FANTASY LIFE i: The Girl Who Steals Time

[b]TLDR:[/b] The story and character writing are meh. The actual gameplay, however, is very fun and there’s a ton of different things to do. If you don't mind a lighthearted (forgettable) story but prioritize fun gameplay + variety, FLi is a good choice. [h3]Pros:[/h3] - [b]Character customization.[/b] The character customization is very cartoon/anime-styled, and they have a variety of hairstyles, skintones, and mouth/eye options to choose from. You can even choose your character’s height and voice (there’s 5-6 different voice packs, some masculine and some feminine). - [b]Good character designs.[/b] The characters they introduced in this game have good designs, ranging from cute to cool to edgy. There's some decent variety of character designs in your teammates as well; not everyone is a generic cute anime girl/boy, which I liked to see. - [b]Good postgame content.[/b] People will disagree with me on this point, but I find the postgame content (after you defeat the final boss) very time-consuming in a good way. There’s numerous different things you can focus on: Treasure Groves (which give you goddess fruits, which you can use to unlock a variety of customization, recipes, and items), Ginormosia (where you can explore, fight and grind to your heart’s content, and unlock around 30 new characters to join your party), Snoozaland (which unlocks a large amount of cool new outfits, armor sets, weapon sets, furniture, and emotes), and more. Just maxxing out all of my Lives to lvl 100 took a large amount of time, but I found the grind enjoyable. - [b]Multiplayer.[/b] The Multiplayer in this game is very fun and easy to get into. You have a variety of different game modes to choose from, and you are actually REWARDED for completing games in multiplayer. The more people play together in Treasure Grove, the more goddess fruits your entire team will receive. The more people play together in Snoozaland, the more items you'll receive via the alchemy bots. (More items = More dream points) - [b]Island building.[/b] Speaking as an Animal Crossing fan...I LOVE that we get an entire island to build. You can terraform it to your hearts content, and terraforming in this game is insanely convenient thanks to your robot helper. There’s a good variety of items and furniture that you can decorate with, and your teammates can live on the island with you. If you’re an Animal Crossing fan (or any ‘cozy game’ that allows you to build a town and decorate), you will love this feature. [h3]Cons:[/h3] - [b]Lackluster and boring story.[/b] The story from the original Fantasy Life 3DS was great. Nothing groundbreaking or life changing, but it was a good plot with interesting and likable characters. In comparison, the story for FLi is...nothing. Its incredibly one-dimensional and lacks depth. Compared to the original 3DS game, the story for this game is a letdown. - [b]Lackluster and boring characters.[/b] Don’t get me wrong, I think the new characters they introduced are very cute and cool design-wise. The issue is that everyone is so one-dimensional that there’s literally nothing to their characters aside from their painfully basic backstories. They have no additional dialogue upon going out of your way to speak with them; they’ll just keep repeating the same lines over and over until they happen to be relevant to the plot and show up in a cutscene. - [b]Barebones character dialogue.[/b] This is specifically regarding the characters that can live on your island and join your team. The issue is these characters barely have ANY dialogue. At most, they have maybe 10-15 dialogue lines total (1-2 greetings, 1-2 help requests, 1 when its raining, 1 for nighttime, 1-2 when they’re in their house). The ‘conversations’ they can rarely have with other characters are painfully bland. The conversations are always a variety of A: “I like this thing!” B: “I don't care” A: “Oh okay!” A final Fun Fact: Apparently this game was originally intended to be a MOBILE GACHA GAME until the ex-director stepped down, and the dev team scrambled last second to try and turn it into an actual decent game despite their time constraints. Which explains so much about this game's cons lol.