Disney Dreamlight Valley Nintendo Switch 2 Edition Review – Magic Kingdom Cleanup

Disney Dreamlight Valley Nintendo Switch 2 Edition Review

Life sims are big business these days. Everyone loves a discrete little world they can carefully tend to for hours on end. Disney Dreamlight Valley is shamelessly cashing in on this feverish need, but thankfully, the game is also pretty good. I dipped my toes in these colourful waters back when the game came out on Xbox. Can the Switch 2 version hold up? Mostly, yeah! Aside from the character models, everything looks and feels exactly like it did the first time I played.

To be fair, the characters look alright. The clothing and hair textures are clean enough, and the faces are about as detailed as they’ve ever been. It’s mostly a matter of resolution. Certain parts of your character, like their face, are a little fuzzier than I remember. Everything else is reasonably crisp, which I appreciate. The houses, the interactable objects, and the environments all feel appropriately detailed. Handheld mode is especially good for smoothing over any inconsistencies that this port might be working with.

Fuzzy Round The Edges

I’m also happy with the load times. You’ve got a little waiting to do when you first boot up the game, but after that, it’s smooth sailing. The frame rate is perfectly stable as well. I never noticed any dips or stutters during my playthrough. I saw no visual glitches or problems, and nothing crashed, froze, or fell apart while I was playing. Dreamlight Valley isn’t the most demanding title I’ve ever played, but still! The porting process to the Nintendo Switch 2 was apparently incredibly smooth.

One upside to playing this game on the Switch 2 is the controller. I love the Switch 2 Pro controller a troubling amount, but there’s no arguing with the results. Dreamlight Valley’s control scheme maps quite nicely to the Switch 2’s flagship control pad. Planting crops, smashing rocks, and arranging furniture all work great with this setup. On the other hand, this is still an underpowered system. So there aren’t any settings you can tweak to improve the visual fidelity. If you find it lacking, you’re out of luck. This is simply how it looks. But as I mentioned before, it looks pretty good.

If you’re unfamiliar with the premise, Disney Dreamlight Valley uses a paper-thin excuse to sweep you away to a magical world. It’s a dark and lonely world in desperate need of repair, but still magical nonetheless. Only your unique ability to uhhhhh, talk to people and solve their problems can save the day here. With enough acts of kindness/menial labour under your belt, you can transform this busted spot into a magical wonderland full of Disney’s most memorable IP. I’m an absolute sucker for both environmental restoration and custom clothing, so this wobbly conceit is more than enough for me.

Off To Dreamland

I’ll toil away in the emerald mines for literal hours if it leads to a closet crammed full of clothes. Thankfully, the resource points in Dreamlight Valley come back crazy fast. By the time you’ve completed a circuit around the space, at least one of the depleted nodes will have replenished itself. You can constantly scoop up more materials to sell, so there’s no price tag too high. At least, not that I’ve encountered so far. The core loop has you persistently finding heaps of loot. It’s such a rich, verdant land that you might run out of things to buy if you’re not careful. But like any good life sim, Dreamlight Valley is always spitting up new stuff for you to buy.

You’re finding loot so often, in fact, that you’re also constantly running out of room. I built a bunch of storage, sure. But my pockets were still bursting with loot. You’re subtly encouraged to fence most of it as soon as possible, given how renewable all these resources are. There’s a chance that what you find will be essential for one quest or another, but it’s never hard to find more, if you’re patient enough.

Pocket Full Of Loot

I care not for in-game selfies or microtransactions, but Dreamlight Valley is pretty fixated on both of these things. It seems like clothes are for spicing up your photos and no second thing, if all the promo material is to be believed. I can ignore this easily enough. The microtransactions are a bit more egregious. You technically earn the currency they’re pushing in-game, but it’s a real drip feed. At least the amount of stuff locked behind this currency is minimal.

With the Switch 2, ports are a little more feasible. Gone are the days when the Switch version automatically looked worse. Now, chances are you’ll hardly notice a difference – depending on the game. Disney Dreamlight Valley is a great choice for a Switch 2 port. It runs smooth, looks dang decent, and boots up clean. Whether it’s your first time in the valley or not, you’re sure to enjoy your time here.

***A Nintendo Switch 2 code was provided by the publisher***