Fantasy Life i The Girl Who Stole Time
Fantasy life the girl who stole time is the next game in the Fantasy Life series from Level 5, the studio that brought you Professor Layton and Ni No Kuni. The original Fantasy Life game released on 3DS back in 2012. With an RPG levelling system and storyline but life simulation mechanics, Fantasy Life felt like a game you could spend thousands of hours in. Every year for a couple weeks I would get my 3DS back out and dive back into fantasy life and progress one of the life paths a little bit more. Excited as I was for the new release and getting to live in the land of Reveria again, I wasn’t sure what new they could bring when I was already expecting to live the 12 lives and a plot of magic and mystery again like the previous game, but what was going to make it different. Especially in an era where ‘cosy’ games are everywhere and often now feel half baked. Level 5 delivered on the promise laid out but the first game with the growth and added features the gene has developed over the last 13 years.
Twelve Fifteen different lives to live
Fantasy life and the culture in the land of Reveria is built on the idea that everyone has skills and specialties to contribute to their l communities. Paladins and Hunters clearing the area for Woodcutters, who are providing resources for Carpenters, providing tools, furniture and homes to others. In Fantasy Life you can choose one, two or up to fifteen lives to develop skills in. The game relies on you playing at least one ‘Life’ in each category ‘combat’, ‘gathering’, and ‘crafting’. Life Masters are renowned across Reveria, they’re who you learn from and who you can eventually surpass and become a Life ‘Legend’. So there is lots to do for each life,
You start as ‘Brand New’, with a stick for a weapon and an archaeologist on your old world. As you are stuck in Eternia Village you have the option of twelve ne lives to choose from. As the story develops you unlock new lives of Farmer and Artist. These side stories and development in the first game is what kept me coming back over the years to spend a little more time completing quests and challenges. In ‘The girl who stole time’ these lives are more integral to the narrative. It’s a balance of being a jack of all trades or a master of one -previously this has been more up to you, and you could play it that way still but it stalls the story progression if you’re not using the range of skills as you got. The crafting skills could probably be left if you want to focus on some lives to begin with, however, NPCs in the world often ask you for things such as clothing or potions. If you’re someone who likes to upgrade that tools, weapons and armour in RPGs then the crafting lives are the easiest way to access those upgrades.
I need to recognise the quality of life updates that have come with this new series entry. No longer. No longer do you have to go back to the guild office and change your life to make progress in that skills, quest lines. All of the crafting and gathering lives are active at the same time and gain experience as you interact with a specific part of the world, or choose a specific recipe. so there is significantly less back and forth to Masters’ locations, and guild offices. With combat lives, you can now change your life in the menu and it has a shortcut. If you’re playing with a controller to help you pop back and forth to different types of weapons, so you can target enemies that are related to quests more efficiently. This is a huge change and especially as the world of Reveria is quite big, I’m really glad that they’ve made this spot between lives, much more accessible and convenient.
Time Dragon Plot and Town Builder?
I will avoid spoilers best I can, as you can guess from the title, there is time travel involved. I stand by this has been done well. The dragon is connected to time, and whoops you’re in the past as your first plot point, after that the move between the past, present and another realm is at s much or little as you choose outside of when the plot encourages you to dip back and forth it even then it contributes to your skill progression in each life. Each part of time, serves a different purpose. The present is both a part of the plot but also has a large section that is reserved for saving Strangelings. Strangelings are transformed Masters of different lives. Some of them played the 3DS game, you may recognise them. These are people that you can have moved into your ‘ town’ in the present, and team up with when exploring the world across time, to add to your skills during crafting and help you gather materials. It for me after I have this alternate style of life sim game added in, but with the incorporation of farming into the game. It’s quite nice to have a larger homebase that you can decorate and the NPC‘s interact with the world. So if you have a farming space they will farm if you have a crafting table, they will craft I don’t think it needs the terraforming element, but I’m sure players who enjoyed it in other games, such as Animal Crossing, will be pleased to see this element, even if it feels a bit unnecessary to me in the parts of the game that I want to focus on.
The Price – Will you get your money’s worth?
I’ve seen a lot of discussion about the price of new games, games are expensive, so if you’re looking for a game where you’re gonna get hours and hours out of the games content then, this is a game that you can consider spending your money on.
Fantasy Life i, the girl who stole time, could take you maybe 20 or 30 hours to run through the story, but the world has so much to it that you could easily spend 60 or more hours, exploring every nook and cranny and completing every quest. So if you’re worrying about spending £50-£60 or more I can say that you will get your money’s worth. If you’re unsure about the game as a whole, if you enjoy role-playing games, narrative driven games, games that give you the freedom to choose the pace of your experience then this would be a game you’ll enjoy. The game does support cross play and it is available on PC and Home consoles, the cross plane does require you to the game on multiple consoles as is, unfortunately, quite common. If you are a Switch owner and you’re worried about the frame rate and how the game runs on the Nintendo Switch – while it doesn’t look as good as it does on my PC it runs well there’s no lagging and if I hadn’t originally started playing it on my PC, I probably wouldn’t have noticed the small dropping graphical quality.
Fantasy life, I the girl who stole time, it’s a fantastic return from Level 5. it has all the love and creativity that went into the first game and the update of technology has really helped them bring everything they wanted to do to life. The music of some of the areas matches up or has similar tones, which just makes me personally so nostalgic. If I get asked for any life-saving recommendations, I will be giving Fantasy Life as a recommendation to friends and family.
