As my internal hype for the Tomodachi Life sequel builds, I'm making an official commitment to myself.
I, So and So, hereby promise that I will only buy the new Tomodachi Life if it has all of the following:
1. At least 100 mii slots. Ideally more, but there better not be fewer.
2. At least one cool new minigame like Tomodachi Quest.
3. A similar or better level of outfit customization. The raw number of items or permutations is important but it isn't enough - there needs to be breadth (casual + formal + wacky) and depth (lots of each of those in different colours).
4. A similar or better level of home customization. I might accept fewer interior options if they do something interesting with exterior options, although I'd prefer to have both.
5. A similar or better set of interesting things that miis can do (e.g. chat sessions, hobby items, jobs).
6. At least some (like at least two on this list) quality-of-life improvements, such as:
- the ability to lock clothing items
- more ways to encourage mii relationships than small infrequent random events
- the ability to designate certain miis as each other's family members or spouses
- more meaningful age groups than kid/adult (primarily for avoiding absurd romances, but maybe there can be other features that incorporate it)
- don't encourage us to give miis birth years or make them automatically age (I think the game basically already lets you do this, but the user experience doesn't make clear how important birth years are or aren't so I ended up giving them to every mii)
- if there are still catchphrases, make them long enough to be usable in languages with alphabets
7. The basics, like overall decent gameplay, UX, and code quality that everyone isn't complaining about in reviews.
8. Same-sex marriage. No excuses, no compromises, no cop-outs (e.g. "maybe they're just friends", "miis have no gender", etc.). I'm not even going to use it that much myself, but if they can't get something as simple as this right, then they don't deserve my money or my time.
9. At least one thing that sparks joy or excitement. (e.g. an improvement on any of items 2-6, an interesting multiplayer mode, an interesting narrative thing, a neat VR thing, something cool that I wouldn't have even thought of, etc.) Otherwise, I might think I want to buy it just for the clean slate, but then not end up playing it very much.
I feel like this is a reasonable expectation to set. What do other people think?