The Good Life

Like any other game by Hidetaka Suehiro, The Good Life is a unique experience with simple yet engaging gameplay and solid story telling, offering a few hours of pure meditation.

If you love unorthodox Japanese games, you should probably try The Good Life, especially given its low price point. Just be aware that's plenty of shortcoming here.

The Good Life is a curious and uneven experience. As a sort of hybrid RPG meets life-sim, it's certainly competent, despite the grind it demands. Surprisingly, the novel premise takes a back seat for the most part, but it's never anything less than adorably easy-going, carried along by a carefree attitude and endless charm.

Ultimately, The Good Life is a good game with some flaws. There are some features that the game probably could have done without. Nevertheless, the story is very interesting, as well as the characters, and there are moments which are genuinely shocking or funny. While Naomi's character can be obnoxious at times, she also makes a good protagonist in a "fish-out-of-water" situation, complete with funny snarky moments. Aspects of the game make it quite addictive, such as profiting from taking photos and posting them on the computer, as well as completing the main story quests and side quests. The game does allow you to play at your leisure, so you can go off and do some other activities such as gardening or cooking or crafting. The ability to turn into a cat or dog is unique, beneficial, and easy to use. For a game made on a modest budget, The Good Life isn't bad at all.

While The Good Life has its charms, most of the gameplay just feels really sluggish. Many of the story quests will have you making your way to a point on the map to watch a cutscene, you’ll then have to make your way somewhere else to watch the next one, and so on until the quest ends. The side quests also end up feeling repetitive and while it can be pretty relaxing to go through all the quests and slowly tick them off, for many players this will get tiresome pretty quickly.

For those who relish bizarre interactive experiences, The Good Life is an essential oddity that can't be missed. For everyone else, this is a barely functional chore that is all but guaranteed to frustrate and bewilder. Still, you've got to hand it to SWERY: no one else makes games quite like this.