Ever since Level-5 shifted from being solely a developer to publishing its own work, it has felt like every original game it created was a sales pitch for some kind of multimedia project. To be fair, that approach worked well for Level-5 on more than one occasion. That success was a double-edged sword, I think. For a while there, Level-5 seemed to be more focused on making its games suitable for such ventures than actually making them great experiences on their own. Rarely poor, but frequently lacking a certain something.
One Level-5 series that somehow dodged that was Fantasy Life. After launching on the Nintendo 3DS in 2012 and getting an improved version that went international a couple of years later, Fantasy Life just sort of sat things out during the Yo-Kai Watch salad era of the publisher. A sequel built for mobile devices eventually stumbled its way out the door in 2018 in Japan and was even available in the West for a few years, but apart from that release, Fantasy Life didn’t seem to have much going on. Its absence always struck me as odd, especially as life simulation games were getting more and more popular. Perhaps it was the meteoric success of Animal Crossing: New Horizons that finally got things rolling for a new Fantasy Life game? Either way, after well over a decade with no home console release, Fantasy Life fans received a new game to dig into.
Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time arrived alongside the Nintendo Switch 2 itself, with a modestly-priced Switch 2 upgrade kicking the Switch version’s framerate, resolution, and load times into more comfortable territory. In some ways, the passage of time between games is clear. This is obviously a much prettier game than the 3DS original, though it shares much of its presentation style. We’ve got a completely new story to enjoy here, with time-traveling shenanigans and lots of weird characters to encounter. There are a bunch of new elements to the gameplay, and plenty of little tweaks and additions to make doing what you need to do that much smoother.
Yet once you get down to the business of playing it, Fantasy Life i will feel very familiar to anyone who played the Nintendo 3DS game. It’s something that would perhaps bother me if the gap between releases was small, but instead I found myself really enjoying the game’s general loop again after such a long time. Is it repetitive? Absolutely. Is it a grind? Yes, it often is. But it’s not an unpleasant example of those things by any means, especially after the first few hours when the game properly opens up. You’ll have to muscle through that initial bit, unfortunately.
At its core, Fantasy Life i is an action-RPG with a whole lot of extra things stapled onto its bones. There’s a story here that you will progress through, complete with experience and gear to accumulate, a world to explore, monsters to thwack, and dungeons to delve into. There are different job classes to use, with this game referring to them as “Lives”. They level up independently, gaining new abilities as they do. Where Fantasy Life i does things a little differently from the average action-RPG is in how its crafting systems manifest themselves. Each crafting field has its own Life to represent it, and you can swap into those and level them up as well. You’ll need materials as well, right? There are Lives for that, too. Those will also need some leveling up.
This could be an absolute mess if done carelessly, but Fantasy Life i keeps things quite simple. If you want to gather, you’ll just automatically change into the appropriate Life. Crafting time? No need to head back to the guild. If you’ve got the skills, you’ve got them. The more you level everything up, the more capable your character becomes all around. That makes it handy for doing what you need to get done, but also for completing the many quests the game throws at you. Just about everything you do in this game will give you experience, and that in turn will grant you the ability to do even more things. Welcome to the loop.
None of the different Lives go all that deep into the weeds. The combat Lives offer a simple system of light and heavy attacks with some basic evasion and countering mechanics to assist you. Mind your stamina, naturally. Gathering and crafting often require a simple mini-game activity to be completed, just basic enough so as not to become overly irritating. Getting around the world maps, particularly to places you’ve been before, is a relatively painless process. Speaking of those maps, everything is extremely well-marked on them. It keeps the process of juggling all of those Lives, quests, and other points of interest breezy.
You’ll also be building up a little town as you go, filling it out with residents you find in various times and places. Sometimes they’re objects when you find them, but you can change them back if you’ve gathered enough of the proper resource. You can get that resource by engaging with everything else in the game, and when you restore those people they will often give you something you need to move the story forward. This too is the loop. Explore the world, complete quests, level up, gather resources to build up your base, unlock the next bit, and repeat. Sometimes you get to ride a camel or a dragon, and we’re never unhappy about that.
There are companions in-game who can tag along with you on your adventures if you feel you need some extra support, but Fantasy Life i also offers multiplayer support both locally and online. It’s quite a bit of fun to play the game with other human players, with the world offering plenty of opportunities to get into trouble. What’s nice is that the game is perfectly fine to play solo if that’s your preference, but it also works really well in multiplayer. It’s sometimes hard to strike that balance, but Fantasy Life i manages it just fine.
Playing Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time is like being handed a big basket of particularly porous bread and a bucket of gravy. It might not be much to look at, and you might wonder how you’re going to deal with all that gravy with just bread at your disposal. Yet every time you plunge a piece of that bread into the gravy, it soaks up so much of the stuff that it begs belief. This is a weird metaphor. What I’m trying to say is that this is a huge game with tons of things to do, none of which taken separately might seem like an especially good time. Yet when you bring it all together, it just works. This is one of the best ways to scratch the life simulation itch on the console so far, and a strong return to form for the Fantasy Life series.
Version Tested: Nintendo Switch 2
Review Copy Provided by Level-5
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