Publisher:
Gameloft
Developer:
Gameloft
Genre:
Life Sim, Simulation, Farming, Adventure
Where to buy:
Steam, Xbox, PSN, Epic Store, Switch, Microsoft Store
Since you can perhaps remember the name Disney, or the house of mouse. You know of one thing, by now it is a part of one of the largest grown enterprises in the world, scooping up brands like a tide-wave of money. Some claims, came from some smart investments, like Gameloft for one. Which worked with the likes of Sega, Dreamworks, and many more. Publishing mostly mobile games in their belt. Most will perhaps click their tongues at the idea of Mobile transactions ensue. Why? Who knows why. As all items within the games shop are actually cosmetic. I will get into all of that in a moment. The story itself is really good. sharing a similar coat to wear like Kingdom Hearts, with the heartless. This time we deal with a mysterious figure who casts darkness and vines of forgetfulness. Making all of the characters feel drained, and forget themselves amongst one another.
Down to grassroots, the game itself is basically what you expect from a village/town simulator. You build relationships with many Disney characters. You then run quests ranging from simple in nature to an absolute grind-fest. Nothing new, really. This time instead of the crippling debt you bask in with a Tom Nook, Uncle Scrooge has the reigns. In what is actually a less stressful and pleasant means to upgrade your town, as opposed to downtimes like in Animal Crossing. This of course comes from a mobile-style game. I feel like it sometimes gets a bad wrap all the time with most of the speculation whenever a game also happens to come out for mobile. Sure it features micro-transactions. This time not as “buy to win” as most will spew out faster than tasting a nasty stew. Rather everything in the game is connected to a more modernized and clever “play to obtain” style of format. Yes, you gotta grind a bit, but are you really paying aside from the time you were going to put into the game anyway? I found myself unlocking freebies/in-game items by just going through the main story, and doing random things. Which over time did not feel like an effort. Those things contain mining ores throughout the map in-game. Gardening all sorts of vegetables, plucking fruits from nearby trees, and bushes. Fishing down by a pond or by the ocean. Digging around for dark shards, which is meant for a few uses in the game’s craft system. Cooking a feast with the likes of Remy of Ratatouille. Fishing with the legendary Angler Goofy, or knocking some walls down with Donald, it features so much charm and fandom for many a young, or old Disney fan.
Core gameplay with PC so far is a smooth sailing adventure, except for a few bugs, or soft-locks (expected from early access). I do not final grade anything when it comes to early builds of anything aside from the presentation, gameplay, and how it fares so far. What I will strongly say is it is shaping out outstanding, with its big launch next year. We should see a powerhouse-of-a-mouse on our devices of choice. Swapping between Keyboard and mouse to Gamepad is pretty good. With controls sometimes hanging out on the screen before realizing “oh wait he is using the gamepad, swap over boys!” Playing well to the optimization or comfort of any gamer. With that praise awesomely, the game allows you much like Animal Crossing to wear whatever you want, as you choose a body size as opposed to gender. I build my character after myself and I was able to toss on whatever costumes or pieces of clothing I find in the game. However silly I looked or cool. Seemingly open expression is present so far. Over time completing quest lines with characters in the game you can unlock iconic items or swag from them with levels. Spending time with them, or them witnessing you do tasks also improves their approval rate. Granting you access to more story quests.
The game offers a static world presently with none of the charms of a randomly generated world was given much like other games of the genre. This is not a deal breaker for me, as many solid town sim games did not ever offer it, and still were grand. However, the option for a random seed would be pretty cool in the future. If online town visiting is given to the players, it would be cool to be able to come into a town unlike my own in structure. Yes, creativity and moving around trees or buildings could sort of fix that, however Geo-forming elements altered from my own would be lovely. I expect this is just a stock build and players will maybe get this option as for now they want to make sure stuff just works and NPCS are stable.
Another cool element tossed into the game, which was a welcomed feature from many games from the genre: creating designs for your outfits! Setting up cute or rad-looking outfits, patterns, or the lot to show off your creative juices in the magic kingdom. varying from all sorts of shapes and sizes. From iconic stickers to ones you shape yourself. With an obvious “keep it PG” motto spammed in the intro of the creator, you can not create any of the characters with topless attire. Still, you can create some pretty easy-to-use outfits with patterns spanning from stars, to some wild patterns.
This all said. I have spent past the past several hours doing many a fetch quest. Building fences, helping Wall-e. Moving some trees around, all feeling like a pretty solid experience with some hick-ups here and there. This is one might say is the definitive take on a Disney fan’s dream came true to hang with some of their favorite characters in the companies history. We can not see the future for the games full free to play release, and how content will be handled per-say. This is up to the developers of course. I would though now for its current status thank the developers and publishers for this game. So far it is pretty darn good *goofy laughs*. Just be sure to keep those quality of life/fixes coming out here, not being able to pick up this one item for Donald’s introduction mission is driving me, and my pockets in the game crazy!
