As someone who hasn't played the original 3DS game and only experienced it vicariously through streamers like Vinesauce, I initially had no plans to play its sequel, Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream. it wasn't until I played the demo, and realised how much fun I could have creating Mii's and tayloring their speech patterns and quirks to my tastes, that I decided the game might actually be worth my time. So I took a chance on it.
And after playing it consistently for a week since its launch, I can safely say that it's a perfectly-okay game that's a lot more fun during the first three days spent with it, before gradually losing its lustre. Your enjoyment of the game will depend largely on your tolerance for seeing the same events repeat adnauseum, and whether or not you mind the fact that half of your playtime will be spent in the Mii or object-creation screens.
Credit where its due, despite its limitations compared to Miitopia, the Mii creator in Living the Dream offers a surprising amount of creative freedom, and plenty of workarounds for its limitations. Coupled with the customisable bedrooms, clothes and objects (in addition to pre-made ones you can buy), there is a welcome amount of depth to allow you to populate your island with all kinds of weird characters, be it based on people you know, people you don't, characters from other stories you like, or even your own warped creations. The fact that I can make a picture-perfect Specter from Ape Escape and a Mii version of Lupin III in the same game is pretty awesome.
You can even add personality quirks on-top of the customisable voices and personality-sliders, like how they stand, how they greet, how they walk, and any other little traits they might exibit, to flesh them out beyond their designated templates. My only complaint is that there's currently no option to pick accents based on your language. So if you're from England and have an American character, or if you want to make your Mii sound like a Scouser, Jordy or Yorkshireman, you're out of luck.
More options become available the more Mii's you populate your island with, but at a certain point, you'll reach the end-credits and wonder what the point of continuing anymore is. You'll no longer have a goal to work towards as you level up your Mii's. No greater purpose, no endgame, nothing. Satisfying your Mii's requests will give them happiness points, and eventually level them up, allowing you to add things to make them more personable, while also giving You happiness points to increase your island's rank and grant a wish at the fountain.
I'm at a point in the game where I no longer have any meaningful wishes to grant that'll unlock anything cool. All that's left are tour tickets, which I've already experienced.
All of this is to say, the game is sorely lacking in unique content to sustain itself past a week of playtime, and relies heavily on your investment in creating Mii's and checking in on them to see what antics they get up to and what rewards will stem from it. It's a nice hook at first, but again, you'll run into the same things time and time again. I don't even know if Nintendo will bother delivering a content-update to keep this game fresh and worth going back to later down the road, because they've already removed Mii-sharing from the previous game, and because it's on the Switch, you can say goodbye to Streetpass and Spotpass features too. The only way you can share your creations is through local play. You can't even upload screenshots and videos for this game from the console itself, which will only harm the game's longevity even more.
So I can only recommend this game if you can get it for dirt cheap, if you're a streamer with a capture card, and/or if you think your own creative drive will keep you entertained with the game for longer than a week. It's so close to being a great game, but right now, it's a fun little time-waster that runs its course rather quickly.
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