The name is the least of its worries
Various Daylife is a game that seemed to have its budget spent more on advertising and its artwork, I was highly interested in how it looked from the trailer also but after a few hours of playing, Various Daylife is a game that is far from what I expected and not in a good way.
Various Daylife as the name goes makes sense when you get into the mechanics of the game, the name itself is also down to the fact that staff involved in Various Daylife also worked on Bravely Default and Octopath Traveller. Even the artwork and font used in the cover are similar in design and aesthetic. This in itself had my hopes high for Various Daylife but in the end, the disappointment still shadows me.
You play as a new arrival on a continent in pursuit of riches and secrets that it holds. As you arrive you are greeted by a female Knight and taken to a nearby Guild where you sign up for a Class by picking a set of answers, this had me take the role of a Warrior for my Character. My first issue with the game is the awful text boxes, they have a faint orange and blue hue around the border and a diagonal lined background to them making the equally awful text hard to read especially on a bigger screen. This actually is a terrible choice and I felt like this was a disability option for colourblind people but it’s not, it’s there and can’t be changed. You meet a cast of characters who are easily forgettable, Bruno another adventurer who has experience in adventuring, Gilda who is the Guildmaster and Efil the annoying Waitress. Characters converse and can be seen on screen talking like a Nintendo Mii character, even graphically they are similar. The exploration in town at the beginning has you moving horizontally and interacting with buildings as long as you are in front of them, this isn’t a big deal breaker for me. As you join the guild you will be assigned tasks to do aka Jobs, these are simple requests which the game will tell you what you will earn by doing them which is usually XP, money and increasing your stats, the game will also tell you if you have been successful or not in doing these, that is it, you will gain bonuses for multipliers on certain days but there are no real gameplay mechanics here.
The real gameplay comes from adventuring with your newfound friends out into the wild and here is where you actually get to fight in turn-based battles. Venturing out requires setting up your party before doing so. It also gives you a set amount of days and here there is little gameplay apart from the battles themselves but again not really a deal breaker. Your characters move automatically horizontally where a progress meter slowly fills, and at certain points, you will fight monsters in turn-based battles. The battle screen shows your characters at the bottom with their health and character portraits which is nice and probably the most detailed part of the game along with the characters walking and battling at this point. As you progress battles and the percentage bar continues to fill, time will visually, pass, it will get darker as the day goes on and by the end of it you are usually tasked with fighting a boss. As a massive JRPG fan, I am fine with fatuous characters but Efil has been the most annoying character up to this point, Efil has an awful walking gait which makes the other characters look way too serious while adventuring. Efils character along with her awful dialogue, attire and frivolous nature just feels forced. It does not help that Various Daylife barely has any character building, especially in the first twenty minutes of the game which is roughly how long it takes before you’ve met everyone and ventured out for the first time.
The turn-based battles themselves are fine and I really didn’t expect much after the bad start the game had already given me but there are at least some good mechanics in them. An example is casting a Fire spell at the enemy will set them on Fire or using an Electric spell will cause them to be shocked. Physically attacking an enemy while it is in a negative state may cause the effect to pass on to your characters. This also works both ways if the enemy was to attack one of your party members. The general rule of gameplay is to chain debuffs on the enemy making it more difficult for them and having an advantage for your party by causing massive damage. This is all a repeat cycle one that you will do again and again but there really isn’t much change that stands out.
I know I had mentioned that the real gameplay comes from adventuring but it really does. The bulk of what you actually will spend time doing is will be navigating menus and levelling up your characters through tasks in-game and there is a lot to this. The various Jobs you can do are based on what classes you have unlocked in-game, for example, you can do waitress work or secretary work. Doing these jobs will give you XP but will also increase and decrease stats depending on the Job. Fighting monsters will increase your Strength but doing Jobs like Secretary work will lower this stat but will increase your Intelligence. Keeping an eye on your overall mood will determine the outcome of certain Jobs also. Doing Jobs for days on end is not a good idea, you need to monitor your character Stamina and Mood in order to succeed properly and recovering your Mood by going to the Spa alongside other activities is one way of doing that.
Doing all of this will unlock new skills for all your current unlocked Jobs but not the other characters in your party. Doing this will cost a lot of time and money so if you want to get your other party members on the same level there will be a lot of menus to be navigated going forward. The game does have quite a bit to do in towns, you can buy new gear and improve your relationships with characters all while spending money to do so. While this appears simple enough, to begin with, it does get old pretty quick and the jump in cost to do so only furthers the grind of doing these chores even more.
Various Daylife seems like a game that can keep you busy for many hours but I find the overall faults outweigh its positives which isn’t a lot, unfortunately.
A Nintendo Switch Review Code was provided by Square Enix
