A Wonderful Waste of Time
User Rating: 8 | Fantasy Life 3DS
Fantasy Life is a dumb game. It's repetitive, simple and lacking in the things that make for an epic experience. The above statement applies to ppretty much every "casual" game on the market. If you're the type of person who's never wasted time playing games like Tetris, Angry Birds, The Sims, or Farmville, then read no further, as this game probably isn't for you. If you're the type of person who's wasted entire evenings playing Harvest Moon, or Animal Crossing, you may want to give this a try. Fantasy Life is essentially what you would get if Animal Crossing and Diablo had a kid together and that kid loved Zelda. It's a simple, open-world game, that let's you do everything at your own pace. The premise is, like everything else in this game, simple. You're the new guy in town. Silent protagonist, custom avatar extraordinaire. You start off living in an attic-room and must make your way through the game mastering one, or many jobs-referred to as Lives. These consists of everything from Paladins, to Carpenters, to Blacksmiths. You're not tied down to any one Life. You can choose freely between them all at any point. So you can go mine some ore as a miner, switch to a blacksmith and use that ore to forge armor and weapons, then go cut down trees as a woodcutter, switch on over to a carpenter and craft furniture for your house to rest up before exploring a new dangerous area as a paladin fully equipped with all the weapons and armor you created as a blacksmith. This all sounds like a lot of work, but this game handles the workload with fun, easy minigames and quests galore. It quickly becomes addicting to engage in all these activities, especially if there's a bigger goal in sight, such as reaching a new area, or buying a bigger house and furnishing it. The story is pretty bland and entirely forgettable, but it is there. It mainly serves as a means to keep things moving along and to introduce certain characters. The majority of your time will be spent leveling and completing quests. There are a ton of quests and engaging in any or your jobs earns you xp to level with. Combat, something that can theoretically be altogether avoided, is a pretty basic affair of action-based attacks. This and exploration are where the game resembles Diablo to me. Unlike Diablo however, the art direction and character design are anything but dark and forbidding. In true Level-5 fashion, the characters are all very cartoon-like and filled with cheesy, self-aware, hilarity. This game knows it's corny and is never afraid to poke fun at itself for it. All the cliches from rpg's past make a cameo here and the game makes sure you know it's ware of it. Level-5 has been one of my favorite developers, ever since I layed eyes on Dark Cloud. It's good to know that these guys are staying consistant with their quality. They've always like to experiment and have been fairly successful to date. Even titles like White Knight Chronicles have managed to innovate, while delivering an entertaining experience. Fantasy Life is no exception. Though it plays as a much more casual experience than I'm used to from these guys, it offers an addicting, lengthy game that is great the whole way through. It's not for everyone by any means. If you've never played Harvest Moon or Animal Crossing, you'll definitely want to give this rental first, to make sure it's the kind of game you're willingto shell outt $40 for. Fans of those two games should find plenty to waste away the hours with though.
