FANTASY LIFE i: The Girl Who Steals Time

This ain't a "slow life RPG." It borrows that moniker from the first Fantasy Life but completely misses what that even means. Instead, you're a generic Zelda-style protag in a pretty mid plot about time travel, ancient evils, alternate timelines, chosen-one destinies, etc. And its constantly interrupting itself to introduce the next feature, cutscene, unlockable, collectable or mobile game mechanic, which it has a ton of. It has some of the same charm, style and mechanics of the first game but its all been repurposed to create what's essentially the perfect endless mobile game experience. It might be charming enough to get you to come back in short bursts, but its too much. It never slows you down to just chill, take in the world, and actually role play the fantasy life. The maps are all tight and shallow like its made for mobile. Even it's customization is shallow with most of the interesting looking clothes and items being locked behind post-game gacha mechanics, which only highlights that mobile game issue. Guess I know what the i stands for now: Fantasy Life (Mob)i(le)

Company is churning out AI slop, do not support.

你们这群纯粹因为觉得游戏玩法太肝自己玩不下去就给差评的是不是有点太神人了？

Its not bad but it really does not feel right for me. I dunno, I feel like I've got a decent tolerance to the "anime" stuff in anime (you know what I mean) but this game is genuinely the first time I have played something and felt like im not in the target age demographic. I'm sure it gets less painful the further in you get, the start has a lot of story, but man, the story is not good and the character writing feels like a budget kids show. Every time someone speaks to me, I want to turn the game off. The gameplay and music are pretty nice but I just found the game so hard to want to return to.

[h1] Fantasy Life i: The Game That Steals Time [/h1] This game, as the aptly named title suggests, steals a ton of your time, and not all of it feels as though it was stolen in the name of fun. While the game is certainly cute, charming, robust, and highly entertaining, the grind may become an overwhelmingly negative factor that may or may not hamper your experience. If you enjoy a bit of a grind, this game can easily sink its claws into you for hundreds of hours. If you are annoyed by games that make you grind mindlessly for hours on end for meager amounts of EXP, then you may want to avoid this game. [h3] Story: [/h3] The story can be summarized fairly easily: Short and inconsequential. It's only a small part of the overall experience, and it is easily finished in 30 hours or less. It is a sweet tale of friendship and cooperation that spans the ages, a wholesome journey overall, but it lacks any real urgency or substance. Even the main villain and the overarching threat to the in-game world feel rather non-threatening, and those elements only take up a small portion of the narrative. Once it's all said and done and you've tidied everything up, you're left to realize that finishing the story was really just the beginning of the game. [h3] Gameplay: [/h3] This is where the real meat and potatoes lie, and really it's what has kept me around for over 100 hours. The game is a blast to play, simple as that. It's bright, colorful, snappy, easy to control, simplistic and accessible in its design, and it has the ability to really lock you in when you're chasing that next life path rank up, or grinding for the materials you need to craft legendary equipment. The problem, however, is that it's incredibly repetitive. This may be a turn off for some, as you will find yourself doing the same thing over and over again in every aspect of the game. There are a multitude of different classes (which are called Lives) in game, but they all boil down to the same gameplay. Combat and gathering lives will mash the same two buttons or keys repeatedly. Crafting lives boils down to tapping, holding, or pressing a single button or key, while occasionally pressing one more to perform a powered up move. This creates a massive lack of strategy, and results in feelings of boredom during extended periods of play. The worst gameplay offender, however, are the quests. The random quests you get from NPCs in the world are some of the most boring I've encountered in any RPG. They are all the same, either being fetch quests or quests to hunt a certain type of monster. There is no real variety, and the rewards for doing most of them are completely insignificant. It is a part of the game that can be easily ignored, outside of completing billboard quests. Speaking of the aforementioned monsters, every enemy you face is a reskin of an enemy you've previously faced before. One area you may fight grass snakes, then in another fire snakes. Then later you may come up against regular wolves, only to later encounter shadow wolves. This example carries on for every enemy type in the game, and it feels monotonous. Thankfully there is a lot of variation in the activities available. Each period in time presents its own style of gameplay. In the past, you explore a series of islands with their own self contained towns and dungeons, and it's where most of the main story takes place. In the present you build your own town on an island in a village management style game akin to other games in the life sim genre. Then elsewhere in time you have a massive land mass called Ginormosia, which is a large open zone where you will do more grinding than Tony Hawk did during his entire career. This at least shakes things up and keeps the game from feeling too boring too quickly. [h3] Graphics: [/h3] One area the game does succeed is the graphics department. The art style is absolutely adorable, taking on a sort of kawaii aesthetic that reminds me of Animal Crossing in a way, while being its own thing entirely. The characters are all in a chibi style and the main character is highly customizable, with more options available for customization later in the game. The world is sweet and quaint, though a bit samey, with a noticeable lack of biome types. The textures are a bit blurry in some spots, even with graphics cranked to the max, which isn't noticeable when actively playing, but if you look close enough, you can see a difference in quality between textures right next to each other. It's not an issue I feel will lessen most people's enjoyment of the game, but it's one of the only flaws I can find with the graphics. The game performs wonderfully, and I never had any frame drops, random crashes, or traversal stutter. Despite it being one of the more pleasant games to look at that I've played in a while, largely thanks to its adorable charm, it could use a little more spice in its otherwise bland overworld. It may be large, it may be vibrant, and it may drip with saccharine vibes, but the lack of visually distinct areas makes most of the game feel bland. [h3] Sound: [/h3] This is where the game falls somewhat short again. While some of the tracks are pleasing to the ears and audibly soothing, there simply aren't a whole lot of them. You will hear the same 3 combat tracks repeated over and over again for every type of fight. You will hear the same music in every town at night, every overworld map sharing the same theme with only a couple of differing tunes. Every dungeon has the same 2 or 3 tunes it plays depending on the type. Every tavern in every inn has the same (admittedly charming) background song. It would have been nice to hear more. Buddy NPCs will drive you insane with their repeated banter. You will hear the same phrases repeated at least 250 times per dungeon floor, and I assure you that you'll almost certainly be sick of it after the first few hours of hearing it. Some of the buddies are worse offenders than others, but it would have been great to have an option to just shut them up completely. [h3] Summary and verdict: [/h3] While I really did love this game overall, and I feel like it's a strong contender for one of the better JRPG/Life sims I've ever played, its flaws compound upon each other to keep it from reaching true greatness. The adorable world, cutesy vibes, and sweet characters are overshadowed and bogged down by massive amounts of grind and absurd repetition. While I do recommend this game, I do so tentatively. It's a game you may find yourself enjoying a lot, like I did, but it's also a game you may seriously dislike if you don't like wasting a lot of time doing the same things over and over again. It's a game built upon grind, but at least the grind is mostly fun. Mostly. Overall: 7/10

100 hours in and now the game can no longer launch on the steam deck. I have attempted a ridiculous amount of "fixes" and workarounds with no joy. It isn't worth this amount of effort and frustration.

It's just a really cute game to unwind for a few days. There isn't much of an endgame to speak of, aside from getting the most powerful gear and decorating your village. It's disappointing that they haven't really supported the game after launch. All we got was a couple hotfixes, a photo mode, and a small DLC that introduces roguelike elements. This game could be so much more. They teased more updates months and months ago, but they haven't said anything. This game would be perfect with more Animal Crossing elements, such as a museum, events, or holidays. But aside from those small issues, the game is really nice.

Brings back memories of hiding my 3DS underneath my pillow when my parents came in to check if I'm sleeping. Very attached to the old game and probably would have preferred if we could've seen the familiar maps again etc, but that's just my bias. When it comes to the actual game though... it's good. But they had too many pots on the stove. Animal crossing island, open world botw, story, now a roguelike dlc... they just threw everything at the wall. It was a bit jarring at first to get introduced to one thing and then ripped out of it to be introduced to the next thing. All of it is decent, but none of it is fully done. The story feels... meh? Sure, the original wasn't a masterpiece either, but it really nailed its themes of friendship and unity. There was never a big bad, just people uniting their passions to save their world. Here it's just "this guy is evil because he can". Half of whatever he was planning didn't make any sense. They clearly wanted you to love the new characters but I just didn't, which does impact the story that relies on you liking the characters. The story map feels empty. One of the islands is literally just a street and a huge annoying cave. Speaking of caves, they all look the same. Show me a photo of one from the old game and there's a pretty high chance I can figure out which one it is. Here? No clue. Half of your islanders are important political figures. Can you even imagine what Reveria looks like while these guys are hanging out on your island? (It's fine though, that is one of the sillier complaints. I am glad we get to see most of the favorites return. I get that this is very light hearted and whimsical etc. etc.) The QoL stuff here is insane though. Life switching is really convenient, we can finally dodge, crafting is sightly less annoying. I feel like fishing got worse but idk. I also wish they would've made new music for this. As it stands I just got annoyed to see the themes of old locations being slapped in random places. Overall, half of my opinions on this are shaped by my love for the first one. This one has improved on many mechanics, still grindy though. With everything else... it's good. I had fun (mostly. until the grind sucked my soul) I just wish they would have had a more focused approach. Like this it feels like they had a brainstorming session and every idea was accepted. It is interesting to try and combine all of these things, but I don't think they quite achieved that here. It very much feels like some places are detached from the rest of the game, almost a separate game. When I first went through the treasure grove i thought it would be really interesting, traveling through time, maybe there'll be hints of lore? Environments changing throughout time? But no. It's just another dungeon for grinding. It's really good in some places and rough at others. It's cozy until it is grindy (unless you enjoy brain off grinding time, i did at times but at others i was just frustrated). The story is rough too with hints of something that could have been interesting. I'm glad we got this game, I never thought we would. I do love it a lot, maybe that's exactly why I'm so critical about certain parts of it. I want it to be great, I want to love this as much as the first one. And to be fair, the endgame being insanely grindy was a problem in both of these games, which seems odd for a children's game.