I'm not a huge fan of the Mouse in general. A mixture of Disney characters on their own wouldn't constitute a particular draw for me. Nonetheless, I got excited about Disney Dreamlight Valley because I enjoy life sims and this one looked like it would offer something of a story.
That it does. You're slowly unravelling the mystery of why everyone in the village has amnesia, and why everything is covered in strange bramble-like thorns. The overarching questline for the story is supposed to offer many hours of play. And then there's also individual story/quest lines for you to build relationships with each character. Leveling up friendships has the practical advantage of having different characters helping you more with assorted tasks. You can pick one type of activity per character, and those include: fishing, farming, mining, digging. That's a nice feature, but I also found myself enjoying each character's quests/storyline.
Again, I'm not a huge fan of the Mouse, but I found myself nonetheless moved by trying to figure out why (for instance) Minnie Mouse had effectively turned into some kind of ghost. I felt sorry for Mickey, who was missing her. He was very wistful and she kept appearing in a strange silvery form for brief, tantalising moments around the village. How could I bring her back for Mickey? Later on while also playing through the main quest, a portion of gameplay gave me some insight into Minnie's predicament, and I enjoyed the way my experiences of both stories came together.
But what's the rest of the game like? At the moment it's in early access and it can be pretty buggy. Crashes on Switch were quite bad to begin with, then one update rendered them slightly less bad, then the next update seems to have made the game a touch more unstable for me. At the moment I'm unable to log in altogether, because there are problems with the servers that mean the game isn't loading for many people. Those are getting addressed soon, with players being promised compensation for not being able to play during a Halloween Event. So problems do get addressed over time. But I think it's safe to say that as a service game in early access, you shouldn't expect a completely smooth ride.
There are also individual bugs that can pop up, and those can sometimes impede progress in specific quests. The devs have tweeted out a link to their trello board so you can keep track of what's been reported and what's being worked on. I appreciate that kind of transparency.
Does that mean you should hold off on the game for now? Possibly. It'll eventually go free-to-play. At the moment you'd be buying a founder's pack in order to play. That comes in 3 different prices, offering more or less stuff, and more or less in-game currency. That particular currency can be used to play a season/battlepass-type "Star Path".
Buy into a Star Path, complete different tasks/challenges, earn the seasonal currency that comes with each Path, and then you can buy extra pets, items, etc, included in that season pass. Apparently the most expensive founder's pack has enough of the initial currency to enable you to play several month's worth of Star Paths. They aren't selling that currency any other way at the moment; you can find a chest each day somewhere in the village that gives you a small amount of it, but you might hard pressed to unlock many seasons with just that. That's one incentive to buy the most expensive pack. But even if you didn't, you can still play through the story. There's still a lot of content to enjoy.
If you buy in now, you'll get the items from the early Star Paths. But then you're spending money on something that will eventually be free to play in some basic form (albeit there will be some monetisation at that point too for optional stuff; I'm guessing the Star Paths might be monetised. It's just my guess though.) And again, there are bugs at the moment.
For me it's still been worth it because I enjoy the story, I enjoy the different characters' stories. You can also get into fashion. The character creator is pretty good in the first place, and I love that some fashion items include turbans, hijabs - items that can help more people feel included by the game.
You can also have fun decorating your village. I think the later might be easier on PC. On Switch it's a little clunky moving large buildings around, for instance. It can be done, but I have the feeling that would be smoother with a mouse. You can both buy and craft decorations in the game, and if this aspect excites you there are already very many YouTube videos showing how different people have gone about laying out their village.
Other things you can do: farming. I have a massive pumpkin patch in the game to generate the kind of currency you can use to buy fashion or furniture from Scrooge McDuck's shop. You can also cook food and serve it to guests at Remy's restaurant. You can slowly work towards unlocking different areas in the game that you can explore, and that offer new resources or new characters.
It's possible to rush through everything; I certainly went through a ton of content quite quickly initially, and then now I find I'm waiting for new updates that move the main story on a bit, and bring new characters, a new Star Path, and so on. I don't mind dipping in and out of a game that I expect to play over many months, but a different type of player might want to go more slowly than I did, so as not to run out of content between major updates.
On the whole, despite it being quite broken at times, I like this game. It has some promise to it. I don't know that I will play it forever; my relationship with service games tends to be that I can keep playing them for a long time, and I don't mind paying a bit of money every now and then for cosmetics or other non-essential items if it helps the devs keep on developing the game. But eventually I will run out of steam and move on.
Hopefully before that point though, I'll have gone on enjoying this game for quite a while. Another notable detail for the future: the devs plan to eventually try to add in multiplayer. There's currently 1 million players for this game already.
Multiplayer would mean friends could hang out with each other in-game, and that would certainly add new life to everything. Again, that's probably very far down the line, and at the moment it can be pretty buggy. But for me it's still worth it right now.
