The Good Life

The Good Life can be summed up as one of the more polished SWERY experiences. For some, that explains all they need to know; for everyone else, it’s like a fun, repetitive, sweet and sour mixture between Little Dragons Cafe, Animal Crossing, Harvest Moon, Pokemon Snap, No More Heroes III, and Katamari Damacy. So few games leave me at a loss for words like The Good Life did, yet this is somehow one of my longest articles. As a gamedev and reviewer, I’m confused. As a gamer, I’m content.

The Good Life knows where its strengths lie. Its functional open-world model and mostly-dated gameplay systems sit quietly in the background and allow its quirky charm to take the spotlight. That charm is piled on thick, with absurd characters (and absurd accents), a plot that digresses so wildly it seems unable to remember where it started and, lest we forget, the whole dog/cat transmogrification thing. The charm and atmosphere have to be seriously compelling if they are to excuse the well-worn mechanics, repetitive tasks and frequent slowdown and pop-in. If Japanese old-school gaming whimsy × twee Englishness isn't for you, then neither is The Good Life. But if you're a SWERY fan and that sounds like your cup of tea, get dunking.

The Good Life is a Swery game, with all the good and the bad things that implies. Sure, there are issues, but also plenty of memorable moments.

Not even the picturesque world nor the functional elements can save the game from its boring content. You would need stronger motivation to keep playing this game and after a while it fades quickly.

The photography element is the best part of the game, and even though you don’t get a whole lot of specific feedback on your shots, it’s entertaining to try to take shots that will get a lot of virtual social media attention. A great game? No, but not without its charms.

Tedious amounts of fetch quests, clunky controls, sloppy presentation/execution, outdated visuals, and a mediocre soundtrack are really hard things to ignore, especially when considering the $29.99 price point. All in all, I’ve heard a lot about SWERY’s games and was looking forward to this experience, so it’s a bummer it fell short.

When everything is flowing in The Good Life, it feels like a touch of Animal Crossing with alternatingly quaint and irreverent British pastoral television, all with a burgeoning murder mystery underneath. Unfortunately, some of its rougher edges seem possibly related to the Switch itself and, although loading times are usually on the shorter side, their frequent appearance interrupts the flow even more. The Rainy Woods residents are charming and strange and there’s a numbingly pleasant feel to smalltown life and chores, but stiff controls and muddled design make it hard to find a good rhythm in The Good Life.

There is a ton of stuff to do in The Good Life, even multiple main storylines to pursue. Unfortunately, completing them and fulfilling the side missions is not very fun. Between the constant back and forth across the huge map and the fetch quests, I feel that more in-depth gameplay features would really help me enjoy this game.

The Good Life is a game with all the credentials to attract the attention of lovers of games like Animal Crossing or real life simulators. In reality, all the potential remains imprisoned in an unfortunately inadequate gameplay realization.

Despite the good will of the developer, The Good Life simply can't make it to the sufficiency. Unfortunately, too many design and technical problems keep this game far from a decent gaming experience. There are a couple of good things to mention, but are overshadowed by unexplainable design mistakes.

There is just a lot to do in The Good Life, which means that players can potentially sink upwards of forty-plus hours taking pictures or running mundane, everyday tasks. And while I like life simulators, I don’t like them when they can barely run at over 3 FPS. With a story that lacks focus and with these elements largely feeling like padding, The Good Life doesn’t stand out in any significant way.

Despite having some interesting moments, The Good Life feels and plays like a crazy mess.

While there’s still some ramshackle charm and memorable silliness to be had, The Good Life takes every opportunity to sell itself short and make playing it a frustrating, repetitive, and user-antagonistic experience.

I really wish The Good Life wasn’t a constant tug of war match. A series of steps forward, and equal steps back. I frequently would find myself loving the richness and detail of the setting, only to be taken out of it by an annoying gameplay mechanic. It overstays its welcome, and rides what it does well out thin. If you can get it on sale or on Game Pass, I’d say you might as well give it a shot. It’s not devoid of positives, but it ends up being painfully average at best. While I hope Swery’s supposed collaboration with Suda51 will be good, I don’t think I will be returning to Rainy Woods.

The Good Life has a name behind it in SWERY, and as such, the story brings all the insanity and the confusion one has come to expect from his previous titles. There is scope for the humour to work, but factoring in fighting with the camera and struggling with the controls the whole experience is just not worthwhile. In a self-fulling prophecy, Naomi points out a lot of faults in games that The Good Life just blithely repeats itself. Throwing a crazy ad-lib together and keeping fingers crossed the game works may have worked in the past, but this game has none of the fun or the charm to be successful nowadays.

The Good Life, for better or intentionally worse, is full of hardships. It might be the kind of experience you're looking for if you wanted a reflection of just how laborious life can be sometimes. That might not make for a very good life, though.

The Good Life is a product plagued by major problems on the playful and structural side. A title extremely lacking from a technical point of view, which brings to the screen a series of decidedly questionable game design choices, at the basis of an adventure that, while trying to tell a story in its own way mature, often ends in boredom and struggles to support the player's interest.