FANTASY LIFE i: The Girl Who Steals Time

Best game ever I love Level-5 I need more updates, DLC, expansion, ANYTHINGGG

I watched my wife play this game for a bit and initially the cute artstyle threw me off. I'm a Helldiving, For Honoring, Grand Theft Autoing, Vampire Surviving, Blasphemous gamer, but I've always tentatively dipped my toes into games like Animal Crossing, to see whats up. Then I played it. Now here I am giggling like a schoolboy who doesn't know what to do with his hands as I unlock another Buddy, judge them against the rest, then spend hours agonizing over what decorations to put around their house. My farm nearly has one of every boss monster. And I have over 30+ Treasure Saplings from what amounts to a Race War against Mimics. To top it all off, it's something my wife and I can play to spend time together, running in the open world hunting for Legendary Don horns, or power-levelling each other (mostly me) in Treasure Sapling runs. This game is everything that I wanted from Animal Crossing and several other survival/gathering games. Rife with dopamine at every corner, don't let the cute art style fool you. Underneath those chibis is a mechanically rich and deep gaming experience that you'd do yourself a disservice to write off. tl:dr: game cute make caveman brain happy u shud play 11/10 would accidentally ruin my own monster house again

As someone who's played the original game on 3DS (and it's DLC) and greatly enjoyed it, I was incredibly surprised the whole game turned out as well as it did in spite of everything going on with development, and going on in general with Level-5... The gameplay has been refined and been given incredible amounts of QOL compared to the 3DS game, the lives feel really good to use for the most part! The island building system is pretty nice, mostly thanks to Hagram's implementation making it significantly more convenient! The character creation system is also pretty good, even if some options are missing compared to the original, even considering the Hair and Eye Catalogs that can get you more options for both... This game is also the rare kind of game that not only has gender hardly playing a role in character creation, outside of an inner clothing option, with options of "Gentlemanly", "Maidenly", and "Mysterious", it also allows you to, once you have access to the Guild Office for your island, change your appearance and even NAME for free at any time you can access the Guild Office itself, not having to delete your save whatsoever to achieve this! [b] God, more games really need to do this. [/b] The story and writing is pretty much what you'd expect based on the 3DS game, a fun ol' time with lots of funny bits to boot, I won't go into it too much to be honest. As for the graphics, they're pretty incredible for the most part! When it comes to the characters, there's a lot of great designs here and there, a lot of which are lifted from the now defunct Fantasy Life Online, and to that I say good, they shouldn't rot there. Overall, the roster of recruitable characters/Strangelings/Buddies is pretty good! there's some oddball picks here and there, but overall it makes for a pretty good variety of faces! When it comes to complaints and nitpicks, I have quite a few unfortunately, game's far from perfect, despite it being pretty good... [strike] The camera is pretty good until you decide to roam around Ginormosia, one of the game's three regions, where you can't even look to the horizon. However, the developers are already working on a solution for that which will be added in a patch, which looks like it'll solve that particular problem.[/strike] (as of a patch released 6/12/2025 for PS4/PS5/Xbox/Steam, The camera can now be angled to look into the horizon, making Ginormosia exploration feel significantly better!) Something I only discovered recently, there's a whole trove of recipes that can only be obtained once a real-life day through your island. I wouldn't mind it if it were just like furniture or something, but quite a few of them are actually important, some even being needed for quests. For some reason even when you roam a Treasure Grove in solo play, there's the 1 hour timer that's otherwise used for Multiplayer, and just, why? Like I get they don't want people to play it way too much, but at that point just do the usual thing and go like, "you spent a lot of time in that Treasure Grove, maybe take a break?" or something. Kicking the player out in the middle of a stage or making them just leave and come back in to reset the timer is just rude and annoying... [strike]On a related note, I really don't get why only the Crafting Lives' challenges actually need the Treasure Grove's exclusive contents, every other Life just needs stuff from anywhere else... it's a really weird inconsistency.[/strike] okay cool as of the update released on 7/2/2025, you can also now obtain these materials in Ginormosia as well! awesome! But overall, the game is really really fun! While I feel like it's not [b] exactly [/b] at the 3DS game's level, it comes close, and could probably surpass it with the right additions and changes.

i love this game so much. i was super iffy ab it getting it at first bcuz of the price, but seeing how cute it actually looked in gameplay videos had me sold. when i first saw the trailer on the nintendo direct, i thought the art style looked kinda bootleg & i did not care for it at all. few days after the release, i watched in-depth gameplay videos and was shocked at how cute the graphics and art style actually is, and how polished the mechanics are. i feel like the first trailer did not do justice at all. when i first tried the game myself, i was a lil overwhelmed but immediately fell in love. the graphics, art style, music, sound efffects, animations, ui, and the mechanics all felt so smooth. i feel like the devs really put a lot of efffort into this game which i appreciate. this game gives me such a nostalgic animal crossing feel. im 110 hours in and i feel like i still have so much more to do and cannot wait to keep going. i play this on steam deck and it runs rlly well + super cozy to play in bed. i say this game is worth the price 100% with the huge ammount of content in it. i truly do recommend it ♡

Loved the game. Enjoyed my time with it. Problem is that end game grind is a time gated hell on par with gacha games. All bosses on 5 real minute in-game only timers. Some progress only made on daily logins. I do not appreciate these predatory practices in a single-player focused game that I payed full price for. Village building is interesting but painful and overly time consuming. Cant move houses, bridges, farms etc freely. Have to go through several conversation menus and loading screens to demolish and rebuild. New Rune Factory game has MUCH better feeling village building. Heck, their Dark Cloud games had a better village building experience.

Its pretty fun if you treat it kind of like runescape as this turns into a grindy game. Theres not as much variety in furniture and clothing options compared to animal crossing from what i can tell, so i wouldnt really play it for that if thats what you are most interested in.

My wife and daughter convinced me to try Fantasy Life, even though I don’t play these types of games. I usually stick with games like Elite Dangerous, X4 Foundations, Stellar Blade, SoulsBorn, and Bannerlord, but Fantasy Life surprised me. It reminded me a lot of FFXIV (back when it was a decent game). This is great family fun, and I think future iterations or DLCs could take it to the next level. With anticheat already implemented, why not add player markets? Setting up a player shop and selling to both NPCs and players would make this game S-tier. The combat system is surprisingly fun, but some more variety or unique mechanics per job would go a long way. Crafting feels too much like Simon Says, so some skill-based features would make it amazing. Fantasy Life draws a lot of inspiration from FFXIV, so I hope the developers lean into those ideas. If they ever make an MMO version with a player market or economy, I’m in. All in all, I never saw myself playing this type of game, but I’m glad I tried it. 10/10 fun family time, but I’m hoping for more features in the future. P.S. Devs, if you read this, add a shopkeeper DLC, I want to own a store!

If you don't mind a game that's very repetitive and has a lot of grinding, you'll love Fantasy Life i. I used to play the 3DS version when I was twelve. Glad that Level 5 decided to finally make a sequel to that beloved game from my childhood.

I'm almost 50 and this game helps me experience wanting to game more than sleep again; a feeling I have not had since I was a teenager. My son and daughter also love this game however they don't do any grinding so it's all me playing 3x mastering all crafting lives for everyone. Even that did not burn me out and I'm still eager to play more.

"let me just do one more quick thing" the game story surprisingly punched a little above its weight too

this has all but taken over my deck. they're a match made in heaven. i have a hard time getting into many farming and cozy games tbh, what i needed was the jrpg angle that this game does, and i will sink dozens of hours into grinding. its a perfect game to grind while watching reality shows so its become a fixture in my routine.

I truly love this game. Fantasy Life was such a big part of my childhood and finally getting another Fantasy Life game was so incredible. I love ths game with all my heart, the nostalgic music and enemies, the cute graphics and the life system is something I always enjoyed. They did a great job to preserve the charm of the first game, and I am really glad they did. There are some things I really hope for though. The world feels small, Gino has that big awe moment when you first reach it but other than that the islands feel small with little variety. Speaking of variety, it is missing just that. The world is mainly desert, plains and forest... There is a small vulcano area but like in most games it simply needs more and bigger worlds with different themes. I hope they add more, there isn't any sort of winter or snow area, which is a shame because the music from the first Fantasy Life there was fantastic. I cannot point out enough how much I hope they make bigger islands with all sorts of themes, Snow, Vulcano, Mountain and even Darkness. Another variety that is missing is enemies, it feels like there are 8 base models that all just get a different skin, so many cool and unique monsters are missing and make it feel repetitive when you see the same enemies everywhere. Same thing with the bosses, so little variety for boss trees and ores, which the old game had plenty of. I hope they add more in the upcoming dlc. The game is of course very very grindy, it makes sense in this type of game but there are things that feel way too grindy, like gathering materials from the legendaries, because it takes a lot of resetting and you need way too many of them. And mainly, the grove exclusives. Those are terrible, it takes so many seeds to reset it in singleplayer to even find them and then unless you play multiplayer there is no way to get a branch to replay the groves, I hope they make this a bit easier. But despite all those things, this game is truly wonderful, it's really something I have been playing since release and still am. If you read this Level 5, I love what you did with this game, I hope you see the suggestions the community has and make this game as much of a masterpiece as the first one <3

I liked the gameplay (see the positive reviews from others as nothing I liked has been unsaid!) but I cannot recommend this game due to the Easy Anti-Cheat nonsense applied to it. From launch it has been flagging the game as a virus, crashing randomly, using tons of resources, running even after the game is force quit. Once I figured that out by disabling my firewall and whatnot it was janky sailing until a week or two ago and I have not been able to get in game at all. It won't open, saying I'm cheating lol. I don't play any multiplayer elements of any games, I don't have mods installed, I don't even have screen recording, I cannot for the life of me figure out what it is flagging as cheating. I've tried every fix the internet has given me from deleting, reinstalling, TPN in bios (as this is apparently a very common problem) and nothing has worked. Looking into it further this application is widely known for causing these issues, a lot of people are suspicious of it's security, and isn't even effective against cheating. Why on earth they added it to this game of all games is a complete sidenote - what on earth could there be to protect against. It's not even PVP? Bizarre choice. I'm having a hell of a time trying to unstall this game as well, Easy Anti Cheat will NOT turn off, will NOT uninstall. It won't let me stop it from booting up, it won't let me force quit or uninstall. This feels like a virus it's so ingrained, it's so weird of them to include it. I cannot recommend a game that I cannot play, so if you have had issues with the anti-cheat program you will also need to steer clear.

Super fun game! what an amazing surprise. I prefer this game over Animal Crossing. Great story, super nice charm and you can even play it with friends! Highly recommended!

I am never one to buy a game full price (specifically a $60+ game). I'm especially not someone who will buy one only a few days after the initial release. However, this game was compared to numerous games that I adore, so I bit the bullet. I don't regret it one bit. I'm new to the Fantasy Life franchise. Although I thoroughly played my DS in the early 2010's, I had never heard of the original Fantasy Life. There is so much to do in this game! Never did I think after a month+ of it's release, I'd already bank over 50+ hours and I can easily see banking another 50 easily. The main story was cute (albeit a bit short for my personal taste). There are so many "Lives" to level up and master. I've never been into too many super grindy games, but I've thoroughly enjoyed grinding my way through this one. You have an island to terraform and decorate. There's combat, crafting and collecting (or hoarding if you're like me). We have three maps to discover and explore, so it truly feels like you never run out of stuff to do. There isn't a lot of items that I don't love, but there are a few. First is online play. It feels extremely important to play with others in the post game grind. I wouldn't mind doing this with my own friend group if they owned the game, but I don't want to jump into random lobbies. It almost feels like a punishment if you don't play online for some of the post game events/items/drops, etc. The other thing I wish they'd elaborate more on is specifically the post game grind. I feel that the game does a great way of introducing everything to you throughout the story, but the moment that story ends, you're on your own. I've spent numerous moments looking up what something is, what I need to focus on, and how to do xyz. All in all, I adore this game and recommend it to others even at a $60 price tag. I fully plan to eventually 100% this game. I do see that taking possibly 100+ hours, but I'm excited for it as it doesn't seem impossible considering where I'm at now.

This game is one of the greatest pieces of media since the bible. Even with only 2.7 hours into this masterpiece I can say with confidence it has changed my life for the better, not only do you not need to wait for a sale you should instead wait for a reverse sale and give them more money than they ask for 11/9

If you are on the fence about getting this game, go for it. It was worth every dollar spent. I'm still not done and now have over one hundred hours. I've loved everything the game has to offer from crafting, to finding different buddies, how smooth group play is, the decorating and clothing options and more. This is currently my favorite game of the year. It is so adorable and works like a dream on the steamdeck!

Kick your addiction to FF14 by playing this game instead :) update (SPOILERS): the game is still fun but to whoever decided it was a good idea to require every single job for the last chapter i hope your family doesn't love you.

Wonderful game. If you have problems deciding what thing to focus on or sticking to the main story then oh boy is this the game for you. Everything and anything at some point will have value to you accomplishing your goals, and its pretty fun to get sidetracked sometimes. It very much feels like a large world, and at first seemed like a terrible grind but in multiplayer anything done by any player gives you all mat drops, and full experience (and quest progress if you own that Life, regardless of your personal progression of that life) making getting some materials and leveling classes much better! There's also a funny April fools video from the devs you can find on youtube where the game looks like animal crossing. All in all enjoyed the game. Has silly humor and great jokes. Purposefully got every achievement. Excited about the free DLC coming up in July for more content. And plan to keep playing. 10/10.

While this game isn't bad in any particular ways, it's a far downgrade from the original 3Ds game. While there are problems like combat being significantly easier, allowing the player to take on pretty much any enemy they find regardless of level, and gathering being made to focus mostly on stamina consumption, making skill expression very limited, the game suffer from a lack of soul compared to the original game. Many areas are forgetful rooms connected by straight hallways and areas, mostly towns, feel far less lively than the original game.The writing for the game too is also mediocre, with the story and characters not being particulary good compared to the original game's great writing and characters despite having a weak story also. Overall, despite having good quality of life changes, Fantasy Life i feels like a downgrade from the original in every major way.

I have played them all. Harvest Moon, Rune Factory, Animal Crossings, Stardew Valley, Story of Seasons, Fae Farm, (you get the picture) and this game....is my absolute favorite!! It's been forever since I've been so engrossed in a game that I can literally forget anything I was stressed about before I started playing. I love the progression in the different lives. I love not having a timer count 1 second as 1 minute of time passing, worrying about passing out at midnight or running out of stamina. The graphics are gorgeous, like what we wished they could be in Animal Crossings and just a beautiful as the remake of Link's Awakening. I love the punny plays on Zelda BOTW that make me chuckle. I bought this game twice it's so good, once for PC and another for Switch 2 so I could have longer battery life to play. Just take my word for it. They put so much effort and love into this game. For the devs: you have a masterpiece here and DLC could keep it alive just as long as Animal Crossings if not longer. For the gamers: stop thinking about it and just buy it! :)

I went into Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time without any nostalgia for the original 3DS game, so I feel like I was able to look at it with unbiased eyes. While it’s charming on the surface, the more I played, the more I felt like it didn’t live up to what it could’ve been. At first, the game seems packed with content, you get to choose from a ton of jobs (called “lives”), and it gives the impression that there’s going to be so much to do. And technically, there is, but it’s a bit repetitive and a lot grindy. For the average player just following the story, it might not feel like there’s much incentive to dig deeper. I never really felt compelled to try everything — even though it sounds fun on paper, I just didn’t want to. The gameplay loop revolving around leveling your jobs gets repetitive fast. I usually don’t mind a bit of grind, but this felt more tedious than satisfying. Leveling up jobs and buddies takes time, and I can’t imagine having to do it for multiple different jobs. Side quests are mostly fetch quests or basic monster fights, and the story, while cute, doesn’t have much depth to keep you hooked. The game doesn’t really guide you outside of the main story either. It drops you into this side world (Ginormosia) without much direction, and I often found myself wondering, What am I supposed to be doing right now, and why does it matter? Some features — like farming, terraforming, and building up your island — are locked behind certain story parts, which kind of interrupts the whole “play your way” vibe. And even though the game tries to make day/night cycles and time travel feel meaningful, the NPCs mostly just say the same things no matter when you talk to them. It’s hard to care about a world that barely reacts to you. Visually, it’s cute and colorful, but for a full-priced game, some of the graphics and animations feel a little dated. And I really wish there had been voice acting, at least in the cutscenes. The dialogue can get long, especially early on, and without voices, it just drags. You might enjoy this game: If you love slower-paced, grindy life sims where you set your own goals and don’t mind repetitive gameplay. But if you’re looking for a cozy game that also feels rewarding — with a satisfying story, character depth, or meaningful progression — this might leave you disappointed.

As someone who has been hard-seeking the same pure joy and excitement I had back in 2020 when Animal Crossing released. I can say with confidence that Fantasy Life has scratched that itch and more. The developers have taken community feedback to heart and words cannot describe how simple Quality of Life improvements made my day. The only gripe I have now is not being able to craft multiple pieces of furniture at a time (quality does not matter for decorative items, so its an odd change) and no grid when customizing the island (this is a very minor thing, I think a simple toggle option so that we can properly align things that cost in game money like moving Islander homes) i've sunk nearly 50 hours into this game and I can easily see hundreds ticking up over time. Steam Deck compatibility is solid and I definitely echo the games recommendation: PLAY WITH A CONTROLLER

Fun game. Undercooked, overscoped, decently polished. Would recommend on sale. In almost every core aspect, this game falls flat on its face compared to the original. It's very disheartening because I genuinely want to love it. Looking at the current state of the industry, this game seems to very much be a victim of higher ups in the studio pushing scope creep on the developers. If you want a complete experience, just play the original. Lots of flaws and nitpicks in every corner. The soundtrack is unfortunately mostly reused from the original, often in really weird ways that do not match this game's theme. The story is very weak compared to the original, with very shallow characters and weightless plot twists. The main RPG area's island system feels very shallow compared to the contiguous world from the original. This is even worse with the caves, which are repetitive, bland, flat, and sad. The open world (Ginormosia) barely ties into the story and feels very extra, even with the amount of content. Animal crossing island is... decent? It's relatively polished but is too small, limiting in housing, and lacking in proper customization. I have not attempted multiplayer, but there is overwhelming feedback that it is practically unplayable in the current state. Couch co-op exists but Trip cannot level with the player, making him a joke to play. Combat is also lacking in most of the depth it had in the original. Proper combos have been replaced with repetitive button mashing, and the whole elements system (at least for mages) has been axed in favor of autoswapping elements based on what you're attacking It's hard to think of the positives. I do enjoy the core art style, especially coming off the original. Cutscenes are also well done, but few and far between. Minigames are satisfying when you figure out their tricks. Given how few positives there are though, it's very much a "1 step forward, 2 steps back" situation. The game does retain some of the magic of the original, but only to a shallow level. Once you start actually diving into the content, the shortcomings become very evident. It held me for a good 40 hours (as I was doing every side objective imaginable), but I can't see myself coming back or grinding to the endgame until the multiplayer is overhauled and the core systems are vastly improved.

This is a good game by a company that's good to its players which is worth its weight in gold. Many issues players have discussed are actively being addressed or already have been, and it's refreshing to see devs that actually care. Fantasy Life i will give you SO MUCH PLAYTIME if you want it to and I really recommend it if you like grind/collections.

Animal Crossing on steroids. Love the game fun and addicting

Very fun game with lots of content. There are many good things about this game, so I'll talk about the negatives instead. - Crafting jobs all play exactly the same. Which makes leveling feel very repetitive, they are needleslly drawn out with the same exact mini games, I would rather have some of them get combined or change the gameplay for each of them. - Craftings are very annoying. Unskippable mini game cutscenes everytime you craft. There's option to craft without mini games, but then you are not able to save up materials and are not able to craft higher quality items. So you will have to do mini games for crafting most of the time, it gets very repetitive. - Base building is okay, but also very annoying, You cannot move bridges, stairs and houses freely, instead you will have fo talk to the guild and pay money to move each item every single time. Makes it super hard to plan around for your perfect base, it's extremely unintuitive. There are also limits to how many infrastructures you can build, and the limit is just not enough. - Not many interactions for the home and base building. Building is not rewarding because there's barely any incentive to do them. There's no reason to go inside your house at all, so I didn't even bother decorating the home. It's mostly for aesthetic and completly optional. - Fantasy Life has a lot of different gameplay and different ideas, but none of them have any particular depths to them. Combat is satistfying but simplistic, craftings are mind numbingly easy, farming is dissapointingly shallow, I find gathering as the strongest aspect of the game but it's still not very deep. - Every dungeons feel very samey, There are optional deep dungeons which are procedually generated which is understandable, but a lot of actual dungeons are still very plain. There aren't any puzzles or platforming to them, just run from point A to B. That's it. - The end game content are outrageously time consuming to complete. Some materials farming are tedious and require luck to drop. Some people may enjoy the grind but they are actually not so rewarding because the game is so easy anyway, getting the end game equipments are basically number go big. Despite these flaws Fantasy life is a fun game, it's like a theme park game with lots of different gameplay mechanics but yet very simple to just pick up and play.

Long review, sorry! I have mixed feelings on this game. The core gameplay loop--where you run around smacking trees and mineral nodes and packs of roving lizards--is weirdly addictive, and exploration and combat generally feel quite fluid. However, the game's plot is absolutely atrocious and makes little logical sense: it opens with a dragon that fires missiles out of an open chamber in its stomach, for example, before following up with a magical dragon breath attack that seems vastly more powerful than a missile barrage somehow. No, this dragon is not a robot, it's apparently a living, breathing, missile-filled dragon. And this doesn't even get into the "time travel" aspect that leaves far more plot holes than it explains. It also feels strange to me that this game is billed as an RPG when there's next to no ROLE-PLAYING happening here. The end of the game assumes that you've picked up at least the four gathering classes and one of the combat classes, and sort of pushes you into unlocking every crafting class so that regardless of where or how you started, every player character is going to feel the same by the end. Even worse, the first chapter does a lot of talk about "picking your Life" except you can't really masquerade as the town's tailor or blacksmith. No one really wants or uses the items you sell, you can't own a shop in the town square, you don't get bespoke orders beyond the handful of random overworld quests, and these quests are not tailored (heh) to your Life; you get carpentry and cooking quests even if you choose to be an alchemist or a magician. They've also chosen to include characters from previous games in the series, except these prior characters are just kind of dropped into the game world without any rhyme or reason; they don't really act, react, or interact with anything of note, not even when we transport them to our base camp 1000 years into the future; and half of these prior-game characters were made for a now-defunct gacha and are both incredibly overdesigned and further take a crap on the flimsy world building. (One of the gacha-origin characters, for example, is a mercenary who's also a pop idol for some reason, despite the fact that the setting in this game lacks mass media and therefore the very concept of pop idols.) There is good here: again, the base gameplay loop is fun, and getting to design your own island base camp is decent, even if the base camp is kind of out of the way. And, honestly, the level design in the weird alternate reality dragon-shaped continent is good enough to match the gameplay loop (and is much better than the half-baked dungeons you get on the plot-relevant maps) to the the point where I almost wish the game were limited to the dragon-continent. In other words: mixed feelings. This is a game you play if you like the arcadey gathering-combat gameplay loop. This is not a game you play if you want a cohesive, fulfilling plot or complex, memorable characters. One final closing note: as someone who's (obviously) played through until endgame and tried a bit of the late-game grind? Yeah, the post-plot part of this game is terribly grindy and filled to the brim with Skinner boxes. I've included some examples below, read them at your own peril: - Certain bosses are only available in a side-game mode called "treasure groves." Each grove can be one of five types (matching gathering classes + combat) and each type picks exactly one boss at random to be that grove's boss. Except, the grove boss pool includes EVERY boss in the game, so not only is it a 1-in-5 chance to get the type of grove you want, it's another 1-in-10+ chance on TOP of that to get the specific boss you're looking for. - You can "upgrade" your battle companions if you get multiples of their specific character items (which is a mainstay in gacha games and is quite gross to include in an actual, standalone title like this) but those character upgrade items are only obtainable via random chests available in the aforementioned groves. Even worse, you can't choose whose item you get so you might need to grind out a ton of treasure groves to get items to upgrade the one or two characters you actually like. The upgrades are optional and not necessary to complete any content, thankfully, but it's still a gross practice. - Speaking of gacha mechanics, this game includes several actual gacha boxes that (of course) mostly contain crap items but also contain a small number of crafting recipes. To my knowledge these crafting recipes aren't necessary for any quests but it's still absurd to me that you need to use a real-life time gated resource to continuously open dumb gacha boxes if you're a completionist and like having every crafting recipe. - Some crafting recipes needed to make quest items are, however, only available via a once-a-(real-life!)-day random recipe gift from people staying in your base camp. There are at least three quest items that are obtained this way, except there are so many random recipes you might get that in the time I've owned this game, I haven't gotten any of the three recipes I've needed. - There's a special 50th character who can only be obtained after completing the story and requires you to gather 50 of a special item. Except the special item only appears in limited quantity on your base camp island and refreshes once per real-life day. Without any clock manipulation, it would take at least 10 and possibly up to 25 DAYS to unlock her. Yeah, I'm not logging into the game for 25 days after completing the story just to unlock one character, sorry. - The alternate-reality dragon island? You get better events and rewards if you do enough tasks on the island to "level" it up. Except each island section needs to be leveled individually, there are seven levels total, and the island has 14(!!) sections to it so getting everything up to the higher levels where all the fun events spawn is a total slog. I'm not even sure there's much of a point to most of the levels; I only really noticed changes in available enemies and gathering spots on levels 3 and 5, so levels 2, 4, 6, and 7 almost feel completely filler (aside from the increased encounter level.) - This isn't related to grind but this game contains an anti-cheat software (that I've disabled because I didn't plan to use the multiplayer functions) but anti-cheat software is a terrible consumer practice and I would be remiss if I did not mention it.

Fun game. If you want to play casually you can. If you want to go kill monsters, you can. If you want to cut trees and craft, you can. You can play at your own pace. The world is ginormous! Plenty to explore. The story and dialogue is witty and the game doesn't take itself serious. I definitely recommend.

+Addictive gameplay loop with great use of resource gathering +Huge variety of Lives to tackle, locations to explore and goals to work towards +Charming visuals and great soundtrack -Lack of environmental variety and repetitive dungeon designs -Tedious post-game grind relies far too much on RNG spawns The original Fantasy Life was my favourite game on the 3DS. I sunk around 300 hours into it between the base game and the Origin Island DLC. The core of the game was taking on a selection of jobs, or Life roles, and building them up by interacting with the world. There were combat lives which are pretty self explanatory, split between two melee classes and two ranged classes. Gatherer classes such as woodcutter, angler and miner allowed you to collect resources to sell or utilise yourself. Lastly were Artisan classes like Carpenter, Blacksmith and Tailor which allowed you to take collected resources and create equipment for yourself or others. All the Lives complimented each other in a way that every resource had a purpose and fed back into each other, allowing you to be completely self-sufficient if you wanted to. It was essentially The Legend of Zelda meets RuneScape with a sprinkling of Animal Crossing. It was a game I never expected to see a sequel to for many reasons, but it was a pleasant surprise all the same. Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time takes the foundation of the original and greatly expands on it. Many small quality of life changes have been introduced that really smooth out the experience. Each Life can be switched on the fly either through the menu or by interacting with something in the world rather than having to return to your master. Traversal has been expanded with a jump and the ability to scale most walls. The Bounty system got the axe, so completing boss monsters and resource points no longer requires you to slowly haul them back to be evaluated where they could get lost or destroyed along the way and completely lose the reward (seriously, screw the Bounty system), and many more. Companions play a much larger role in this game. You can have upwards of three following you at once, each with their own Life designation that can chip in to help you with combat and resource gathering. Artisan companions can even join you for the crafting minigames to make things even easier. Companions can be collected mostly through a new collectable addition; Strangelings. These are a variety of objects merged with people than need to be restored to their original form. The designs for these are a lot of fun and even often reflect the personalities of the people they become. These companions vary between new characters and familiar faces from the original for a nice bit of fanservice. Each Life functions largely the same as they did in the original game. You're given a list of tasks to complete, be it killing a certain amount of a monster, taking on a boss, or crafting an item with a high enough quality. Completing these tasks and reporting to your Life Master will allow you to level up, granting you access to better gear and better upgrades. Separately to gaining ranks is leveling through generally utilising your Life. Unlike the skill point system seen in the original, Fantasy Life i has a Skill Tree system for each Life, letting you upgrade certain perks to make you more effective and giving you that extra incentive to keep at it. Dungeons in this game also now have certain obstacles blocking off access to areas which can be bypassed when you have a certain Life at a high enough level criteria, or failing that having a companion with you who is. The main game is split into three main sections: --1. MYSTERIA-- Mysteria and its surrounding islands are where the core story takes place. Here you take on all the initial Life paths available to you and gradually unlock more locations and resources. The story in the original game was probably the weakest part of it. Dialogue and characters weren't particularly engaging and the story just kind of ended without much fanfare. The story in The Girl Who Steals Time was a big step up. While nothing amazing, the characters were much more memorable, there was plenty of amusing dialogue, and enough twists and turns that the climax and final boss felt satisfying. My only real gripe is that the environments left a lot to be desired. While there were plenty of beautiful locales, they don't really branch out much beyond plains, forests and beaches. Nothing visually compares to locations from the original game like Al Maajik and its surrounding desert, more elevated locations like Mt Snowpeak or Levitania, or especially anything otherworldly like the Starlight Garden. Dungeons also don't fair much better. Even with some visual variety between there, most of them literally consist of copy-paste rooms awkwardly connected with corridors between them, causing many of them to lack their own identity. --2. THE PAST-- The Past itself is also divided into three different sections in a sense. First is a big dungeon that is regularly returned to throughout the main story as you encounter multiple road blocks. Second is Treasure Groves, randomly generated dungeons which contain all variety of encounters along the way which culminate in a final challenge on the final floor, usually containing unique encounters not seen anywhere else in the game. This can become arduous when going for 100% completion due to all of these being randomly picked with each dungeon generation and having to go through all the prior floors every time before even getting close to the final encounter. Some of these will need to be done multiple times if you're enough of a masochist for that kind of thing. Lastly is your base of operations, a customisible village that very much takes a lot of cues from Animal Crossing New Horizons. You gain access to a staggering amount of decorations and furniture and terraforming is faster and easier than it ever was in ACNH. There's tons of potential there, but I personally didn't spend much time on it since I already sunk over 900 hours into Animal Crossing. --3. GINORMOSIA-- Ginormosia is a huge open-world that's very Breath of the Wild inspired. It's divided into multiple sections with a big diversity of monsters and resource points, many of which you can encounter here earlier than you do in the main story. Each area can also be levelled up after earning a certain amount of area points via resource gathering/felling enemies. Each subsequent level increases the strength of everything found within and even gradually unlocks more valuable spawns, bosses and new treasure chests. Overall this was probably where I spent the most time during the game. With each area at least up to level 5, you can collected practically everything you need to finish all the tasks for maxing out each Life save for a few only encountered in Treasure Groves. There are also challenge shrines spread around the map. Completing the puzzles within will reward you with a good bulk of the Changelings found in the game. This game basically took over my life for around a month. I had a couple of weeks off work and just about every session turned into a battle of "I'll just do this thing, THEN I'll go to bed" which I often failed. Despite a few shortcomings, the core of what made the original Fantasy Life as engrossing as it was is still in here with tons of improvements that I think I could comfortably call this the better game. Even many smaller gripes many had were taken on board and addressed in patches, such as changing the button for reviving companions to not be the same as dodge roll, or allowing you to aim the camera higher up in set locations. I've drawn the line to stop playing for now since I earned all the achievements, but I'll definitely come back if we get more content in the future in the vein of Origin Island from the original game.

They give you that much to do you'll never need to play another game ever again... A perfect marketing strategy

Over 250+ hours of peak gaming, the single-player MMORPG of my dreams (with optional multiplayer), more than worth it at full price. If they add a Minecraft mode DLC like the survey implied was under consideration, I will play little else unless Dragon Quest Builders 3 is announced (never).

I was so excited for this game! I played the original one on the 3DS so I had many expectations. This game is everything I wanted it to be and more. The Fantasy Life series is so good, fun, quirky even cozy! I have played 150 hours so far since the pre-release date. I also bought this game a second time on my Nintendo Switch (solely because I do not have a steam deck, yet) and the cross play is great! This game has so much content and so much to do!!!! Highly recommended! I play with controller as well and find it a lot easier than using mouse and keyboard. Its worth the price!

It is a great game if you enjoy a slow-cozy gameplay, looking for material, some online co-op in grove and ginomoshia. Less rpg, reminds me of Stardew Valley and this genre of games. For all ages.

An absolute delight to find myself lost in, exploring, designing, and overall am having a lot more fun than AC....and I never ever thought another game would be able to occupy that special place in my heart. But nevertheless, a fun, feel-good masterpiece.

Almost like kingdom of amalur or dragon quest x offline. It's a CV long game if you do every quest, achievement and goal in the game. It is addictive and fun. I admit something's could have been better. Like all legendaeies are farmes off 3 base materials in s huge world. They could have done better to invole other things in that world. Its lacking in its city or island builder. Coming off atelier yumi and it's cool house building and decorating, the size to build and variety would been wonders. But 50 buddies to collect, a nice story and lots of recipes to gather and craft. A thumbs up.

Simple, relaxing and enjoyable. The game is like a dessert, with the visual appeal of a pastry or cake, and many distinct but complementary layers: custard, berries and cream. You spend your time watching a fantasy ideal slowly come to fruition as you grind, so you must have the ability to enjoy watching your numbers increase. Your crafting abilities improve and your village gradually starts looking the way you want; your character starts to look impressive; you find favourite party members: you are meanwhile working with just a light attack, heavy attack, charge attacks and a roll in combat. The crafting and gathering minigames are all very similar. If you expect meat, you will be disappointed; you are encouraged instead to rotate between the layers of the cake so that no single element becomes boring in isolation. The game works by giving a constant sense of progress, keeping your eye on the immediately next reward - sidequests, levels, skill unlocks, weapon upgrades - while offering your imagination more distant goals (your perfect town, your final gear). Each recruitable character conveys a sense of personality through their appealing designs and (frequent) voice lines, so everyone is sure to find a favourite party for exploring and battling. Combat is on the shallow side, but the limited multiplayer scenarios are enjoyable nonetheless (e.g. delving into dungeons with simple, repeating boxy layouts or roaming widely to harvest resources in an 'open world' area). It takes a bit too long to unlock special strikes for both combat and harvesting modes (skill trees feel like a gimmick to needlessly delay acquisition of your complete moveset), but the constant rotation between minigame-like Life activities helps to hide the limitations. If combat threatens to become stale, one can quickly find ore to mine, trees to chop, or fish to catch in most environments. Each 'Life' (character class) produces resources necessary for recipes in the others, so you are naturally encouraged to rotate between them, and to alternate between periods of adventure and slower hours of crafting and decorating. It is satisfying to wear or sell what you make; when you perform well at a minigame and craft an excellent item, you may find yourself dealing much more damage, or earning more money when selling. You can really feel the advantage you get from a good crafting round or a rare weapon/tool discovery. After many hours, it becomes a good 'podcast game'. Although the minigames for each Life are nearly identical to each other, the differences in visual flair and sound make them feel somewhat distinct. Crafting high rank items often requires for you to have freed, geared and trained a character of a specific Life to assist you (complete with the ability to swap in and apply their own special moves), and the involvement of these party members increases the aesthetic sense of uniqueness, if not the mechanical sense. The interrelations between all systems - village development, party growth, Life levels and skills - results in the aforementioned sense of constant purpose and progress. Every action increases your future chances in some other domain or scenario. Fantasy Life is not deep, but it's charming, and there are lots of items to produce. Think Animal Crossing: you expand, customize and decorate your own house in a village where you can farm and assign houses to your favourite allies. The land-and-waterscaping functions are streamlined and convenient compared to New Horizons, and it's clear that the developers referenced and improved upon many such ideas liberally. While I felt that the game's combat was too simple for the high-end dungeon exploration and weapon modification/upgrade systems to be necessary, they were a nice touch that sustained a sense of potential. It also seems nonsensical to hold back the final hair and eye styles for so long, but admittedly this is the sort of game that functions because of far-off goals rather than moment-to-moment mechanical mastery. Levels and gear-numbers are far more important than skill in every case. The dungeons become repetitive, but at least this incentivizes multiplayer cooperation. Unlike your normal teammates, real players can help with every gathering node, and this can speed your levelling considerably. Like with Animal Crossing, I am gradually losing interest as I achieve the character appearance and village layout I had been waiting for, but I don't regret my time with Fantasy Life, either.

OVERALL: This game is cute, fun, and combines a lot of different games' mechanics. It has a cute character creation, linear storyline, MMO-esque profession grinding, AC:NH island building mechanics, and a whole open world! Very similar to the OG game, but with a lot of QoL changes. The multiplayer works fine enough for me. In my opinion, the biggest drawback to the game is RNG-based mechanics. MULTIPLAYER: A lot of people have issues with multiplayer, but I personally have not had many issues at all. There is an arbitrary time limit on multiplayer sessions, but I think it works fine; it's just strange. I have not joined any open lobbies and only play with personal friends - this makes communication a lot easier. Crossplay seems to work fine (I'm on PC, friends have been a mix of PC, Switch, and PS). Joining and leaving someone's base camp is so, so much better than something like Animal Crossing. You can leave by talking to certain characters, and it's really seamless. Gifting items is the clunkiest part for me. You can gift one item at a time, but if your friend is in a menu, you cannot gift them the item. Then, it exits you out of the gifting menu completely and you have to go back in and navigate back to the item again. Which is annoying. STORY: At the time of writing this review, I haven't finished the main story yet. It's cute. Nothing groundbreaking. Twists are predictable, but I don't mind. It's a goofy game, and the writing on some dialogue did have me laughing! It's fun. QoL CHANGES: Switching between Lives is immediate and very, very nice. No more having to run back to the Guild Office to switch up your Life. Fast travel is much better - it isn't tied to buying wickedly expensive houses in different towns. Worktables are much more streamlined, but a little overwhelming. You can craft anything from any crafting Life, no matter what worktable you walk up to. Filters help manage which Life items you can view at a certain time, but I rarely use this feature. There are no more Bounties for boss enemies, which could be a drawback if you enjoyed that aspect. I did not, so this is a huge QoL change for me. DRAWBACKS: There are a horrific amount of recipes that are tied entirely to RNG (297!!!!!!), and restricted on a daily basis. Islanders can gift you recipes in return for completing a task, or you can catch them at their worktable in their homes. Regardless, this is difficult to trigger and diabolically annoying. You can also only get one of these per day without changing your system clock. There are also "lootboxes", for lack of a better term, where you can randomly draw recipes and items. I have not engaged with this mechanic, but they are purchasable through a type of resource that is restricted to daily play (unless you change the system clock). I really dislike this mechanic and it is my genuine only main gripe with the game. A good amount of the recipes are called for in NPC requests, and you're left scratching your head wondering where to get the recipe unless you look it up. Monster and Gather drops can be incredibly frustrating due to the respawn timer on gold-level bosses (5 minutes). Sometimes, you won't get any of the drop you were after at all. It hasn't been a huge issue for me personally, but I know my friends had been struggling with it on mining nodes in particular. There are some workarounds for this (making your own gear with Drop Rate +), but that's relatively high-level / late game. You do have the option of buying some drops, but the currency resource is different and not easily farmable. Some enemies are only in a specific dungeon, and it isn't guaranteed if you'll see them at all. HOWEVER, this is really only important if you care about crafting your own super high level gear. You can get through the game just fine, and you can absolutely get through the story without engaging in Treasure Groves at all. More minor complaint: you can only have six villagers living in houses on your island at a time - which is only a little sad because I wish I could have more of my favorites. Half of the returning characters are actually from the mobile game, which I did not play. So a lot of the characters you can recruit were completely unfamiliar to me. Overall, It's a really fun game. I love the grinding. The graphics are cute. I love that they stuck with the Chibi style. Devs are doing a great job keeping up with feedback, and a free DLC is coming in the future. The original on 3DS is one of my favorite games, and this one is too.

While not anything hugely groundbreaking, it is super simple to pick up and play. For those out there that have to do everything, there is a ton of stuff to do. I'm at 132 hours and still have things to finish. Its a wonderful little game that I'd highly recommend to my cozy gamer friends. I only have 2 complaints with the game. 1. Some resources are extremely hard to get in multiple quantities, in particular, drops that only come from Specific Treasure Grove bosses. There are some workarounds to speed things up, but I wish there was an option in Ginormosia. 2. Online is extremely hit or miss. Tons of communication errors just ruin the experience. When you do make it in a lobby, theres a good chance that the host is AFK or will close it down early.

sequel that fixes so many of my issues with the first game - no more sprint cost - easier to switch between lives, no more spending 30000 dosh to respec every time - a quest tab for crafting and more one of my few issues with this game was that the camera wasn't great in one area but they fixed that really soon after launch. :)

Childish Fun with an excellent gameplay system. It can be quite addicting, and from how long i've played it never seems to get dark or too serious. It kind of plays as a casual peaceful fantasy with some fighting and crafting

Literally the love child game of Animal Crossing/Stardew Valley that I was looking for, except it has story. Ew, story. The rest is pretty good though, I'm used to playing grindy games like Runescape for obsessive leveling and armor optimizing in Monster Hunter so it's the perfect game for me :D

Super chill grindy game thats a nice hybrid between Breath of the Wild, Animal Crossing and Rune Factory. Highly recommend to anyone who likes those kind of games.

I have way more hours in this game than its showing because i originally pirated the game. After 20 hrs i ended up buying it because its pretty good. my only issue with the game is that the village building component of the game feels a little under baked. i wish there was activities you could do with your villagers and that moving houses around is a bit annoying since you need to pay to move them.

This is my first Fantasy Life game. I know about this game is pretty big titles on nintendo ds/3ds. for my experience, this game is one of the most fun I had playing this year. the cozy and cute theme of the game with alot of funny narrative is so enjoyable. with the full price tho, I think the content is a bit lacking, should've been like 40-50$. if you like cozy and cute game and this game is on discount, you'll not want to miss this game. Gameplay progression feels really rewarding that you always wanted more. There's 3 type of profession, battle, gatherer and crafter, with 4-5 classes (called Life) each, which interact with each other entrap you to the game progression loop. there's also base building element, but severely needs in QoL updates in many aspects. The story itself is okay, nothing groundbreaking but fun and enjoyable enough. The only complain I have is some of the game mechanics this game have is like F2P mobile game, like real world time gating on bosses / daily login resources, unnecessarily slowing progression, I think because you'll play most of this game solo, with endgame grind which encourage you to play with others, but not mandatory. Some endgame grind like recipe collecting, can took you months to complete, if you don't do any exploits and save scumming, which is easy to do, thus I feel it's not necessary. also easy anti cheat for mostly single player game is annoying.

A lot fun especially when I don't know what else to play. Fantasy life reminds me a lot of Runescape. Just grinding out various skills.

The game gives me good old Zelda game vibes and is fun to play. There is quite a bit to do and I haven't encountered any bugs. The crafting system/mini games are cute and skill development makes them easier. This is one of the positives regarding the companion system. They can assist with crafting skills. The home base has a nice housing system for companions which I haven't seen in many games. You feel like you are building a little community. The negatives I have about the game is that the Co-Op isn't fully fleshed out. You can only play together under certain circumstances and loose access to your advancement when you do. They need to work on that. Also, the companions are a bit slow to react, often attacking with their special moves after the fight is over and when my companion does a group heal, the others don't identify it and simply run away.

Great game — absolutely loved it! I’ve put in about 57 hours so far and finished the main story. The world and life sim elements really pulled me in, and the charm of the series is definitely still here. That said, I wasn’t a fan of the mini-games and quests tied to the crafting classes — they started to feel repetitive after a while and slowed the pacing a bit. Overall though, a very fun experience and well worth playing if you’re a fan of Fantasy Life or life sim RPGs!

If you owned a 3DS you might have heard of the first entry in this series. For those that haven't Fantasy Life is an action RPG life sim game where you take on various "Lives" ranging from your combat classes like Paladin or Mage, classes built to gather resources like woodcutters or fishers, and your crafting classes like blacksmith or alchemist to live out your "Fantasy Life". As someone who likes completing tasks in game, it's a real blast just running around and slowly but surely mastering every life you can. That of course might be the main drawback for some. It is a fairly repetetive game. If you aren't a fan of crafting minigames then you'll probably dislike 6 of the 14 classes featured. But if you're a fan of dungeon crawling with and supporting your friends as well games with sidequests I highly recomend it.

10/10 – Cozy game perfection with depth. Fantasy Life: The Girl Who Steals Time blends Animal Crossing village-building, Zelda: BOTW exploration, crafting minigames, and surprisingly satisfying combat. Tons of Life classes let you play how you want—gather, fight, build, or chill. It includes multiplayer, but it’s a fantastic single-player experience on its own. No stressful farming, just cozy vibes and great QoL. A must-play for fans of the genre.