What a remarkably fun and cute little game, I enjoyed this a lot more than I thought I would. Its strength is absolutely in its delightful characters. I do wish the game incentivized pursuing Lives (Lifes?) more in the story/main quest, besides just mentioning they exist.. It's a shame that the main appeal of various little jobs doesn't actually really come up in the story .. And the story itself is quite simple and predictable, but has some sweet moments and nice themes. Looking forward to the sequel!

Is this review extremely biased and clouded by a strong sense of nostalgia? Yes, and I don't care.

Fantasy Life is a game that I am consistently able to go back to and sink in hundreds of hours into, to me this is what I think animal crossing is for many people. While not really being a life simulator, it has many elements of a life sim game while combing some action adventure rpg elements which I really enjoy as I am not whole heartedly a big fan of full life sim games. Combined with its much more laid back tone and fun art style it really makes this game extremely easy to enjoy and fall in love with.

The life system is one that I adore, and while it doesn't fully alter the game, it allows your character to unlock new skills that can help advance your other lives alongside being able to meet new characters and experience some unique stories. Not only that but as a completionist who tries to do as much content in games, the lives added so much content for me to get done and it felt extremely satisfying to get each life to max rank.

Yes its gameplay elements are quite simple, but despite that I still found it enjoyable and still allows some basic forms of skill expression that can allow you to punch above your weight class at the time. The combat is pretty basic of your normal attack, a charge attack, and dodging but felt active enough to require me to focus on it rather than button mashing through it. On top of that as you rank up in your combat classes you unlock different combos that can be done with different button combos and timings which allowed for some different move sets.

The crafting lives were mostly different minigames of combinations of mashing a button, timing a button properly, and moving the circle pad in a certain motion. The gathering classes felt the most secondary as their actual activity wasn't the most interesting and skills while being extremely convenient to have were not really required as many of the crafting materials needed you could just buy, unlike crafting which had craftable exclusive items. However despite that the classes were very efficient to have to progress all other lives, and it still felt nice to find some new ore when exploring or doing another quest and being able to mine it all.

While the story may not be anything special or ground breaking, and the game might have a mountain of dialogue, I found all the characters, both major and minor to all be very charming and enjoyable . Fantasy Life is a game that isn't made to be taken seriously, and made to be played while sitting back and just enjoying your time within the world, and succeeds in delivering a very enjoyable, charming, and one of my favorite gaming experiences.