your completed tasks sometimes, so you continuously must try and complete the quest before it breaks again. Several time I had to visit that overly chatty Takoyaki and several times, I then had to piss about with trying to place her stupid house.
Simple things like watering crops will inexplicably leave ONE crop being unable to be watered until you re-log.
The clothing side of the game is the most customisation that you will be getting and a lot of the time (for a very long time) you are stuck with ‘vaguely resembles this franchise’ clothing.
God help you if you don’t want to wear ball gowns, dresses or skirts because that is 99% of the clothing.
You CAN customise clothing with a blank template of specific clothing (no designing trousers for you) but it’s like being given play-doh and told to sculpt a replica of the London Eye. It’s not good enough.
And let’s not pretend that this game was ‘made for children’ because Disney knows that older people are getting this game, so having basic stencils to design your clothing is both boring and old school.
Also, screw you if you want to have long straight hair or a fringe that doesn’t look like it’s been cut using the bowl technique because you aren’t getting it.
You know, despite most Disney characters of both genders having these attributes.
Going back to the ‘old school’ thing for a second.
A FULL priced game with an in-game shop.
There is no excuse for this anymore.
Let us earn the items with the multiple currencies you have us get.
You aren’t strapped for cash, Disney, get out of here.
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The islands that you rarely get to visit, to gather more characters, you will only need to visit ONCE.
No resources will spawn there, no special decorative items, no storylines are that particularly linked to the bigger story.
Sure, you can expand the main village but, travelling to distant islands shouldn’t just be a ‘collect this character’ quest only.
It would be a lot better if those islands had exclusive resources on them to make the world feel bigger than just the village you are building.
If they are one use only, then don’t make it possible for us to travel back to them because they are just empty TINY voids when you have taken the character out of there. They have nothing anymore.
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There is a chance that when you interact with a portal, your character will flicker and jump around the screen before finally just standing there. This can break and crash your game.
This happened SEVERAL times (this is mainly for Olaf’s quest that I noticed this the most) and I was worried I had a permanently broken save file but by the power of grey skull, it let me complete the quest.
During cutscenes there’s a chance that there will be a double of either your character or the Disney character and a lot of the time they will be in t-pose.
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An extra complaint I have is that the game is shockingly quiet when it comes to voice acting (apart from the repeating lines) and I just assumed that at least MOST of the lines would be voiced.
Y’know, being a full priced Disney game and everything.
But whatever.
Take the game with a pinch of salt.
If you like cosy games with a story, wait for this game to go on sale before you buy it.

I've been playing since the start of Early Access in September 2022 (first on the Nintendo switch and then switched to PC) and this is one of my favorite games!

The good:
- Many things to do in the game, especially for new players (quests, exploring, collecting, levelling up, farming, decorating, DreamSnaps, etc.)
- Fun to decorate & interesting challenges with DreamSnaps
- Touch of Magic tool allows players to create & share custom designs with motifs for certain clothing / furniture items
- Aesthetically pleasing, pretty immersive & several biomes / realms to explore
- Love talking & hanging out with Disney/Pixar characters
- Interesting main story plot line
- Lovely community on Discord
- Seasonal events, Star Paths & community challenges
- Multiple content updates per year

The bad:
- Sometimes grindy / repetitive
- Premium shop & its weekly rotation feels a bit like something from a mobile game + can cause FOMO for players. You can earn Moonstones (premium currency) via DreamSnaps, but that's not nearly enough to buy all the new weekly added premium items & buying more with real money is very expansive (1 house skin is 10-15 euros; 1 character skin is 10 euros; 1 critter/companion is 5-7 euros; 1 tool set is 15 euros).
- Gameloft often doesn't communicate well (although they do send out surveys once in a while)
- Many QoL improvements needed in almost all aspects of the game (e.g. better RNG, better UI, better filter/tag system, search bars, placing items diagonally, etc.)
- Some character quests lack depth
- Multiplayer not available for DLC & you can only look at eachother's Valley's, so not really play together
- Some characters shown in the original trailer are still not in the game
- Had to buy the game again to be able to play it on my PC
- Not able to have multiple profiles
- Lack of consistency in creative freedom
- Item limit for decorating outside
- Slow in implementing fixes for bugs

Yeah, I like it. The developers have clearly done their research into the genre.
Ever felt the in-game clock of Stardew Valley was speed running your whole life? Or that Graveyard Keeper's pace might actually be keeping your grave? Has Animal Crossing’s bird’s-eye view ever had you questioning if you’re some kind of god with poor depth perception? Oh, and don’t even get me started on the "hey-let's-turn-your-PC-into-a-toaster" optimization of My Time at Portia.
Well, Dreamlight Valley basically takes all the grievances of similar titles and provides a thoroughly polished experience. The amount of content is well worth the price. As a completionist, I am looking at about 500 hours worth of gameplay for the base game—aka my new part-time job. :)
I'd only cut the relentless socializing. I get it, you need something, but can you please not hover around like a homeless puppy while I’m trying to tend to my crops? I KNOW you have a quest for me, I SWEAR it's on my radar. Let me live my best farming life for just five minutes and water my tomatoes in peace.

I was having a great time playing the Disney Dreamlight Valley game, but then I realized something. I'm the main character, and I've just been running around this valley doing chores for everybody. The whole experience feels more like slavery than it does playing a game. I'm building homes, gathering supplies, and doing random tasks for the other characters so that they can open businesses or go on vacation. I don't want to be anyone's damn slave. I'm the main character, and I should be getting other people to do my bidding. I've started this whole game off wrong.

I'm just at the beginning of this adventure and I'm pleasantly involved. Graphically it reflects what is expected and without too many pretensions. The soundtrack is obviously taken from Disney films, so nothing new. The photo mode is the one that disappointed me a little more, it could have been better with more movement and the possibility of taking fantastic screenshots, unfortunately however it is very focused on selfies and little on the surrounding setting which I consider beautiful.
The gameplay is fluid and there is really a lot of farming and many things to do.
I expected many more "old-time" characters and much less new entries (perhaps because I come from the 80s generation).
Overall it is really a nice game and the price is adequate. my rating 8/10

A incredibly well made Animal Crossing style building, farming and friendship making game. Lots of quest's, customization's and regular updates have kept me coming back for a long time. More of a cozy game in between all the Fighting and Arcade games I usually play and was just something to originally pass the time on the side. I ended up putting a little over 450 hours in on Steam and my Nintendo Switch (thank you cross save) and can see myself putting many more hours in yet to come. I hope they continue to support this game for as long possible, because it has a real chance to become one of the best on the market of this genre of game. I love the mix of classic and new Disney Characters and Music as well the extensive quest's and world designing. Thank you for the great game I will be playing for many more years at this rate

Oh my gosh!! Finally a game you can think about during the day. I'm always at work expecting or wondering what to do next when I'm back home playing this game. What should I do next, what new unlockables I'm gonna discover, the story I'm gonna dive into!
This game has such a magical atmosphere. I can't believe I haven't tried it before. It really keeps you excited with joy, giving you a few laughs and cute moments with all those Disney characters!
The soundtrack is such a throwback to when I was a kid watching the animated movies. The Disney Castle's music intro is so powerful, I hope people keep supporting this game for future updates because this game has A LOT of potential!!!
I always loved the Disney games when I was a child and this surely is a carefully (very well) done improvement of em'all.
Yes I highly recommend this game:
It's fun, it's beautiful, and has all the elements you need to keep yourself entertained.