Disney Dreamlight Valley (Switch, 2023)

Loads of cozy Disney charm encumbered by endless tedium.

Nostalgia Factor: High. I am a big Disney fanboy.
Difficulty: Very easy. Only the grind will test your patience.

When I first saw trailers for Dreamlight Valley (DV), I was very excited – that is, until I learned that it was developed by Gameloft. Gameloft are notorious for ultra-grindy F2P gacha games of varying quality. While my experience with DV has been better than my experience with other Gameloft games I’ve played, the “Gameloft grind” still plagues DV.

The Good

I ended up buying DV on Switch (which I don’t recommend) so my daughters could easily play this one too, but even in spite of the Switch’s performance issues, the game still looks quite nice. The models and textures are simple and cartoony, but this works just fine for the Disney aesthetic. Most of the iconic Disney characters are well designed with smooth animations. The lighting in particular looks very nice at sunset, especially when light reflects off the water. At night, the glow of windows and streetlamps is also a treat.

The voice acting is very solid. The original voice actors for more than half of the game’s characters returned for their roles: Stitch, Moana, Mirabel, Mulan, Gaston, Pumba, Nala, Buzz, Rapunzel, Mother Gothel, Ariel, Eric, Ursula, Beast, Sully, Wall-E, Eve, Tiana, Jafar, Jack Skellington, and of course Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Donald, and Daisy. The sound-alikes for the remaining characters are also very good.

At times, the writing just seems like functional content needed to fill out the enormous amount of quests and interactions, but I also found myself chuckling at clever lines. I rarely felt like the Disney characters were misrepresented. I have to give credit to Gameloft, they executed these characters well, and that is one of the greatest strengths of this game. Do you want to hang out and interact with your favorite Disney characters in a cozy village? You will probably enjoy spending some time with DV. The main storyline is slim, but effective. You slowly unravel the mystery of “the forgetting,” and you pursue a villain called The Forgotten. The conclusion of the main story questline was surprisingly touching.

The music is absolutely stunning. We have French composer Marc-Antoine Gagnon to thank for this gorgeous soundtrack. DV is his first major credit, though it seems he’s also been tapped to compose the score for Gameloft’s upcoming Dungeons & Dragons game. It’s hard to put into words just how important a great soundtrack is for a game like DV. The familiar Disney motifs are expertly handled, but the fully original tracks are just as magical, honestly. Gameloft doesn’t deserve this guy. There’s even a bouncy village track that feels very reminiscent of a popular track from Stardew Valley. Perhaps it’s an homage to the game that spawned this massive wave of copycat cozy farm sims.

The game’s crafting, character customization, and village customization are another strength. There are loads of different decorations, furniture pieces, and clothing items to craft or purchase. Star coins are the primary currency that you earn by selling crops, gems, etc. Moonstones are a premium currency that you must pay real money for (to be expected from Gameloft), and some items are only available in the premium shop. I’m a bit spartan when it comes to character customization, but my daughters have spent hours upon hours just buying new clothing items from Scrooge and changing their character’s appearance, ad infinitum. They are also obsessed with the in-game camera selfie mode. They love taking pictures with the characters.

The village customization is where I began to lose myself a bit. Gameloft, those madlads, have made it possible for you to move or remove almost anything in your village. Want to put Mickey’s house in the darkest corner of the depressing Forgotten Lands biome? Banish him. Want to create a prison for Donald out of garden trellises? Lock him up. When I discovered the near complete freedom they give you to fully customize your village and all of the biomes, I immediately moved all of the fruit trees and bushes from each biome into nice and neat rows (this game was bringing out a bit of OCD in me) in front of my house for easy star coin earnings. Gameloft have really delivered when it comes to sandbox freedom and creativity. Devoted players have created some incredible village arrangements.

The Bad

Comparisons to Stardew Valley’s gameplay are inevitable, and the results do not favor DV. Gameplay is really where this game loses its luster. In DV, the gameplay centers around five main activities — farming, foraging, digging, fishing, and mining. Fishing and mining are strong activities. Mining in particular is quite satisfying, at least at first. The fishing minigame is a bit simplistic, but suitable for the cozy genre. I enjoyed the challenge of fishing for squids, lobsters, or other rare marine life when quests so demanded.

Foraging is not really much more than just picking up stuff off the ground or harvesting fruit from bushes. It feels a bit sluggish picking up items, and it doesn’t add much variety to the gameplay. Digging is even slower and even more of a chore. I always groaned when yet another quest required some absurd amount of clay or glass, which is crafted from sand.

I have mixed feelings about farming. There are aspects that I appreciate. As tended crops pop into existence, you’re delighted with charming visuals and bouncy animations. As you harvest crops, the sound effects are pure ear candy. However, the actual digging, planting, and watering process feels cumbersome and slow. Whereas, in Stardew Valley, every action is quick, snappy, and so satisfying. The watering in DV was particularly frustrating. Maybe it’s easier on PC, but I found it difficult to nail that perfect 6-grid watering pattern consistently. It just feels more like a chore than a fun video game mechanic.

As you harvest crops, the way your farming buddy wantonly spews bonus goodies is aggravating. You have to run around like a beheaded chicken every 10-20 seconds or so, or else the bonus goodies will become “dropped”, requiring you to press a button to pick up each one instead of just running over them to pick them up. It would be nice if the bonus goodies just landed directly onto your character.

Storage is another annoyance. They start you off with a pitiful amount of storage space in your backpack and storage chest. You can upgrade these options with a heap of star coins (which is very much worth the trouble), but it takes time. You can craft additional storage chests, but they have limited space. There’s not even a way to pay real money to unlock “premium storage” or something, so I don’t understand why they would gimp your storage options so severely. It’s not quite Earthbound levels of inventory management pain, but it’s very poor game design.

I encountered some bugs, though nothing I wasn’t able to work through. I often noticed characters gliding around without a walking animation. Ariel’s 3D model is bugged and consistently flickers whenever she surfaces. Once, Mother Gothel pulled out her fishing rod, got stuck in that position, and then glided around the meadow in that pose for a few minutes. Hilarious. About 5 times in my 80+ hours of gameplay, the game would freeze and become unresponsive, requiring a hard restart. Again, I wish I purchased the game on PC. I experienced horrible performance on the Switch, with loads of asset pop-in and massive FPS dips. Loading times are also terrible. I clocked the initial boot up loading screen at 1 minute and 30 seconds. Yikes. That’s just too long for a game in 2024.

The Ugly The Grind

My biggest gripe with DV is the atrocious grind that’s baked into this game. It’s well known that DV was originally planned as a F2P title (Gameloft!), but the $30 early access pass sold so well, they shifted gears and maintained the $30 price point upon release. I was hoping this would result in a well balanced game design, but the game still feels like a Gameloft F2P game with a “grind wall” firmly cooked into the code.

F2P games make their money in two ways: 1) paid cosmetics, which DV still has, and 2) pushing players to spend money in order to break through a “grind wall.” Many F2P games share a common goal with MMOs. They want you to keep playing the game for as long as possible. They want to keep you hooked on the grind. The longer you play the game, the more likely you are to spend money on cosmetics, resources, experience boosts, etc., to progress past increasingly grindy and bloated quests.

While the first 30 hours or so of my DV experience were quite nice, I started to feel some serious fatigue with the tedious gameplay loop once I hit the “grind wall.” Star coins were not an issue, since I had farmed up and sold hundreds of pumpkins, but I found Dreamlight (another resource) to be in short supply. The only way to earn the massive amount of Dreamlight required to unlock all biomes and character realms is by completing dozens hundreds of monotonous tasks. I found myself doing the same tedious tasks over and over again. Harvest 3 fruit, catch 3 fish, remove 4 night thorns, etc. On and on and on. The amount of Dreamlight required to unlock everything is absurd. You can’t even purchase Dreamlight with real money. You just have to suffer through the grind. How does this benefit Gameloft? It’s just bad game design.

Most of the story and character quests aren’t too bad, but a few are outrageous. There’s a notorious quest for Minnie that requires 100 stone, 100 hardwood, 30 iron ingots (it takes a long time to mine enough iron ore for this), and 200 clay. That’s a lot of resources. Who thought this was a good idea? Grinding for all these resources is not fun. There’s a quest for Remy that requires you to make 22 pies. The efforts to bloat the play time of this game are not even remotely subtle. It seems like Gameloft just left this atrocious grindy F2P scaling in their paid game. How difficult would it be to slash some quest requirements in half? How hard would it be to reduce the Dreamlight requirements for the biomes and realms? Why does it have to take so long to level a character up to level 10 in order to unlock their final character quest?

I initially had a great time with DV, but then the grind got to me. I just hit the wall and couldn’t bring myself to play this game anymore. I really wanted to unlock all of the characters and finish all of their quests, but I found myself miserably plodding through quest after quest, task after task, like some kind of tortured captive with Stockholm syndrome. Gameloft dangles the best content in front of you like a carrot on a string. Too many quests and characters are locked behind a grind wall.

I had enough and called it. Quitting on the game this way, after 80+ hours of gameplay, feels deeply disappointing. I’m pretty miffed, honestly. This has really soured my whole experience and made it difficult for me to recommend this game. I’ve heard that the DLC content is even more grindy. Yeesh.

Perhaps I’ll return to the game after a long break, but probably not. There are so many other great games out there with properly balanced game design that doesn’t force you to jump through a thousand tedious hoops just to experience the content you want to see. If you don’t mind not experiencing everything there is to unlock in this game, you may enjoy Dreamlight Valley for the first 30 hours or so. Otherwise, beware — the grind wall is mighty, and only the most tortured souls can scale its great heights. Perhaps you will be one of them.

TIPS:

If you do decide to dive into Dreamlight Valley, here are some tips and strategies you might find helpful.

Farming is the best source of star coins. It’s absolutely worthwhile to grind out some star coins and unlock every upgrade (backpack storage, home upgrades, every Goofy stall, every well, Scrooge’s store, Moana’s fishing boat, Wall-E’s garden, Kristoff’s stall, etc). To start, make a huge farm of at least 50 carrots (I went huge with over 200 carrots). Repeat as needed. Remember to keep star coins for seeds. Once you unlock The Forest of Valor, switch to onions as your primary crop. In the late game, you’ll unlock access to pumpkins which can bring in more star coins than you’ll ever need.

Grab all of the fruit trees and bushes in the village editor and place them in front of your house (or somewhere easily accessible). Harvest everything on these trees often for easy star coins. You’ll also have easy access anytime you need fruit for a quest.

Always have a buddy “hanging out” with you as you farm, forage, and quest. Have at least one or two buddies for each skill (gardening, mining, fishing, foraging, digging). I gardening for the rest since mass farming was my primary grind for star coins. This also helped me to level up several characters.

Once your star coins are flowing, hoard every resource you can and store them in medium chests (which can be crafted). Try to keep a full stack of each resource you collect, as you will likely need it at some point for a quest.

Keep a crafting bench and stovetop outside of your house so you don’t have to enter your house each time you need to craft or cook. The loading times are brutal.

Keep an eye on the “Dreamlight Duties” tab for easy dreamlight tasks. It won’t take long for you to find yourself short on Dreamlight.

It’s incredibly tedious, but an easy way to level up characters is to give them flowers over and over again. It takes a lot of flowers (about 30 flowers to level a character from level 9 to level 10), but I found this to be quicker and easier than farming, mining, foraging, digging, or fishing with a buddy in tow. Put on a podcast or an audiobook and start dishing flowers.

Once you have all three types of berry bushes in front of your house, make a bunch of 3-star berry salads (one blueberry, one raspberry, one gooseberry). Take advantage of auto-fill and turn off the animated scene while cooking to make this process go faster. Fill up your energy meter with fruit (coconuts, lemons, or gooseberries) and then eat a berry salad with full energy to gain that bonus sparkling-yellow energy. This allows you to hold “L” and sprint/glide around the valley. I keep a stash of berry salads on me at all times just for this purpose. It makes questing much more efficient.

Try to focus on one quest at a time (so you don’t lose your mind), but also try to activate as many quests as you can so you don’t accidentally sell something you’ll need later. Items needed for a quest are marked with a special icon.

One last tip I wish I would’ve followed: When the game starts to become fatiguing, take a long break and play a different game. Perhaps you’ll be able to return without resenting the brutal grind.