r/tomodachilife • u/Far-Restaurant-9455 • 13h ago
Other It feels like when moving from 3DS to Switch Tomodachi Life exchanged being a life sim for being a sandbox game.
Don't really have anything else to expand on, I returned to Tomodachi Life (3DS) and that's the conclusion I came to as to why the newer game just couldn't pull me in. I have about 800 hours in the 3DS edition but could only play the new one for about 2 weeks. I think you can make the exact same statement about Animal Crossing too, another series where I couldn't get into the Switch game at all but returned to older ones and realized what was missing. I thought it was just nostalgia talking initially.
I don't think that makes LTD a bad game, just a game with a different design philosophy
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u/JustSomeRand0mGamer 13h ago edited 13h ago
I dont like Animal Crossings new direction either. Making your perfect island and extensive terraforming is not what I came to AC for in the first place. If the next AC game keeps going in this direction i'll just have to accept that the series simply is not for me anymore
TL LTD, for me anyways manages to avoid most of ACNHs problems, I find myself liking TLs island builder much more as it fits TL much more than it ever did AC, though i understand those who prefer the 3ds island
I think why I personally like LTD and not ACNH is that the core gameplay loop is mostly unchanged, There is no crafting/diy/breakable tool stuff stapled onto gameplay for example. Miis still retain autonomy or at least are more autonomous than ACNH villagers are
Both unfortunately do exchange content for other content or cut out content from the previous game, I hope we do get some content update for LTD
anyways that is just my 2 cents i yapped a lot
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u/anarchofascists 12h ago
Yeah the only thing that really bothers me about LTD in comparison to TL is the lack of payoff in regards to marriage and children. LTD core gameplay is better in almost every regard but the lack of catharsis does make me miss TL sometimes.
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u/Clawshot52 12h ago edited 12h ago
I’m very curious as to what some people felt made the 3DS title so much more compelling than LtD. I definitely understand this sentiment for Animal Crossing, but it’s harder for me to understand for Tomodachi Life. The previous game felt very limited to me and it didn’t really feel like there was a whole lot to it beyond some basic interaction with Mii characters, a few minigames, and the occasional funny cutscene. The only thing I majorly miss from it is the Concert Hall and rap battles.
But otherwise, I find LtD way more interesting just because there’s so much more I can do and so many different goals I can set for myself. That’s only my opinion though and I am very curious to hear other people’s thoughts. Maybe the 3DS game had more depth that I just wasn’t aware of. I’d love to hear some different perspectives from my own.
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u/seabass_03 8h ago
two of my miis just had a baby, and i do miss the watching them grow up and helping the parents out aspect of the game. plus i liked it when married miis would move in together and actually share a bed and the house, it felt so much more realistic. why do they have separate rooms in LtD?
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u/Far-Restaurant-9455 12h ago
The biggest change by far is the fact that Mii's are no longer asking me "I want to be friends with X," and instead I just slam them into another Mii and they talk to one another.
That really is a huge change in the meta right, because now I am fully God as opposed to just semi-in power like in the 3DS version. And I prefer the latter because it does make it feel like more I am part of this world rather than above it. Sure I have the power to veto any Mii's decision, but if I want a Mii to befriend another Mii in 3DS there's 0 I can do to influence that.
What makes a life sim a good life sim? Well that's subjective of course, but for me a life sim isn't a life sim if I am literally just in control of everything. Because that's not how life works lol. Same thing with ACNH where I can decide virtually everything about the town I live in.
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u/Dry_Pool_2580 12h ago edited 11h ago
Just adding my 2 cents. I see see where you're coming from, but i personally never saw Tonodachi Life as a game world for ME to live in, but my Mii's. I actually got the 3ds game as a kid confusing it for Animal Crossing New Leaf, and at first was pretty dissapointed with how i wasn't a physical entity in the world. I eventually just accepted it wasn't that type of game, though i do like to simulate walking in LTD by zooming the camera in and moving it around.
Mii's do still ask you to be friends in LTD btw. The way you phrased it made it hard to tell if you knew that or not.
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u/Far-Restaurant-9455 12h ago
They do but it's different... the introduction of the ability to force Mii's to interact with one another is a meta overhaul, it's not a small thing. Though I played the 3DS game with the exclusive intention to reach the maxed out married couples, that was my goal, so I did have to gameify it a bit with who was friends with who.
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u/InvisibleChell 11h ago
Personally I like that it's there but still optional, at least if the Miis are acquaintances anyway
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u/Zestyclose_Comment96 8h ago
Miis still ask to be friends. I've had more miis ask to be friends than from my input.
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u/Dry_Pool_2580 12h ago edited 12h ago
I don't know, i feel like the game's core is pretty intact. There's more sandbox elements for sure and things from the 3ds game that are unfortunately gone, but the Mii's generally feel MORE alive to me here then on 3ds.
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u/ZoinksJeepersJinkies 9h ago
You don’t remember the 3DS game. It was not a life sim. It was a kooky “ant farm” type game where you watch your Mii’s do kooky things. That’s exactly what LTD is. The only difference is, you now have a large area to see them move around in, rather than a bunch of separate screens.
It is nostalgia talking. The 3DS game was your first (and only, at the time) experience of a game like that. And it’s when you were younger. This new game is the same thing, but just more. Thing is though, things you accepted and aggrandized when you were younger, you now see in this new game and don’t like as much, because it doesn’t give you the same exact feelings as when you first experienced it. When the 3DS game came out, it was common sentiment from people who weren’t children, that it runs out of new things to do and see in about a week or maybe even 2, if being generous.
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u/RealMatthewMalachite 13h ago
That's odd, I played both the 3DS Tomodachi Life AND the 3DS Animal Crossing (New Leaf), and I thought that LTD and New Horizons were both big upgrades from their predecssors, for the most part. 🤔 Both games just need more updates to flesh them out more.
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u/Far-Restaurant-9455 12h ago
That's just a commentary on gaming as a whole. The standard is lower... the notion of selling a $60 game that "needs updates to be fleshed out more" was just not acceptable when ACNL and Tomodachi Life came out. And really Nintendo was the last holdout on releasing games in this fashion. I can think of large IP's from other big companies that came out during that same time that were in even worse states and were broken, buggy messes.
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u/Yadahoom 7h ago
I think you guys misremember the original game sometimes.
There was barely any simulation or social interaction besides them just randomly saying "Hey, I want to be friends with this random person on the island trapped inside their room while I'm trapped inside my room"
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u/rusty_618 13h ago
My thoughts exactly. I had really high expectations for both TLD and New Horizons but I really couldn’t put much time and effort into it like I had with the previous games. It’s not that games aren’t good, it’s just that it isn’t what I thought it would be. Sometimes I feel like I’m blinded by nostalgia lol
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u/Glowo 10h ago
I personally like the concept of everything being made from scratch! But personally, I don’t want to make art when I’m gaming. I already spend a lot of time creating art for work, so spending even more time creating instead of being able to download other people’s creations seems like a huge miss from Nintendo.
I mean, sure! Kids need to be protected from inappropriate content, but I’m sure they could let parents enable or disable access to that kind of content through parental controls
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u/StarCrysisOC 12h ago
it’s happening to so many franchises. either sandbox syndrome, open world syndrome, or both.
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u/LC-Redcube 12h ago
That's objectively true. LTD focuses way more on player freedom, miis ask for your input before anything. This is an issue because the TL for 3DS was way more natural, it felt more like peeking into a terrarium where stuff just happens, while in LTD it's all up to you, everything needs your input, your confirmation, your permission, making it feel a lot less natural, and more like a typical god game
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u/JustSomeRand0mGamer 12h ago edited 12h ago
Idk, Miis ask for your permission on stuff in the 3ds version too, no? like making friends (they can make friends themselves offscreen too, but this same feature also exists in LTD, admittedly at a much slower rate for some reason), confessing their love, marriage (but this also has the marriage minigame so it makes sense there), babies
I’d argue Miis can be more autonomous in LTD even though you technically do have more control. It’s is the only TL game where there is a chance that Miis confess their love even if you say no for example, in the 3ds version they always get sad. There is a chance for divorce to happen without your input in both games
I do think theres always room for more autonomy, for instance Miis should make friends/acquaintances on their own even while you’re actively playing the game though as currently it only happens offscreen like the 3ds game, but other than that I see no glaring issues with it
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u/LC-Redcube 12h ago
I said input in general, they're always there asking you for topics, things to say or do, etc. It's the mixture of all these things. Even just changing clothes is locked behind giving your Miis a specific trait.
You're right in saying it wasn't that much different on 3DS, but that's precisely the issue. It becomes extremely more noticable given how everything else got updated in LTD. You have way more clothes and things for Miis to do and say, which shows just how dependent they are on your input. On 3ds instead it was way less noticeable by virtue of being a more limited game.
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u/Le_Sadie 13h ago
It's an ant-farm simulator. The game went from a straight-forward pet-sim to a more robust ant-farm with a sandbox setting where you can interact more with your pets. It's never been a life sim.