VariousDaylife
Wed Nov 06 2019 keeevviinnI have been playing it non stop it is a fun game, but one thing that bothers me about the game is the leveling up system. I personally think its fine to work on my main character by working, but my allies can only be leveled up if I train with them. I really dislike that feature it really holds back the storyline of the game. The game has such a beautiful world, great character background and the music is beautiful. While I am level 15 my allies are only just level 9. It is hard to level them up any higher. When the pay in the game does not add up. I really wish we could also level up through expedition. And then train with them for additional skills, moves and extra level bonuses. Or maybe the cost of leveling up your allies would scale better. Making money is fairly easy, but I literally have just been grinding the work. I would much rather explore the world and progress with the storyline and meet more interesting characters that the game has to offer.
A Fresh Take on JRPGs
Sat Aug 14 2021 RyanVentoI think it’s safe to say there are entirely too many JRPGs in the overall marketplace, and while some are obviously better than others nearly all of them follow a very similar pattern in terms of gameplay and overall game design. Various Daylife follows in *some* of the same footsteps that other JRPGs do (jobs, turn-based combat, plenty of dialogue, etc) but it offers some new and invigorating elements to an overcrowded space. The art style is crisp and polished, the side-scrolling movement is a nice change, the simplicity of fulfilling job orders is pleasant, and the excitement of going on expeditions made even more so by making them have a special place in the grand scheme of the game. What I mean by this point about expeditions is that most games seem centered around combat encounters, but with Various Daylife it simply serves as *part* of the overall experience, never quite feeling like you’re there to simply hack & slash. Rather, Various Daylife reminds players that they are there to build a life, which means working, making relationships, and fighting on occasion (we are trying to tame a wild continent, after all!) I think the game feels balanced and does a good job at breathing life into the genre by offering a unique hybrid between an idler and, say, Final Fantasy IX. Cheers!
It’s decent, but issues bring it WAY down
Mon Sep 13 2021 small hobbitThere are a lot of features that just aren’t explained well in this (if at all) It at least explains how the battle system works, but you actually don’t really battle that often due to the main gameplay being “work” (the way your character earns money) and one MAJOR issue is it isn’t explained exactly how these work. Yes, there’s a screen showing you the work options you have in your player’s house, but quite a few times I’ve had ones FAIL on me when my character has full stamina and should be able to do the job just fine. And occasionally while the character still has stamina (and has other decent levels of stats) will just COLLAPSE and lose stats, which IS NOT a good feature for an RPG to have! Unfortunately, I’m left scratching my head when this happens because it doesn’t look like anything is being gained back in exchange (I would’ve thought it was due to stamina being low, but many times when it happened the character’s stamina wasn’t really all that low)
I’m playing from an iPad, and the UI just comes off as cluttered. I think I would’ve rather preferred they gone with just menus for everything or full graphics; not portrait forced with menus for everything and graphics showing what’s going on. The battle setup works decently, but I can’t imagine this scaling well since even on an iPad some of the text can be a bit small.
It’s interesting and a good concept, but really hard to play.
Good, but disappointing
Sat Aug 29 2020 QJ.jsThe major aspects of this game aren't bad; the music and artstyle all portray a casual but relaxing game. However, there are certain things included in the package that break the experience and distract from enjoying the actual game. Most notably is the ridiculous UI design. For the iPhone and iPad, there is so much unused white space that I thought the game was broken! The Mac version isn't an improvement either, as the interface for user selections is both awkwardly offset and tiny. The developers didn't even bother to scale it proportionally to the well-sized, center dialog box. Moreover, even though there are a great amount of character animation and expression, bloom effects, and depth-of-field bluring, the game lacks anti-aliasing (despite being made in the Unreal Engine). These alongside the occasional typo/gramatical error, it feels like a game made by both a passionate developer and a random guy working just for the paycheck, each contributing half the content for this game. Even though this game is filled with interesting things, the nonsensical roadblocks and annoyances don't make it worth the while... even to review the gameplay.
Good game! Just needs a few fixes...
Tue Sep 24 2019 Justin k.oVarious Daylife is definitely one of the more creative games released on Apple Arcade. So far, the game is pretty fun. The story seems quite interesting and the characters are all very unique. The graphics give me a Bravely Default vibe and the different battle mechanics are an interesting touch. However, it has a few flaws that prevent it from truly shining. The biggest flaw is probably the white space at the bottom. It takes up about half the screen and is quite unnecessary since it makes the gameplay much smaller than what it could be. Another flaw is probably the text. One some devices, the text seems pretty small compared to the gameplay and makes it really hard to read. These two problems are easily fixable and would certainly make the game much better if Square Enix could adjust them.
Ok game, can explain things better
Fri Jul 24 2020 DeganveranVarious Daylife takes a little while to get off the ground. The game is serviceable with a ok core gameplay loop of doing jobs/questing/story and the characters being relatively two dimensional but more personality then some movies and tv shows I’ve seen.
My biggest issue was how little is explained in the game. I run into issues where I can’t tell if I did something wrong or I hit a bug. For one, using an incense at night is supposed to restore all your hp and mp. On longer quests the constant HP drain and the fact that any food you bring will spoil makes using an incense very helpful. Yet anytime I set up camp and use one the time forwards to the morning and no hp or Mp is restored even though the item has been used. Or in another case I got a bag upgrade to bring more items on quests but there’s no way to equip the bag and my slots have stayed the same.
The story can also use some work. You are a colonist sent to a new world to tame it. As you do you have one main mystery about something only your characters can seem to do and a few smaller mysteries about the greater story but, 17 hours in I just keep getting people acting mysterious and not much explanation as to why I would care about the overall plot.
Overall I say the game is a worthwhile play if you want something fun with a moderate story that you can play while doing other things.
Good game, can be significantly improved
Thu Sep 19 2019 Riis LyngThe white space to move the character and fight in combat takes up A LOT of unnecessary screen space. The visuals look great, but are confined to such a small area that makes it not very enjoyable. I’d like to see a larger screen especially in combat and not 2/3rd of the screen with prompts I can use to fight.
Another improvement would be to increase the loading times. It’s so slow to load when transitioning to an event, or even just entering a new area. Literally takes like 20-30 seconds to load and I start to lose interest in playing further. Levelling up is kind of pain of having to do the “jobs” multiple times over and over and over. It’s very, very repetitive. I get why, but it’s kind of a nuisance. There should be some kind of exp/gold gain after combat and fighting for 6 days, don’t you think? Also when running through the campaign, the HP decrease while walking gets a bit extreme. I had nothing but food items in one campaign, and no matter when I use the food, I can never make it to 100% because I die before I get there. I find that part kind of stupid, honestly.
This game has the potential to be something so much bigger, but there needs to be a lot of improvements.
I’m also shocked that this game doesn’t support landscape mode?? That would be so much better, especially on iPad.
Terrible UX and insanely long intro
Mon Mar 09 2020 One of the Chili BeansI got so excited when I saw this game on Apple Arcade. A one handed, well made, vertical rpg was exactly what I was looking for.
But sadly this game has so many flaws it’s hard to get into. The vertical UI is clearly not what this game was designed for and the transformation was lazy at best. The screen is about 2/3 white space with the environments (which seem rich and well animated) are contained to a mini screen that’s so small you can’t appreciate any of the details. Also the text is thin and small and hard to read which seems like a rookie mistake that I wouldn’t expect from a dev like square enix.
Also. After downloading and starting the game it took me exactly 24 minutes of playtime to even get to the first instance of combat. And that’s while skipping all of the COPIOUS amounts dialogue as fast as humanly possible. If I’d have read it it would have been closer to 40 minutes until the first combat.
I want to like this game because I truly truly would love an amazing mobile-first designed rpg from square enix on Apple Arcade. I just hope that they realize when people don’t play this one that it’s not because nobody wants one, we just want something better than THIS one.
The game is interesting and Unique.
Mon Feb 24 2020 devilrainbloodThe characters are very unique from one another and have personality these games tend to lack. The start of the game is pretty slow but picks up once you unlock around half the map. Don’t listen to the idiots here saying that the game can only be played right side up. These players are the most blind people I have seen since in the options you can change the screen sideways for a much larger screen.
Most of the players here don’t deserve to be reviewers since they only complain about how small the screen is which can be remendied in the options menu. It is sad to see such a gem ratings ruined by idiots that can not see a good game.
Takes a bit to Warm Up
Mon Jan 17 2022 hamperbanditIf you’re willing to invest a bit of idle time into this game it’s worth it.
The game buries the lead a little bit. It took me a good 15 or so hours with the game before it started to be interesting. Before then it was a nice game to play that didn’t require much attention.
A good bit further in the game can still be that but the characters, work system, and especially the change, chain, chance system start to get a lot more interesting. You find yourself having to make quite a bit more tactical choices while still having a pretty chill game to fiddle with while watching shows, listening to podcasts, or whatever.
