The Good Life Reviews
A surprisingly generous and deep life sim from the mind of Swery, but a frustratingly creaky one too.
Weird, good natured, and pretty funny with it, The Good Life stands apart, like most SWERY games.
A hugely disappointing mess of a game that magnifies all of SWERY's worst tendencies and fails to compensate in terms of the unengaging characters and script.
This surreal, multifaceted experience has its charms; but technical and storytelling snags that hold it back
The Good Life is a charmingly silly RPG with a little too much daily grind.
The Good Life does many things, but they never felt like they coalesced together into an experience that could stick with me. I certainly enjoyed parts of it, and some of its stranger moments really do land as big, enjoyable peaks. But there’s a lot of valley in-between, and while I arrived in Rainy Woods eager for a pleasant countryside escape, I didn’t feel like making a return trip after the credits had rolled.
The Good Life is another flawed yet fascinating gem from Swery65. It's a weird world full of unforgettable characters, and even when the gameplay grows a bit tiring or repetitive, it's worth all the photo quests and fetch missions in the world to see that next bonkers twist in the story.
The Good Life is a play by Swery, for better and for worse. His personality emanates and shares particularities: outdated technical and mechanical problems, but with that magical aura. If you like the author, jump in without fear. Important: it is not translated into Spanish.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
The Good Life is Swery's first take on the Life simulators genre. While it incorporates all the features that made him a cult creator it also shows a disorienting mix of elements and mechanics that just don't work well together. The thin narrative line and the histrionic cast of characters fail to fully flesh out the social commentary that the creator intended to convey. The whole experience ends up feeling more like a list of chores rather than a smart and enjoyable experience in Swery's characteristic Troma-like fashion.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Though technically rough and uneven, The Good Life is memorable and anything but predictable.
The Good Life is a bit of a mess, trying to be too many things and getting very little right, with weak characters and an unpolished plot.
The Good Life is a shambolic RPG that barely hold together, wrapped in the trappings of a rural life simulator. It's tonally stupid and structurally broken, but also surprisingly deep and occasionally self-aware.
While The Good Life still has some annoyances carried over from Deadly Premonition, it's still a great time with some wacky characters. The transformations and photography are a lot of fun to mess around with, and the life simulation aspects compliment the more relaxed pace nicely.
If you love unorthodox japanese games, you should probably try The Good Life, especially given its low price point. Just be aware that's plenty of shortcoming here.
Review in Russian | Read full review
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.
For those who relish bizarre interactive experiences, The Good Life is an essential oddity that can't be missed. For everyone else, this is a barely functional chore that is all but guaranteed to frustrate and bewilder.
Boring, pointless, and jammed with grating characters and obnoxious story beats, The Good Life doesn't live up to its name.
The Good Life comes with excellent narrative elements, but the entire experience is damaged by some weird design choices that result in mediocre gameplay. While this is hardly surprising for a game directed by SWERY, some of the ideas featured in The Good Life, like the cat and dog transformation mechanics, deserved a much better execution, as they feel shallow and not particularly interesting. With such flawed gameplay, only die-hard fans of the Japanese director will truly love The Good Life.
To enjoy The Good Life, you will need to be a big fan of Swery, and be able to inflict all the faults of the game on yourself to glimpse any semblance of truth!
Review in French | Read full review