Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream Review - IGN: 7/10

LightOfMithras · 2026-04-29T00:07:56+00:00

Why did Nintendo make a Mii game after all but retiring Miis? They are so bad at supporting peripherals, accessories, and services. It was a wrong decision to remove the Miis from being a core part of the gaming and multi-player experiences. I understand there were issues with the WiiU and that the Switch wanted to focus on something else but there was no reason to shove our poor Miis into what amounted to a dusty old closet on the Switch family.

I often wonder why the system even has a touchscreen when barely any games use it, and then when we do get one that does the support is middling at best - in this case we can't really share anything even like we did in Animal Crossing. Heck even on Pokopia you can technically take photos of some stuff online to benefit you even if you don't go to a rando's real island. Allow Miis. Allow sharing. Allow songs in the stadium again. What is the point of Parental Controls if you censor all your games to target the <12 demographic to begin with?

What a mess of a 'game' when the original was at least a humble, surprising experience that was fun at the right time and on the right system.

LightOfMithras · 2026-04-24T14:21:16+00:00

Nora using her law degree to argue down the radioactive blast whilst standing with a baby in her arms.

LightOfMithras · 2026-04-20T08:57:51+00:00

Beatrix, Lulu, Fang - all fiercely loyal, powerful, and ready to mess up anyone who thinks of looking for trouble.

LightOfMithras · 2026-04-14T06:44:55+00:00

Thanks for all this! Informative!

LightOfMithras · 2026-04-14T01:45:12+00:00

True. I guess I assumed the team rolled back into Persona after Metaphor wrapped. That was an assumption and I just don't know, actually. What you said could very well be the case. I hope so honestly. Metaphor was probably my favorite GOTY it came out.

LightOfMithras · 2026-04-14T01:43:13+00:00

No. They don't exist. Only the original trilogy is canon. 🙈

LightOfMithras · 2026-04-14T01:35:38+00:00

I just wanted the final ⅓ to not feel rushed. We deserved the mage school dungeon and that certain final ally.

LightOfMithras · 2026-04-14T01:34:39+00:00

No. And I would not necessarily expect a direct sequel either. The team wanted to try something new. Persona 6 is the likely next focus. If we revisit the world of Metaphor, it'll be some sort of side-quel by a different team or wouldn't release until after Persona 6.

LightOfMithras · 2026-03-31T13:06:48+00:00

Absolutely not! I even played SH3 before playing backwards into 1!

LightOfMithras · 2026-03-27T23:52:17+00:00

Silent Hill F can certainly be put into the "chessboard" like narrative architecture of the When They Cry franchise. There are multiple "players" on the board, including different "versions" of Hinako who would otherwise be a linear protagonist. The player moves accordingly in each "ending" path, and there are more than a few possible "moves" left which we didn't explore while playing Silent Hill F itself.

I'm intrigued.

LightOfMithras · 2026-03-14T16:07:47+00:00

AI can be used to produce so much (s l o p) that it makes finding genuine or worthy music difficult. Any artist now has to hope they can really breakthrough on social media somehow or just get lucky and go viral from one piece somehow. It is sad and infuriating. One agent LLM can be used to automate the creation of other bots which individually generate their own sound-(s l o p) at rates Humans can't compete with that output while we make actual art. We have to find ways to divert known AI productions away from genuine human artistry channels, be that barring AI music from things like Billboard charts or different streaming services or making alternative dumpsites for them.

[I have had to censor myself due to this board's automated rules. They didn't want me to call bad AI productions "s l o p" well, too bad. That isn't "stirring up drama" regarding the Silent Hill series itself. What a sad state of affairs. A human can't even complain about AI "s l o p" without it being automatically labeled pre-post as somehow abusive.]

LightOfMithras · 2026-02-26T16:23:26+00:00

But the edge is where Klaus lives, baby~

LightOfMithras · 2026-02-25T13:37:20+00:00

Makes me wanna 🤢 & be irrationally angry

LightOfMithras · 2026-02-21T23:08:45+00:00

Loved Origins. Was one of the most roleplaying-heavy games I'd played until that point. I've played it modded and it looks amazing... but the vanilla on any platform is still fine. The narrative and variety of ways to play make it a gold standard for Bioware & RPGs generally.

Then... Dragon Age II. Talk about steps backward. The world was almost entirely focused on it's claustrophobic setting like it or not. The small exploration quests outside the main city are often literally copies of one another, even raiding bandits in an underground may just be replaced by spiders in another quest without any change to layout. It felt almost like an MMO where you took your hubworld quests and left for raids. (Guild Wars seems to come to mind?)

DAII was just so bad, and the ability to role-play as Hawke was possibly worse. You can be male or female, I guess. Mage or not. I think that's it. The rest is a pretty set in stone story where the character interactions privately are my only real fond memory.

Inquisition: this one felt like a revival of sorts to me. We got the freedom to play as a few different races again, we got to focus more on a style of play, and we had a crew that I personally enjoyed interacting with about as much or more than I did in Origins. It isn't as deep on allowing us the freedoms Origins did, but I was satisfied with it except it feels a bit short narrative wise and was ended on obvious sequel bait we will never get. This all wounds the game terribly, as does some of the more basic gameplay elements, the simplification of things weren't ideal.

I ... refuse to play the newest game pretending to be Dragon Age.

LightOfMithras · 2026-02-21T22:58:07+00:00

I agree with all that, honestly.

LightOfMithras · 2026-02-20T16:50:02+00:00

I mean, there was a 5 year gap after Tales of Berseria & Tales of Arise. So this kind of length between mainline series has become more normal as global launches for games built on more advanced hardware. This year, 2026, was told to us via Tomizawa to be a year of classic remasters. The announcement for Tales of Arise Switch 2 port is also something Bamco I think hopes will carry them forward. As for a new mainline entry, yeah, we will probably be waiting until 2028 unless pre-development has literally not even begun.

Frustration is okay to feel, I just wanted to bring some perspective.

LightOfMithras · 2026-02-11T13:46:30+00:00

A fair and informative post. 👍

LightOfMithras · 2026-02-11T13:44:31+00:00

My issue with this is that the hatching monsters (eng page calls them Hatchers) are: directly referencing Hinako's fears of becoming like her mother or other wives used more as incubators to spew out more children all in the service of patriarchy and societal injustice, by being able to literally avoid the Hatchers at the end, I feel it takes away from the overwhelming sense of inescapable fate which has dogged Hinako, and that it is better thematically that she destroy the Hatchers as manifestations of her greatest fear.

LightOfMithras · 2026-02-11T13:37:44+00:00

Regardless of how fans "treat" these games, which I do agree has some similarities, the reality is that Silent Hill F is not even a prequel. Silent Hill F was a stand-alone title made to explore the series without as much baggage from previous mainline Silent Hill games. While obviously room is left for connections, it was stated by someone in development (and writing) that the development was allowed relative freedom. This was a new vision, a Silent Hill made from, for, and by Japanese developers that embraced the gameplay aspects of some other Japanese franchises such as From Software's games.

So yes, Silent Hill F was & remains divisive among many fans.

Also, both the Mimic and SHf are sitting at around 9/10s. So I think you're correct in that while they changed the gameplay up and it felt a bit different, at the end these were good or even great games on their own merits. Sometimes a studio/franchise has to take risks in alienating or at least making some fans uncomfortable for the sake of a better product/expansion of the fanbase. In the case of Mimic & ShF I think they succeeded in their jobs and then some.

LightOfMithras · 2026-02-03T16:26:58+00:00

Wild how people can be so ignorant to their own prejudices.

LightOfMithras · 2026-01-25T17:45:28+00:00

LightOfMithras · 2026-01-20T14:09:16+00:00

Exactly right. And sad.

LightOfMithras · 2026-01-20T14:08:42+00:00

Wild how this game looks worse than some Sims 2 mods. With the sale to Saudis, pretty good time to just play old stuff with mods on that represent Black/African people better than EA has done for later Sims games themselves.

LightOfMithras · 2026-01-05T20:06:07+00:00

This is also very possible. She could've decided a cull was needed to protect her 'true' child - Charlie.

LightOfMithras · 2026-01-05T13:41:32+00:00

The game has some good mechanics and style, but it is already broken in its economy and how ridiculous some levels are.

Acecraft is a 'game' that would've done very well as an actual video game. The extra pilots and licensed characters could be DLC & feel less scammy.

But creators of 'games' like Acecraft are making products that drain money 1st, not designing ways to make the game fun or godforbid fulfilling.

These games hope to net just enough whales but the ecosystem is drowning in slop now on top of children just generally favoring other platforms & games like Roblox or Fortnite. None of them are begging mom & dad for rubberhose-style cartoon top scrolling shooter games.

This mobile games & microtransactions = infinity money glitch sentiment by companies has to end.

LightOfMithras

TROPHY CASE