FANTASY LIFE i: The Girl Who Steals Time

TL;DR: It's baby's first grindathon dungeon crawler RPG. If you like those genres and you don't mind a fairly dumbed down version of all those with a pretty decent crafting minigame, then this game is for you. Long Version: This game isn't a thrill ride or a deep, introspective RPG where choices matter. It's a cozy, relaxed, repetitive, grindy, cute game with mechanical breadth but not depth. [h1]The Class System[/h1] The class system in this game (called "Lives") is wide and shallow, but in a good way. The division of the classes into 3 types -- combat, gathering, and crafting -- is neat, as it encourages players to take one of each. However, it's advantageous to take every gathering and crafting class if playing solo. The leveling is simple. All the class upgrades amount to "number go up." It's a nice way to give the player agency over their progression without adding any mechanical depth. It keeps the game child-friendly. I do wish there was more diversity in the mechanics. [h1]The Mechanics[/h1] It's mindless, but still requires attention. Combat is 80% button-mashing and 20% positioning. I played as the magic class, so my buttons did 5 things: little bolt, big piercing bolt, short-range AoE knockback, a big single-target blast, and a ranged AoE ult. That's fine for a 20-hour linear game, but I played for four times that, so the combat wore thin. There weren't alternate loadouts. The magic system is just "shoot magic projectiles." There are two other spells you can swap to, but switching takes time and neither is better than just killing the enemies faster. The material gathering minigames are the most diverse, but all of them are [olist] [*] Approach resource and press A [*] Position yourself to find its sweet spot [*] Use your four abilities to reduce the resource's HP by a bit, a little, a fair amount, or a lot. [*] Deal overkill damage to double the drop rates [/olist] The fishing game adds a string breaking mechanic, and the farming game gives more creative AoE abilities, but that's it. Leveling up in Woodcutting, Mining, Fishing, and Farming just means you reduce resources' HP faster. It's just combat again. The crafting mini games are where I had the most fun. It's a simple series of inputs with a timer, but it's more interesting than standing next to a target and hitting it. The quality of your product is also affected by the player's skill here. The town building is fine. It's much better once you get a top-down view, and helping villagers is cute. It's a cozy animal crossing style thing that works well with the aesthetic, gathering, and crafting. The dungeon-crawling is laughable. The dungeons are just boxes connected by tunnels. Every room in a dungeon is visible, and every enemy on the same floor is on the map. No surprises, no wrong turns, and little variation. None of them have a unique look except specific rooms in the "Depths" dungeon that you have to interact with for the plot. [h1]The Setting[/h1] The three settings are The Isles of Mysteria 1000 years ago, the Main Isle in the Present, and a giant continent in an alternate universe called Ginormosia. This last one is later tied into the main plot in a weird way. They're cute, simple fantasy settings. Mysteria is where most of the NPCs are and it has the most story. Ginormosia is an open world that borrows a lot of ideas from Breath of the Wild, which is okay, that game's great. However, the "puzzle" shrines are too simple. It has its own version of the Koroks. The Past is where you get to build your town and progress the plot. It has a dungeon that is always full of monsters and resources that you'll eventually need. [h1]The Story[/h1] You and your mentor arrive on an island, and you bring a dragon fossil. The fossil comes to life and takes you back in time. Nobody will talk to you until you "get a life" (choose a class). You do some quests. Then you go to the present, find a hole in the ground, find a crazy lady in the hole who kidnaps your mentor and puts an obstacle in your way that you need a specific NPC to help you clear. Repeat for 40 hours. Oh no! There's a vizier character in the past who is evil. He's been wiping the world clean every 1000 years or something. Now go beat him by exploring the [i]world he crafted within his own mind[/i] which is Ginormosia. So yeah, convoluted, but not complex. A lot of things happen and a lot of vaguely interesting ideas are brought up and never explored. Just follow the main questline and stop to explore when you feel like it. It's the perfect nonsense plot for a kids game. [h1]The Aesthetic[/h1] It's adorable! The outdoor environments are cartoonishly simple yet distinct (despite samey dungeons). The enemies have a decent variety and are all monstrous without being too scary for kids. The characters have a gorgeous diversity of faces, bodies, and outfits. The animations are cute. None of the characters have deep personalities, but they don't need to. It makes it really easy to tell what everybody's "deal" is, especially the ones with punny names. I also love that the dragons have 4 wings. [h1]The Technical mumbo jumbo[/h1] There's a sluggishness to the controls. You can't interrupt actions. You can't cancel an attack with a dodge, you can't cancel working at one crafting station to move to another. You can't back out of a building project without waiting for a text box. I get it. It's part of the chill vibe, and for everything except the combat, that makes some sense. The combat is worse for it, though. It makes sense to not cancel out of things in a game like Dark Souls, but in a cute adventure game, it sucks that I can't get out of the way of an attack because I was twirling after my own attack finished. The random item drop rates are frustrating. There are items needed for late game quests that have a 5% drop rate. Even if you deal enough overkill damage, a 10% drop rate from a creature that spawns every 5 minutes is frustrating. What if you need 10? Best case, that's 50 minutes of farming. Realistically, it's [i]days[/i]. Mobility also feels too slow. The walk speed is good, but the sprint is only 50% faster, and mounts can't be used in dungeons, so walking all the way back out of a dungeon you just cleared feels like even more busywork than the busywork you did on your way in. You have access to a flying, time-traveling skeleton dragon, but you have to walk for 15 minutes to exit a dungeon. [h1]The Political Implications[/h1] [i]Please[/i] take this section with a grain of salt. I have strong opinions about this kind of stuff, but it won't have a real impact on your enjoyment of the game. The whole "lives" thing is weird. Everybody in the setting is only given value if they ascribe to one of the 14 professions acknowledged by the governing royalty. You're shunned for not having a life at the start of the game. Obviously, that's just a means to get the player to engage in the game's class system, but every other adult in the setting has taken up one of the 14 allowable professions. Each life manifests as tedium with goals for promotion. They're all framed in reference to the economy. When you train in a crafting job, one of your first quests is to buy the ingredients, even if you already have them. That framing suggests the only way to participate in the community is by taking one of [i]only fourteen jobs that the kingdom allows[/i]. This isn't important, but it was looming over me the whole game, so I felt it worth mentioning. [h1]Conclusion[/h1] It's a fun, cute, repetitive game that would be perfect for some family game time. It's probably much more bearable if you play in 30-minute bursts instead of hours at a time like I did. The mechanics are varied enough to keep the gameplay loop interesting. The story isn't so complicated that you have to pay a ton of attention to it. It's just a good, wholesome RPG.

Its basically final fantasy online but without the monthly subscription and the online aspect (unless you want to co-op). You can sit back and relax while you chop some wood, go for some mining, or fell enemies with your class of choice. The story was alright in my opinion, nothing phenomenal but certainly not bad. To me the real value was in leveling up the classes and unlocking the best gear, defeating the biggest bosses and mining/chopping the best materials. A game worth its money and definitely worthy of a full recommendation.

PURA DROGAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Erinnert mich sehr an das Spiel was ich immer am 3ds gespielt habe.. Sehr tolles Spiel, nur der Koop ist unzureichend.

Juego completisimo con miles de diferentes tareas a realizar... mi recomendacion es jugar relajado sin grandes objetivos pues pude abrumar tantas posibilidades, no tiene competencia en el sector. Lo compraria sin dudar

Excellent chill mmo-like RPG. Made even better by QoL additions after patches. Nothing overwhelming, everything is pretty easy and polished. Hits that WoW feeling of doing a spot of mining and fishing and fishing and enjoying the vibes.

好...好忙啊

This game became my obsession for a full month, I'll open with that. I instantly got addicted to the characters, the humor and the story. I'm not super super happy with the conclusion but for me it was pretty enjoyable and good anyway. Didn't feel cliche and I loved the aha moment when the title of the game makes sense. Art is cute and chibi. I think that you either like it or you don't. On the bright side, the game is bright and colorful. I usually up the brightness in game but didn't need to do that for this one. The camera angles can be a bit annoying at times but you can usually appreciate the environment very well. I strongly recommend looking off into the horizon in a few of the open areas with bays where you can see land across the water, the backdrop of lower/higher areas, the sky, etc. Sound design is very very good. There's a lot of nice details in the way different things sound, the music is great, it's all very high quality IMO. I never muted music or anything of the sort. Crafting minigames were fun to me. I never used the shortcuts, always crafted myself, and it was a nice break. Combat was simple but I liked it anyway. I played with a shield so I could choose to dodge or parry. There aren't many attacks or combos but I didn't avoid fighting, I still had fun all the way until I left this review. I super super super love the life system and the skill trees. I appreciate that resetting is an option, even though the menuing for it is very slow. The multiplayer is a little bit weird, and you cannot do the story together, but everything else is definitely more enjoyable in multiplayer. Overall, I highly recommend, and even though I thought the priced looked high, I think it's 100% worth it.