FANTASY LIFE I: The Girl Who Steals Time Review – Explorers Of Time

It’s not often that I get this excited for a new title from a developer. But when LEVEL-5 had announced that FANTASY LIFE was getting a new sequel console title, my expectations were high, especially after I believed that they would forever put this franchise to sleep, after Fantasy Life ONLINE did so poorly both in Japan and in the West.

But now, after multiple delays, Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time is finally a reality. So let’s see if it can live up to expectations, and position itself as one of the titles that were announced during this newfound renaissance era of LEVEL-5. Are they truly back? Or are they sadly not back?

A Journey Through Time

Starting things off, you will begin by creating your very own avatar, and begin your adventure as a Professor Edward’s archeology assistant. After finding the remains of a bone dragon fossil, a mysterious gem begins to shine a light in a given direction. Naturally, you curiously head over to where it is pointing, and lo and behold, an undiscovered island, previously not seen in any charter!

Unfortunately, it doesn’t take long until a powerful dragon starts to shoot its missiles into your ship, but before you all sink, the bone dragon fossil suddenly comes to life, and opens a gate to somewhere, and now you have to find a way to go back to your own world. Right off the bat, you might think that sounds like a silly story, and well, I’m not going to sugarcoat it: It is. You’re not going to find a story full of harrowing thrills, action, and plot twists.

Instead, Fantasy Life happily hums along with a story that doesn’t try to be the next, if you’ll excuse the use of this word, “next peak”. Honestly, that’s really all I could ask for. Perhaps the only thing that is a bit of a shame is that there is no full voice acting, only partial, where the characters you meet will occasionally say single words, but not more than maybe a sentence at times. This is sort of a shame, especially given that we’re no longer confined to the limitations of the Nintendo 3DS. Still, it’s better than having none, really.

Get a Life, Don’t be Idle

In Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time, you have 14 professions, and each of them is called a “Life”. You can divide those into three main categories: Crafting, Gathering and Combat. Upon getting your license at the Guild, you’ll be prompted to learn more about your Life through the Life Master, which will give you a small tutorial quest on how it works.

For this game, two new Lifes have been added: The Farming Life and the Artist Life, which are locked until you progress further in the Main Story. Each of the Lives have “challenge missions”, which vary per class, but are not very hard to understand: Gatherers will require you to find and collect a certain number of items, Crafters will have missions associated with crafting certain recipes, and Combat classes will pretty much have a list of enemies to defeat. Whichever Life you choose to pursue is completely up to you, and this freedom is one of the game’s major charms.

Exploring a Gigantic World

Besides its main story, Fantasy Life i also provides the player with a ginormous (pun intended) open-world for you to explore, called the continent of Ginormosia. Scattered across this massive field are several Shrines, Towers, and each area has their own sudden challenges to complete, such as “cut down all the trees within the denoted area”, or “defeat all the enemies”. The more you explore, the more Area EXP you can obtain.

By taking those EXP points and spending them at the Googly Towers, you are able to increase the level of enemies, but also the quality of items that can be gathered from that specific part of the map. As for Shrines, they each contain a challenge, and successfully clearing that will give you a strange talking object known as a Strangeling. I’ll explain what they are soon.

In addition to this, there are several enemy settlements you can help out, wandering merchants you can buy things from, and even legendary recipes to find. There’s just a lot you can do in Ginormosia, and although it is not required for the main story, there is a nice reward waiting for those who decide to clear it. I won’t spoil what exactly it is, of course, but there’s a lot for you to explore, and I wholly recommend you just take your time, even if you have to aimlessly wander and find something cool to do.

Your Very Own Island

And now we have the third major element of Fantasy Life i, which is the Base Camp island. After progressing through the story, you’re given this huge uninhabited island, and with the help of Hagram, the Building Golem, you’re able to customize it however you want. That’s right, even terraforming is possible, and while you’re largely limited at the beginning, you’ll soon be able to do much more with your island as you progress through the story. The terraforming system is very straightforward and easy to grasp, and your imagination is the limit.

This is also where the Strangelings I’ve mentioned previously come into play. Scattered across the island, you’ll find blue flowers called Celestia’s Gifts, which can be offered to the Goddess Statue located to the north of the island to return these objects into their human forms. Once you do so, the person in question will join your Island as a Buddy. There are many ways a Buddy can be beneficial to your adventure, and each of them is specialized in a different Life.

For instance, Gatherer Buddies that you place in your party can help you mine or cut down trees. Crafter buddies can provide an extra boost to your crafting stats, allowing you to craft recipes with a higher quality and even provide buffs of their own. And finally, Combat buddies are self-explanatory: once you begin attacking an enemy, they’ll follow suit with their own attacks. You can even move them into houses you build on your Island and they’ll provide you with some side quests.

Multiplayer, But Not so Much

I might’ve been gushing out about the game so far, but it’s definitely not perfect. Perhaps the biggest fault of it has to be the Multiplayer. During the announcement trailer, LEVEL-5 said that the “i” in “Fantasy Life i” stood for “Internet”, meaning the game is better experienced together with friends. In practice though, the Multiplayer system is just not good.

Once you’ve unlocked Multiplayer, you can open up your island for players to visit, and you can proceed to explore the map together. The catch? You’re limited to 30 or 60 minutes of gameplay while under this. As I was writing this review, LEVEL-5 corrected some of these issues with the Version 1.1.3 patch, which added the ability for you to progress quests even while Multiplayer was active, but the 60-minute limitation is still present, and it doesn’t make any sense to me as to why the developers decided on this.

It does seem like they are closely listening. In fact, the title screen mentions a Customer Survey where players can make their voice heard and talk about many of the game’s features that they would like to see an improvement. It’s reassuring that the developers are choosing to keep their ears to the ground, and ensure that the game is to everyone’s liking.

A Game You Should Not Miss

Every hour I spent playing Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time just made me smile and grin. I am so glad that Akihiro Hino, LEVEL-5’s CEO, saw fit to take over the helm and finish development of this game. I cannot recommend this game enough, especially if you’ve already played or heard about the prequel on the Nintendo 3DS. It’s seriously easy to lose track of time with how many things you can do in the game, even after you complete the main story.

The only problem I have with the game is quite honestly the Multiplayer. But it seems that the developers are with their ears to the ground, as I’ve seen lots of feedback being given through their customer survey and on social media, but even then, this is a polished RPG experience that I’m glad that has been made a reality, and not one that was sentenced to the graveyard of cancellations, if you get what I mean.