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Fantasy Life Review for Nintendo 3DS

Fantasy Life Review for Nintendo 3DS

A Charming Life

When people think of life simulations, they often picture games like Animal Crossing or Harvest Moon , which focus on daily chores and repetitive social interactions with local characters. Fantasy Life is not that kind of game. It’s much more of a role-playing game with a few life simulation elements thrown in. The result of this mix is a charming, gentle game about saving the world while mastering one or more character classes, called Lives in the world of Reveria.

As a newbie adventurer come to the town of Castelia, the customizable main character is quickly ushered through the game’s basics, then turned loose upon the world with the option to work on their Life, follow the main storyline, or just wander around doing fetch quests and seeing the sights. The various Lives are focused either on combat, which is a simple real-time affair; gathering, which involves searching the wilderness for resource nodes and performing simple mini-games to exploit them; and crafting, which involves creating everything from swords to stuffed animals via a manufacturing mini-game.

Most of Fantasy Life ‘s activities have a far more structured purpose than you’ll find in the average life sim. The four combat Lives work like most RPG classes, crafting Lives largely create items with a practical rather than a merely cosmetic purpose, and gathering Lives involve collecting raw materials useful for crafting. All of these Lives are highly structured, giving players a list of challenges that can be completed in order to progress towards the next level of Life mastery. This will please players who find traditional life sims to be too aimless, but may annoy life sim fans who prefer a more casual setting.

Thanks to its RPG roots, the adventure in Fantasy Life is far more wide-ranging than that found in most life sims. There are three major cities to explore, full of colorful characters to meet and mini-quests to complete. A plethora of wilderness and dungeon areas invite players to conquer their local beasts, strive to hook their rare fish, or search their depths for magical ore deposits. These areas are diverse and interesting to explore—the cities ooze personality and the wilderness is crammed with goodies and mini-dungeons to find. It’s all packaged nicely in an attractive and consistent visual style. It even boasts a nice 3D effect that doesn’t slow down the frame rate.

Fantasy Life Screenshot

Where Fantasy Life struts its life sim stuff is in its flexibility. You don’t need to play a combat Life to complete the storyline, which involves very little combat. Players are free to practice any single Life or attempt to master all of them. While they complement each other, no particular life is strictly required, as raw materials and other necessary items can be purchased as well as gathered or crafted.

There are downsides to that flexibility, however. The story, sweet and full of adventure as it is, feels rather disconnected from the focus on mastering Lives that primarily drives the gameplay. It also suffers from the common RPG ailment in which the characters are always being told that they’re running out of time to save the world, but the player is allowed to dink around fishing or sewing pretty princess dresses at their leisure. It would have been more logical and more in keeping with the spirit of the game to remove any hint of urgency from the main quest.

Fantasy Life Screenshot

Surprisingly, considering the involvement of beloved composer Nobuo Uematsu, the music design is another low point for Fantasy Life . There are some lovely pieces found in individual story scenes, and the celebratory musical performances that you hear upon mastering a Life are delightful. Sadly, the tracks that form the backdrop of most of the game remind me of the kind of music you hear piped in the background while wandering through the older parts of Disneyland. They’re cute but kind of clunky, often featuring a rather dated um-pah beat. You’re guaranteed to get tired of at least one of them by the end.

A few more issues will hamper players, particularly those who want to focus on a number of different Lives. All the crafting Lives—smithing, cooking, tailoring, alchemy, and carpentry—use the exact same mini-game for the crafting process. It gets very old if you’re leveling up multiple crafts. Switching Lives isn’t as streamlined as it should be, either. You can only switch at the Guild Office in town, and although you can technically gather, craft, and kill without switching Lives, you’ll want to do so starting mid-game because of the advantages you receive for representing the native Life for the job at hand. The game doesn’t always swap equipment along with job changes, so min-maxers who want to create specialized outfits for various Lives will find themselves changing clothes far too often.

Fantasy Life Screenshot

In other areas, however, Fantasy Life gets its design right. There are a ton of travel options, including quick travel, that make it a breeze to get around the world. Inventory management is quite simple and convenient, especially for a game with the mind-boggling amount of items that this game has. Both your own inventory and the storage in your home are quite large, particularly once they’ve been expanded a few times, and you can craft directly using items in your storage. Interacting with characters is a draw rather than a chore, as not one of them is boring. Even fetch quest givers have quirky personalities, and every shopkeeper has a silly joke to tell. The main characters are all loveable in their own ways, and several feel like fast friends by the end of the game.

Fantasy Life contains many rewards for players who take the time to explore its world and dig into its systems. Combat Lives develop powerful special attacks, which they’ll need to take down the powerful boss monsters scattered throughout the world. Gathering Lives discover increasingly fantastical things to dig, chop, or fish up as they venture into the forgotten corners of the world. Crafting classes develop the ability to customize gear with various add-ons and create fun furnishings for the homes that the character is able to purchase in the main cities. The fact that progress is broken down into small, readily available goals means that players can accomplish things in short gameplay sessions but can also be seduced into longer spurts by completing goal after goal.

The charm and the “just one more goal” appeal of Fantasy Life create a mixture that can be fun for short sessions or cause hours to melt away. That kind of flexibility is its strength, and though there are weaknesses as well, they’re overcome by the game’s sheer moxie and broad appeal. The lighthearted characters, accessible story, and variety of activities will appeal to younger and more casual players, while the expansive world and surprisingly deep RPG systems will hook older, more traditional gamers. This is Level-5 at its best, creating attractive, humorous games that are easy to pick up and play but are bursting with optional content that keeps gamers coming back for more. Go get a Life already, it’s a real good time.

RATING OUT OF 5 RATING DESCRIPTION 4.0 Graphics
Attractive, detailed, consistent style paired with a well-done 3D effect. 3.8 Control
Easy to play, but more variety in crafting mini-games would have been nice. 3.0 Music / Sound FX / Voice Acting
There are some great tracks for one-off events, but the music you hear all the time is of questionable quality. 4.5 Play Value
Though the story and gameplay are a bit mismatched, there’s a lot to do and see in this game’s charming world. 4.0 Overall Rating – Great
Not an average. See Rating legend below for a final score breakdown.

Review Rating Legend
0.1 – 1.9 = Avoid 2.5 – 2.9 = Average 3.5 – 3.9 = Good 4.5 – 4.9 = Must Buy
2.0 – 2.4 = Poor 3.0 – 3.4 = Fair 4.0 – 4.4 = Great 5.0 = The Best

Game Features:

  • In the world of Reveria, you get to choose from 12 different jobs, called Life Classes. Each Life helps shape your adventure with its own set of quests and skills, so you’ll want to try a few—or try them all. Since you can easily switch Life Classes during the game, the possibilities are endless.
  • Mysterious Doomstones are causing chaos across Reveria and it’s up to you to save the land from certain, well, doom. But in the meantime, there’s a lot to do. Battle, craft, quest, shop, hunt, cook… or just go fishing. It’s your life, after all.
  • Fight: Explore the areas around town to find new creatures and baddies to fight, and level up as you go. Some enemies will even net you a bounty if you can defeat them. Turn it in to the Bounty Clerk in town for your reward.
  • Gather: You’ve gotta have the right stuff. Travel far and wide, picking up resources as you go. See something you want, but can’t access it? Try a new Life Class to open up new skills, then revisit the area.
  • Craft: Once you have the right materials, you can play fun crafting mini-games and create items to sell or use. Make armor, mix potions, sew fabulous outfits, build furniture… or do it all.
  • Enjoy co-op play and explore the furthest reaches of Reveria with friends, either online or via local wireless. Once you reach a certain point in the game, the multiplayer option will become available and up to two players on your friend list can join your adventure.

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