FANTASY LIFE i: The Girl Who Steals Time

[b]_Achievement Review:[/b] Difficulty: 2/10 Approx. time invested: 100h MP Achievements: No (but MP makes it easier) Misc / Activities / Collectibles: Yes Missable Achievements: None To simply put it, FANTASY LIFE i is Animal Crossing with combat and without the debts you have to pay back. You start as you seek a secret island, but suddenly you will face the past of the place you searched for. The more you get to know the island and its inhabitants, the story starts to unravel. It is pretty bare bones and simple, in the end not the reason why you play the game. FANTASY LIFE i's strengths lie in the combination of coziness with combat & RPGs, between building your own island or going out in dungeons and exploring the open world, which offers a great variety of monsters, bosses and biomes. There are 14 so-called Lives in total, from crafting like Blacksmith, Tailor to gathering Miner, Woodcutter and combat Lives like Paladin, Mage and Hunter. While playing you will end up balancing all of them to forge new weapons and tools, craft new furniture for your home and island. [b]_Gameplay:[/b] At the core of the gameplay are the Lives you level up to increase your proficiency and to be able to craft better weapons and gear to advance in the story and in the open world. It is the hunt for special resources and exploring where to get them sometimes especially in the late game the grind for resources can be really exhausting. I highly recommend playing in multiplayer lobbies to complete dungeons and the open world to get to your goals quicker. [b]_Immersion:[/b] The game does not offer a story that pulls you in, but the way progression works is quite mesmerizing. As soon as you start to get the hang of how to level up your Lives and where to go for resources, you will start to lose track of time. The combat is pretty basic and the crafting mini games are fun at first, but repetitive in the end if you don't skill for automation. [b]_Design:[/b] I really like the monster & boss design in this game, there are a lot of different kinds of bosses that need to be overcome by all Lives from ore, trees, fishes, harvesting and combat. Everything is really cute and how can you not love seeing your character swinging a huge sword around and clubbing a cute little bunny that seems to have gotten rabies somehow. [b]_Recommendation:[/b] It is a wonderful game to relax and take it slow. I would not recommend starting the game just to 100% it, as the grind slows down your progress in the endgame massively. So much so that you have to rely on multiplayer for special dungeons and to be done faster with it. I enjoyed it, it was fun – in the end I'm happy that I am done though. [b]_Rating: 6.5/10[/b]