As a Fantasy Life newbie who’s only ever dabbled a little in the 2014 3DS release, Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time seemed like a huge upgrade over its predecessor in every way imaginable. This, I thought, would be the perfect chance for me to finally see what this series has to offer. I went in expecting a carefree, whimsical RPG with multiple classes to choose from. What I got instead was an evil, life-consuming grind fest that got its hooks into my tiny lizard brain and refuses to let go. In the best way, of course.
Let me back up a little. Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time is part RPG, part cozy life sim. The setup is simple. You’re an explorer who one day finds herself thrust into the past and wakes up on an island full of colorful NPCs and various pursuits to explore. There’s a bone dragon (lovingly named Skelegon) and a cute blue bird with a metal helmet named Trip that follow you around, and you’re tasked with finding a way back to your own time period.
All that soon goes out the window, though, because once you start unlocking some of ’em Lives, it’s all over for you. Lives are Fantasy Life i‘s equivalent of classes. There are combat-focused Lives like Paladin, Mercenary, and Magician, then there are gathering-focused Lives like Woodcutter and Miner. There are also a handful of crafting Lives like the Blacksmith and Tailor.
Instead of picking just one and rolling with it, though, Fantasy Life i encourages you to play around with all the tools it offers you. After all, what’s the point of chopping down all those trees if you’re aren’t gonna use them to craft brand new furnishings for your house? Oh yes, there is a house. And yes, you can recruit Islanders to your very own island, build homes for them, decorate your own house and the island, Animal Crossing-style.
Most of the Islanders you’ll get naturally just by playing through the main story. You’ll first encounter them as Strangelings, which are basically inanimate objects that can talk. For instance, Kunugi is the first Strangeling you can find, and she’s a dresser with human features and hair. It’s actually kinda freaky. Anyway, you’ll be able to take these Strangelings back with you to the island, pray to a goddess statue and offer it 100 Celestia’s Gifts, then bada-bing bada-boom! They’re back to human form! They can now live in a house on your island, and they can also join your party and go questing with you.
Islanders are particularly useful outside of combat too. Using Kunugi as an example once again, she’s a Carpenter, which means she can give you a bit of a stat boost whenever you’re crafting as a Carpenter. The next Islander you get — Duglas — is a Miner. And as you might’ve already guessed, he helps you mine deposits in the open-world.
Life sim fans will find a lot to love here. There are so many building and terraforming features that get unlocked as you play, it almost puts Animal Crossing: New Horizons to shame. I will say, though, that Fantasy Life i does lose out to Animal Crossing in the customization department. I found myself wishing there were more furniture and design options to play around with, but most players should be plenty happy with what’s on offer here.
For me, the real appeal of Fantasy Life i lies in the leveling system. Every Life needs to be leveled up individually, and considering that there are 16 Lives… Yeah, that’s a lot of grinding.
The fantastic thing, though, is that every level you gain feels like such a huge dopamine hit. Watching your level bar fill it up with that satisfying ‘ding’ sound brings me such joy that I can’t even describe. Leveling up means earning skill points, which means strengthening that Life even further, which means being able to access new resources, which means new furniture and items. As someone who’s always loved loot-based games, I certainly wasn’t expecting to find that same kind of rush in Fantasy Life i, but there it is. That glorious upward-pointing green arrow that tells me I’m about to equip something better than what I currently have. Those bars filling up that let me know I’m about to get a new recipe for crafting.
Everything you do in Fantasy Life i feels rewarding and synergistic. There are no wasted actions in this game because every item you collect or craft serves some sort of purpose, whether it’s leveling you up even further, or expanding the number of tools and furniture you have access to.
It got to a point where I eventually put the main story on pause because the grind was just so compelling. It doesn’t help that there’s a giant explorable open-world in the form of Ginormosia which, as its name suggests, is ginormous. If you’re anything like me, you’ll find yourself spending hours on end just roaming Ginormosia looking for new enemies to kill and resources to farm. The more you do in any given region of Ginormosia, the more area points you rack up. Eventually, with enough points, you can rank up the area so that the enemies and node levels are higher, offering more rewards for your efforts.
Alas, because this is a review and I must do my best to give you a holistic view of this game’s offerings, including its shortcomings, I have to admit that Fantasy Life i isn’t, in fact, a perfect game. While the gathering and crafting Lives are all great, the combat is easily its biggest weakness. I spent most of my time playing as a Mercenary, which specializes in the Greatsword. I have no problem with a slower play style and being more methodical with my attacks, but combat and movement can feel generally pretty floaty in Fantasy Life i, which makes it difficult to be precise.
Oftentimes, I found myself trying to dodge away from an enemy attack in a specific direction, only to veer slightly off-course at another angle. It’s a very small complaint that doesn’t always affect you, but it can be an annoyance especially for slower Lives where precision is everything.
Overall I wasn’t a huge fan of the story either, though I knew full well what I was getting myself into. While the mascot characters like Trip and Cooke were cute enough, I often found myself hurriedly skipping through dialogue just to get to the action. The story isn’t likely to impress you, but you know what? It doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things.
It’s clear that Level-5 has learned a lot from the original release and knows its audience well. As a result, Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time is a straight upgrade and improvement over everything its predecessor did the first time around. With nearly a hundred hours’ worth of content to get through, RPG and life sim fans will find themselves completely hooked. Especially if you’re as lizard-brained as I am.
You can check out our review policy here. Reviewed on Switch.
