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Fantasy Life is a game like no other I have played before; I have never had my hands on a game that has had a ton of choices without getting locked into that said choice. Fantasy Life is cute, charming and will keep you playing for many hours on end; I found myself playing much longer than anticipated just from how fun and addicting it was.
Gameplay:
What Fantasy Life excels at is that it offers you a ton of options. Even from the beginning of the game you are given the option of how you want your avatar to look like. You can choose from gender, body type, skin tone, appearance of eyes, nose, etc. Creating your avatar was a lot like the Mii creator; while there were plenty of options you could only customize it with the set options that were given. After choosing what your avatar looks like you get to choose a “Life” aka the world’s class system. What’s great about this is that you can easily and quickly change your life. You’re not tied down to one set Life per character; I found myself switching Lives very often. There are a total of 12 Lives you can choose from: paladin, mercenary, hunter, wizard, miner, woodcutter, angler, alchemist, carpenter, blacksmith, cook, and tailor. Each life offers its own set of skills and you complete challenges to increase your rank. With each rank the challenges get harder to complete; ie ingredients to cook with will be harder to find, creatures will be a lot tougher to beat, certain fish will be harder to catch, etc. Like it was previously said this is where Fantasy Life truly excels. You aren’t locked into one life class and you can freely switch whenever you want; even within the first hour of gameplay.
The main story of Fantasy Life is mediocre; I found myself trying to complete my Life missions or fulfilling the townsfolk wishes more so than completing the main story line. This was probably due to slow pacing of the game. In the beginning they overwhelm you with tutorials. It seems that every time you have free reign to do something you are bombarded with another set of tutorials. This gets very frustrating when you just want to get going with the game and explore. Some of the tutorials are very useful, but a good amount could have been left out.
The Verdict:
Once you get past all of the tutorials the game is well worth it. The numerous quests and freedom you are allowed will keep you entertained for hours on end. This is one endearing game; you’ll spend countless hours searching for ingredients, cooking up a delicious meal, concocting magical spells, fighting beasts and countless other mini games to get you to the rank of master. The story suffers from poor pacing, but everything else that is available numerously outweighs the game’s cons. This game is available exclusively for the Nintendo 3DS and it is currently priced at $39.99 and is very well worth it.
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