Best Friend Forever Reviews

I don’t know how a visual novel—a genre known for its replayability and branching stories—manages to fail this spectacularly. Compared to other games in this category, this one is a pain to replay, with no distinguishable events or meaningful differences between routes to motivate continued play. There are no illustrations, animations, or character sprites outside the bare minimum, not even extra stuff you only get to see when you're actively dating a character. There’s no customization, no unlockables, no New Game Plus, and no way to skip or streamline the repetitive events. Week 5, 10, 14, and 15 are practically identical every time, with only minor line changes that are hardly worth the player’s time. It’s so tedious that I had to resort to an auto-clicker to get through the endless, pointless dialogue. The mechanics are gimmicky and feel practically useless. For example, activities with your dog can earn points, but there’s no real strategy involved. To efficiently reach level 10, you just look up the starting dog that gives the best bonuses and follow a rigid activity list. It’s a mindless grind rather than an engaging system. The dog-care minigame is equally repetitive and broken. I discovered that hosing down the dog in wide, careless circles—not even properly targeting it—registers better input than actually interacting as intended. This, followed by toweling the dog twice, consistently maxes out its stats. It’s laughably unpolished and clearly rushed. For a game with such a heavy focus on dogs, they’re poorly rendered and lack detail. There’s almost nothing to do with them—no outfits, accessories, or fun interactions like you'd expect in a pet-themed game. If you’re hoping for something even remotely close to Nintendogs, forget it. This is a bare-bones, shallow attempt with minimal effort in its execution. The art style is decent, and the UI is clean, but even those aspects are marred by technical issues. Background music occasionally cuts off for no reason, and character sprites sometimes fail to load entirely, leaving you staring at an empty background. These bugs make an already underwhelming experience feel even more incomplete. As for the writing, it’s occasionally fun in a meme-like way, but there’s too little of it, and what’s there lacks depth. Once you’ve read the emails or gone through the unskippable tutorial/character editor, there’s no reason to revisit them. The character editor itself is laughable—just three avatars with no options to change hair colors or features. Player agency is virtually nonexistent. The dialogue choices and the data you input—like blood type or zodiac sign—are completely meaningless. The quiz at the start, which determines which character suits you best, is fun the first time but becomes tedious on subsequent playthroughs since it’s unskippable. Overall, the game is sorely lacking in content, customization, polish, and player accommodation. Even on sale, it’s not worth the price, and I absolutely can’t recommend it.

The premise of Best Friends Forever held a lot of potential. At its core, it's a dating sim with a heavy focus on personal growth, companionship, and navigating the complexities of interpersonal relationships. Unfortunately, it fell short in delivering any real engaging or emotionally impactful experience. While an attempt at exploring the dynamics of friendship and relationships was made, the plot offers no variety and shower-deep insight to queer issues. The story follows a predictable path, with very few surprises or emotional highlights unless tied to the romantic interest(s) of the player. The unique dog care aspect also begins to feel like a chore, and the vet's feedback follows on a loop. The lack of variation or (true) challenge made it feel like a chore instead of an idle game. All in all, this game lacks replay value. The choices the player makes have minimal impact on the outcome and the story follows the same path no matter what options you choose. The only reason I chose to replay this was to 100% the game, and it truly felt like a chore after the first replay. It's an amazing concept and the art was very well done, but it just doesn't hold up the way I had hoped.

i love the graphics, story, and dogs. i also love the gay pride support and also, did i mention i love the DOGS???????? a literal quote from me 5 mins into the game: "Wait, that's why its called RAINBOW bay!!!" YES YES YES buy this now