Your love, your life.
The best way I can describe Fantasy Life—and believe me, it is not an easy task—is to compare it to three other, very different games. Fantasy Life is like a cross between Animal Crossing, Harvest Moon, and Diablo. It is Animal Crossing in the sense that you spend much of your time collecting, buying, and selling items. It is Harvest Moon in the sense that you spend much of your time crafting, creating, and trading items with others. And it is Diablo in the sense that you spend much of your time collecting loot and destroying every single enemy that comes into your path. Yet, depending on how you play Fantasy Life, you can spend much of your time doing any of these things, or just one of them, or all of them at the same time. That is what makes Fantasy Life so great.
The game begins by letting you choose a life. There are twelve lives to choose from, which range from your typical combat-centric lives (paladin, mercenary, hunter, magician), to collection-centric lives (miner, woodcutter, angler), to crafting-centric lives (blacksmith, carpenter, tailor, alchemist, cook). Which life you choose in the beginning does not ultimately matter how you end up experiencing the game, because after the initial chapter, you are free to choose as many additional lives as you please. Perhaps mining no longer interests you and you would like to become a cook. Or maybe swords just are not your thing and you prefer a bow and arrow. Each life has its own benefits, and choosing a new life allows you to keep the benefits of the old one, which makes switching up your character’s life all the more appealing.
Interestingly, which life you choose will not affect how the story plays out. The game consists of multiple story quests that primarily involve your character exploring the game’s world and meeting its inhabitants. Rarely will you be forced into a combat situation, and when one of these encounters does arise, there is always an option to avoid it. Thus, you can, if you so choose, play through and complete Fantasy Life without choosing a combat-centric life, and still experience the game’s story without to its full extent. However, doing so would take much away from what Fantasy Life is all about, and if you are playing this game for its story—not to say that the story is not worth going through or anything (I quite enjoyed it myself)—you are most certainly cutting out much of what this game has to offer.
You see, while which life you choose does not directly affect the story, it does affect the way you play. Obviously, not choosing a combat-centric life would prevent you from engaging in combat with the various wildlife around the game’s world, which would likely limit how much exploring you end up doing. Same goes with the other types of lives, too; if you decide to choose one over the other, then you miss out on significant chunks of the game. Each life also has its own set of optional challenges that allow you to level up your character more quickly, and depending on which life you want to focus on, you may choose to upgrade your character in such a way that will benefit the specific life you chose. Of course, you have the option to have a very balanced character that is decent at everything, but that is, again, up to you.
In fact, Fantasy Life can be summed up as a game about choices. You can choose to play the game in whatever way you like. You could, for example, forego the idea of exploring and instead focus on collecting and crafting items. Thankfully, the world of Reveria, in which the game takes place, is rather large, and enough to keep you going for several hours doing all sorts of different tasks. The game is littered with non-player characters who will occasionally request that you complete a side-quest for them. There are hundreds of these quests, which range from defeating X number of enemies to crafting a really nice set of glasses. Each character has their own distinct personalities that make them memorable, though that comes at the cost of having far too much dialog for my liking. I found myself mashing the A button over and over again just to get the conversation over with so I can get on with the dozens of quests that I have lined up to complete. That is not to say that the dialog is uninteresting; the localization is very well-done—it is witty, full of character, and repeatedly makes fun of traditional RPG tropes. But there is just so much of it that I could not help but skip through it all.
Overall, I spent about 40 hours on Fantasy Life, and not once did I feel tired of it. There is simply so much to do, and every new area I enter is packed with surprises. The world of Reveria feels alive, and it keeps you busy with its numerous side-quests and challenges. And the best part is, no matter which life you end up choosing—just one, or all of them—the game is still a wholly enjoyable experience, with hundreds of quests, challenges, areas to explore, and people to meet. If you want a great action-adventure that fits perfectly with your portable lifestyle, look no further; Fantasy Life is the game for you.
Author's Note: Look, a new review graphic! I thought I'd change things up by applying what I have learned about HTML, CSS, and Bootstrap these past few weeks. I hope you like it!
