Fantasy Life is a video game developed by Level 5 studios, infamous for their Professor Layton series, Dark Chronicle and associated with Studio Ghibli to a lesser extent. You may also know them for Dark Cloud, if you're the type of person who spends a little bit too much time indoors. (Not judging, I hate going outside as well. The graphics are poor and the AI is rubbish.)
In this game, you are a person who wakes up one day and your mum tells you to go and get a job and stay out of her attic. So you do.
The rest of the game follows an overarching story which is your usual run-of-the-mill "asteroids are falling and turning monsters into evil things and there's an evil person over there very far away and we should probably do something about it."story.
When I say we, I am referring to the butterfly you befriend immediately at the beginning of the story called Flutter, who is actually a magical goddess in disguise, something poorly hinted at during the entire story. When I say poorly hinted, Flutter basically openly tells you that she is this being by being all defensive whenever anyone asks why she can talk or why she glows and seems all magic and stuff.
It's a very kid friendly story, almost to the point of ridiculousness. There's a part where a group of pirates openly assault you and after you've warded them away, they threaten to torture you if you ever cross them again.... by tickling you.
I mean, I'm not saying the story should have been balls-to-the-wall offensive, but this game feels sometimes as if it's trying to veer away from anything controversial at all, whilst we journey from a forest full of simple folk to a port town full of pirates to a desert town full of arabian magicians.
That said, there are some moments of accidental comedy gold such as a man threatening you/ rewarding you with "mega aids"
Only dampened by sad and tired internet memes that should have been retired five months ago.
Now don't you dare tell me that was accidental.
Gameplay wise, Fantasy Life is fun. I've put way over thirty hours into it and yet I'm apparently nowhere close to finishing the story. Welcome to JRPG's, where the video games take at least a year to complete.
Japan, I salute you, although mostly out of worry than respect.
I mean, I've seen the videos man.
Nasty.
....
So there are 12 different jobs or "lives" to master, 4 combat and 8 crafting.
You can use ingredients from the world around you to make various things in various lives via our old favourite "mashing buttons sequentially like in a game of "Bop It!"
Be as original as you want with your crafting system, Japan, I am not going to stop you.
In it's defence, every single one of the thousands of recipes you can "master", allowing you to produce items in higher quantities and doing something quickly makes it a higher quality. So it's not totally old.
The graphics, however, are. This is because the game is two years old and has only just come out in the UK due to localisation. In addition, the full game in Japan is not the full game in the UK and USA, because a bit of it has been cut off for DLC.
If you were to ask a dev why, they would probably say it's "Because you are filthy Western pigs and do not deserve anything except a yearly Call of Duty." whilst sipping something strong and alcoholic rather bitterly.
However, gameplay is everything. You gain exp, you gain levels, you allocate points into stats, you get high enough in one combat job/life, you can perform combos. You get high enough in one crafting life, you learn special techniques to make things faster. It's all there.
And it's surprisingly fluid and enjoyable. You can get exp by mining/cutting down trees/killing enemies/crafting items/fishing and just about doing anything, so it doesn't feel as "grindy" as other games or as tedious.
Finally, it has another system whereby you can do certain challenges in order to unlock different areas of the game/different modes of transportation such as horses/turtles/camels for each respective area/the choice to play different in-game music in your in-game house/the ability to dye furniture/the ability to get a new haircut/more storage/more backpack space. The list goes on still.
Oh and the bosses are great because they're not just limited to combat bosses. there are fishing bosses, mining bosses, woodcutting bosses which are actually damn harder than you'd think.
Generally, the game has been almost universally 7/10'ed due to its extreme length, over complex mechanics (considering gaming over here) and the fact that it feels just too jam packed.
But I have a lot of time on my hands, so for me it's a solid winner.
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