Game Review: Fantasy Life (3DS)

I had previously written a decently sized article (~1300 words, or 4 doubles spaced pages for the schooling types) for today about the 2014 Level 5 3DS game Fantasy Life, but after looking over the article, I realized that I said a fair amount without covering the game to the extent that I wanted to.  I will use snipits from what I had written, but this article will (hopefully) be much shorter and more concise.  Let's do better this time.

Fantasy Life in a nutshell, is a semi open world high fantasy game set in the world of Reveria, centered on the Kingdom of Castele, where after designing your avatar and selecting one of 12 jobs (referred to in-game as a "Life") you are tasked with saving the planet from prophetically being wiped from existence as "Doomstones" fall from the sky, turning normally passive creatures into aggressive monsters.  On the surface it is pretty standard JRPG fare, but it doesn't take itself too seriously, which is all for the better.

One of the main difficulties I have found in attempting to write an accurate review of Fantasy Life though, is because of the 12 Lives to choose from.  Each Life has its own skills and quests, which do take up a good portion of time not involved with the main storyline.  I had my character Jaquon live as a Blacksmith (mainly because of how much fun I had playing Weapon Shop de Omasse, although I figured that the smithing of the items would not be as intricate) and I only played the introductory quest for the Paladin and Hunter Life, so combined with the main storyline, that is all I know of the game.  And, I did not even finish the Blacksmithing quests since I was unable to find a store to buy the necessary parts for additional smithing of more difficult gear, so I cannot comment on how fulfilling completing the Blacksmith Life was.

As far as the main storyline, I would say that I enjoyed about 75% of it, and the rest I felt was a bit slow.  Granted there was a lot of dialogue here, almost more than I would have expected (which is not a bad thing), but a number of the main quest points involved checking in back at your house, then going back to the area you just left in order to talk to the person you just turned the previous quest into so that you could see how they were doing.  It definitely felt like the game designers wanted the player to explore the world or work at their job/Life before going back to talk to people, but after 20 some odd hours I just wanted to get on with the main quest.  I believe this is because with the Blacksmith job, I had progressed it as far as I was able to (without looking up online for a solution).

One of the highlights for me was the art style, which I discovered was illustrated by Japanese artist Yoshitaka Amano (Final Fantasy, Vampire Hunter D) and was conceived by Takuzuo Nagano, who was also the principal artist for the Professor Layton series.  And, as I mentioned in the MIDI Week Single I posted back in May, Nobuo Uematsu (Final Fantasy, Rad Racer, Terra Battle) composed the soundtrack, which has a large collection of songs that exude the "Let's go on an adventure!" sentiment, which is what this game is when you break it all down.

By the end of the game, I was a little surprised that it ended how it did, but at the same time, how the game ended was very fitting for how the rest of the game played out.  In total, I spent 34 hours 20 minutes playing, with an average playtime of 35 minutes, which I feel is a good representation of how I played the game.  I never found myself settling in and investing hours into the game in a single sitting, I never felt that Fantasy Life needed that kind of an investment.  Playing it in half hour bursts seemed just about right, at least for how I played the game.

Would I recommend Fantasy Life?  Sure, it's a fun, well written game with a really good soundtrack and an unintimidating (sp?) storyline that would be accessible to pretty much anyone who might enjoy an RPG.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
The Good And The Bad Times. . .

P.S.  In my first attempt at this article, I had included the opening cinematic, which shows off both the artistic style, the music and the general feel for the game, but I could not find the perfect way to fit into the body of the article, so here it is for your visual and auditory enjoyment