Best Friend Forever

The ease of the interactions made me miss the real-world dog park even more, where there’s always someone new to meet or a cute pup to pet. It’s definitely not a replacement for it, but in a pinch, it’ll do.

From a purely visual novel standpoint, the game is entertaining and well-written, but it fails to make use of the one thing that makes it unique. It has the love it needs, but it will need more training before it can truly be called a "good boy."

Best Friend Forever is an admirable hybrid of two seemingly disparate genres, but both sides of the game suffer from a lack of variety as a result.

Honestly, Best Friend Forever feels like it's having a constant identity crisis. Mechanically and story-wise, everything feels incredibly disjointed.

Ultimately, what I’m getting at is that Best Friend Forever plays like it’s two games inhabiting the same space that only briefly come into contact with one another.

Despite various glitches that are being fixed in updates, overall Best Friend Forever is an accurate take on what life can be like both in the dating scene, and when bringing up a dog. For players who are not dog owners it is an eye-opener to how intense and hands-on having a dog is, with a lot to think about and juggle what aspects of training get priority. All the characters seem available to date, none are cookie-cutter ones as each has complex aspects to their lives which are realistic. Replayability is high with so many romance options available, and learning how to improve stats better to achieve better grades from the adoption centre provides hours of gameplay to be had.

Best Friend Forever is a visual novel covering the first fifteen weeks living in your new apartment. You have just moved to a new city and you are constantly meeting new friends and their dogs. Establishing relationships with these people is the main premise of the game, but you will also groom, feed, and nurture your dog daily. As it is a visual novel, the game focuses on the story, and reading dialogue is the majority of gameplay.

Best Friend Forever has fantastic humour and charm in its writing and presentation without a doubt. Honestly, my main bulk of fun came from the dog-training simulator because I needed Titan the Maltese to be the best of the best. I found the dating sim elements lacking, and while I do think that they belong in the game, fleshing them out more would have created a home-run.

Best Friend Forever remains a relaxing, entertaining dating/dog raising sim despite its shortcomings in regards to the story.

If you’re looking for a short distraction from life, you could do worse than this bright and colourful dating sim that, while it falls short of its potential, delivers a pleasingly diverse cast of characters and cute dogs.