FANTASY LIFE i: The Girl Who Steals Time

It becomes a love hate relationship in the later levels due to time locks and over all grind requirments, but if you dont mind that (and I clearly dont) it's a fun little game

Amazing game!

我只能說 玩起來比看起來好玩多了~

This game lends itself a fair bit to farming/grinding more than raw challenge but it's got a really cute cozy vibe and I very much enjoy relaxing into it, it's been my go-to unwind game for over 170 hours so far.

(Got this game as a gift for participating in a JRPG quiz on a Discord. So glad to have asked this for a prize.) Fantasy Life i: The Girl who Steals Time is a long-awaited sequel from the first Fantasy Life released on the 3DS. Originally intended as a Switch exclusive, they delayed it and have since promoted it on every other console, and I am quite thankful for that. You start out your character creator as a rookie archaeologist at a team dispatched to go to Mysteria Island (name can be changed to player) with only a dragon skeleton as your literal guiding light. As you get closer though, you are antagonized by a big black dragon with missiles and laser that the skeleton dragon awakens and saves you. You are thrown into a different time of the same island, and befriend a girl Rem after saving her from some monsters. Slowly but surely the world opens up, as you are told right away that you can't progress with the story until you get a Life. A Life being a job class system where you can become a fighter with a weapon, an on-field gatherer with a tool, or a crafter where you create items. There is no preference of what life to start, as you can pretty much do all of them (at least that are available; you unlock the Farmer and Painter classes later). Unlike the previous game, this has you instantaneously change jobs on the fly when you unlock them. Which means you can't actually "fight" with your gathering or crafting jobs, for example. You auto-switch to crafting when doing the crafting mini-game, gathering when you're mining a resource (literally if you're a miner), or battle if you're attacking monsters. Incidentally your base "Brand New" job is a battle class even though you don't get a skill tree or weapons for it other than a tree branch, so you're safe even if you don't unlock the fighters first. Everything about Fantasy Life i is like an MMO. You are encouraged to go around doing jobs for Dosh (currency), and unlock new levels for your Lives. Each level up gives you skill points that you can put into your skill tree divided into each Life, giving anything from bonus stats to special skills. Unless stated otherwise, they only affect the specific Life. Some skills are locked by your life rank, which you unlock by turning in specific quests to your Life Master. Telling how many enemies to kill, what item to find or craft, things like that. Most of it is story gated so it's best to clear main story first. The story, by the way, is rather charming. Nothing too deep or complicated, as you have a friend parrot Trip that can only say a few words at a time before he becomes a very vocal side-kick when he wears some brain translating helmet. You quickly decide to go back home to your own time and find Edward (your friend and boss of the whole archaeological team). When you do, through your skeleton dragon (Skelegon)'s special magic, you realize the island you met Rem in the past is now a ruin here, and nothing left but some mysterious ruin. That you decide to delve deeper, only to get locked out by a giant rock by a bratty girl. So you have to go back to Rem's time and find a skilled miner. And then bring him over so you can rescue Edward and go deeper. Only to lose Edward again being blocked off by a giant vegetable. So you have to go back AGAIN... and kinda repeat these beats for the rest of the chapters, haha. Another neat feature for Fantasy Life i: The Girl who Steals Time is island building. You encounter "strangelings" that used to be human but were transformed into inanimate objects like from Beauty and the Beast: the very first Strangeling you find is Kunugi the Carpenter who is stuck as a dresser, and have to find her through a trail of clothes. There is a goddess statue that can turn the strangelings back to normal through flowers, and they reward you by being new residents of the island in present time (even though most if not all of them are from the old Mysteria Kingdom). Each one has a preset Life so they act as party members when exploring, helping with battle, gathering, even crafting so long as it meets their job requirements. A few stranglings are found through the story, but all else are found by exploring Ginomorsia. I actually like this bit because it's the best kind of an open world: very manageable and gives you more of what fun the normal game gives you but with options. You can use mounts pretty much exclusively here as they help make travel time easy when not fast traveling to a new warp point. There are quests all around that reward you with points to increase area levels and nuts to serve as the area currency for rare items given by bear merchants. You can easily find all monsters or rare items here, though getting all parts of Ginomorsia to the highest rank will be very time consuming. I think what I love about this game is that there are so many things to do that give the itch and appeal of an MMO but doesn't charge you extra for it. Boss monsters and mineables have a five-minute cool down timer before you can fight them again. The crafting mini-game for each job is addicting as you slowly but surely get a hang of the button prompts and keep doing it just for that perfect shine for your item. You will fight and mine for loot, then craft that loot at your workbench for a stronger weapon or tool, and then use those for easier more optimal growth until you reach max level. And keep doing it until you get high end gear too. Because even when you beat the main story (as cheesy and silly as it is), you will keep wanting to grind out for that OP build. Especially with the new free DLC that gives you the rouge-like Snoozaland trek, where for 20 minutes you amass a bunch of treasures and items to beat a boss at the end, and then have to cash everything out for points which you can spend on exclusive items. And I haven't even gotten over stuff like Treasure Troves or all the item recipes you can collect. Again, there's a lot to do in Fantasy Life i: The Girl who Steals Time, My only real gripe is that the internet online play keeps disconnecting for some reason (probably because of the anti-cheat software), but at least it allows crossplay between all systems. I will probably keep coming back to this as it doesn't ask for anything more out of me than my free time. I have stayed up quite a few nights just doing all the runs and getting those pesky rare item drops for end-gear, but I say it's worth it. For those that love the same kind of online games that hook you in, I strongly recommend this one, and for the PC/Steam version at that. You can play cooperatively with friends/strangers(/stranglings?) and without paying extra for internet or cosmetics!

The crafting and collecting system is compelling. I'm not finished the game yet, but I hear it only gets better from here. The way it unfolds is very satisfying.

Ein sehr schönes Spiel <3