FANTASY LIFE i: The Girl Who Steals Time

Doesn't have the charm, story depth, or combat (magic) variety of the first one. They really dropped the ball on what made the first game worth playing for over 200 hours.

很肝很普通。代入感一般，没有养成升级的欲望。画风可能是唯一优点。

This game is undoubtedly an entry into the fantasy life series. Nevertheless, for someone who has played the first game with its paid DLC, this game just has some stuff I don't really like nor did expect. As the first title was one of my all time favourite games, the expectations for the sequel were quite high and I just don't think that they were met in the capacity that I would have hoped for them to be met. I might even go so far as to say that if you're looking for advice on which game to start with, I'd actually argue for the original fantasy life on the 3DS if you can still find it. Then again, I am probably getting ahead of myself. I should go over why I don't like this game as much as the first one. Let's get an obvious point to consider out of the way first: Nostalgia arguably plays quite a big role, since it has been some time since I last touched the original game. Even so, when thinking about certain aspects such as the story, it becomes increasingly clear to me that there was much less of a focus put onto said story in this game than was in the previous one. I'd almost go so far as to say that this game had basically none at all, though that obviously isn't correct. For what it's worth, however, it arguably failed to establish a more interesting and gripping narrative than the original game had. This shouldn't be all too surprising, since this game focuses much more on multiplayer than on the singleplayer side, but that without knowing that beforehand it led to me being quite disappointed. Aside from the lacking story, there are a few more points that I take issue with that I'd like to mention. Scaling in this game works differently than in the first one. One notable difference is the fact that all of your lives now scale independently from one another and you no longer have a central character level that you use to distribute stats to your lives. This does mean that you will actually have to use all of them to level them up, which might not be that bad of a change since you really just had to defeat the end game bosses in the previous game to level up quickly. The skill trees are also a neat addition, if a bit repetitive since they tend to not be unique between different lives of the same classification (those being gathering, fighting and crafting). It would have been cool to see more varied skills in those trees, but given how similar some lives tend to be, I can imagine that being somewhat difficult. So all in all just something that's different from the first game that I don't mind all that much. Next would be the fact that you can now change lives on the fly. It actually happens automatically based on context. That much is almost a luxury when compared to how it worked before. Definitely a good change since the previous method where you had to go to the guild for every switch was definitely antiquated. Something I don't like though is that the star amounts required for each life and each rank have been streamlined. They took all the whimsy from us that we enjoyed via ridiculous star amounts handed out in quests. I don't know why, but I remember that quite fondly. Definitely not a 'game-ruining' thing, but something that just continues to bug me. They also took the experience of talking to all life-related npcs from us whenever you rank up. You used to actually have unique dialogue for npcs that practiced that same life, but since those npcs are almost nonexistent at this point, that feature thus also kicked the bucket. Another way that this game ruins its immersion by literally deleting features that gave you the impression that what you did actually affected stuff. To add to this, they also locked some of the required items for life quests behind a new addition this game: Treasure Groves. You also used to get additional life quests by talking to some people. This used to be somewhat of a problem since you didn't always have enough quests to get to the next rank and you also weren't told who would actually give you that quest. In a way this somewhat stymied progression, but it also encouraged interaction with the npcs. Since I'm squarely on the latter side, I miss the dialogue lost with the removal of this feature. Another thing that has been on my mind is the fact that we lost a bit of natural variety in this game. This may sound strange since you have the entirety of Ginormosia, the Past and the Present to work with, but if you remember the first title then you also remember the mountaintop that was completely covered in ice, the volcanic cave with that winged egg ore that sucks 'cause it just won't die and the land in the sky that serves as one of the last areas you visit. This is actually one of the biggest issues that this game has if I'm being honest. I cannot stress enough how many times I've gotten lost in one of the sub-areas because they all look like they've had their structuring procedurally generated with, on occasion, a little bit of colour variation added on top to keep things from actually being the complete same. This drives me nuts. The landscaping was one of the things that made exploring in the original game fun. You could go somewhere new and actually find a completely new environment with a different layout and different vibe. Now it's all just 'the same' in essence and, for a lack of a better way to explain in words just how irritated and infuriated I am: I hate this game's guts for this. It is a horrendous abomination for this. I don't know if I'm the only one that's so upset over this. I only know that I am and that I wanted to voice that. Perhaps I am also just a bit too early. I want to hope that there's a reality in which those sceneries are added in a later update/DLC, though the fact that it'd potentially have to be a paid DLC just to get previous features back is a pretty bad look. Next up are some of the crafting changes. As you may remember, buddies previously weren't able to help you with your crafting. Crafting things at the later stages actually turned into a bit of a nightmare since you also couldn't equip better gear without having the needed aptitude level for it. That is no longer the case as you can now equip the best gear you have available right when you unlock the life. It arguably skips a lot of progression that would have otherwise been there. Then again, how much of that 'progression' actually makes for a good gameplay loop nowadays is probably questionable. You'd have to craft multiples of the same item just to get your crafting affinity up. Not sure if I'm just hating on this because it's 'different' but I do think that something has been lost this way. I guess I'll just take comfort in the fact that I can always go back to the previous game if I want to experience that again. Additionally, the way that ultimate skills work in crafting lives has also been changed slightly if I'm not mistaken. I believe they used to charge on every action completed and not just every set, though that might be completely wrong. If so, then I actually preferred the previous version. Nothing like running out of time on a set of instructions just to be saved by a timely ultimate. Oh the struggles of being skill issued on crafting mini-games. We have, however, also had improvements here when it comes to the mini-games. Both the alchemist and the cook now have instructions where you have to rotate your joystick in a circle to either stir the pot or cauldorn depending on the life. I like this change since it adds a bit more variety to the mini-game. I am just a bit confused why we didn't get more changes like this in that case. We could have had a carpenter change where you have to move the joystick up and down to saw for example. Shouldn't have been too hard to do. Still, I guess the fact that we got literally anything new is already quite a big thing. (1/?, actually managed to run out of text on this so I guess I'll continue this with a comment)