Fantasy Life Review

Choose from 12 life classes and live the life you want to live in Fantasy Life.  The game is set in the world of Reveria where citizens have to choose which life path they want to follow. All is calm and well in Reveria until one day a Doomstone crashes into the roof of your house. This sets of a chain events that leads to you saving the day and rescuing Reveria from total destruction. Don’t worry you won’t be doing this alone. You will have a helpful little butterfly to guide you alone the way.Unlike The Legend of Zelda this companion is actually helpful and more talkative. She doesn’t repeat the same sentences over and over again. She is also way less annoying.

When you first start the game you have to choose a life. In Fantasy Life classes aren’t called classes they are called life paths. You can choose to be a paladin, mercenary, hunter, angler, cook, alchemist, blacksmith, carpenter, miner, magician, tailor, or a woodcutter. The great thing about the game is that you do not have to create multiple characters in order to choose a different life. You can change your life path at any time during the game.  You can actually master all 12 of them if you choose.  I loved that  and I think all RPG type games need to make it that easy to change classes. The skills you learn in one life class you can take with you if you switch to something else.

Each life class has its own master that you must report to.  Each master assigns different tasks that you must complete for star points. Once you have accumulated enough star points you move up to the next rank. You can even achieve the legend rank if you choose to.  Ranks are different from leveling up. In order to level up your character you need exp. When you do tasks or quests in the game you do get exp. Then when you actually complete it you go to your life master to receive the star points. It is possible to level up quicker than moving up to the next rank.  All together there are 3 types of quests to choose from: challenges, butterfly requests, and other requests. The challenges are the ones you receive from your life master to get star points. The butterfly requests are the ones to help the story progress.  When you complete those ones you get bliss points. When you have enough bliss points you report to the butterfly to get items to use in the game. You can get a new pet, horse, bigger bag, etc.

Other requests are the ones from the various citizens you meet in the game. When you complete them you get dosh or other items you can use such as potions or food. Dosh is what money is called in the game. Luckily getting dosh isn’t hard in the game. Nor is it hard to get a lot of it either. As the game progresses you can unlock players to be in your party. You can also play online with your friends or play solo offline. I love that option because most games nowadays force you to play online. Quests aren’t harder if you play alone either. You can also customize your character in every way. You can even choose facial features. There are tons of outfits and accessories to buy in Fantasy Life as well.

The graphics have a whimsical element to them. It works for the tone of the game. The graphics remind me of Animal Crossing. Cute, simple, and just works for Fantasy life. The various sounds in the game work with the tone but at the same time didn’t blow me away. At the beginning of the game you can choose what kind of voice your character will have. This doesn’t make sense considering your character doesn’t actually talk. None of the characters do. That is one thing I wish Nintendo would change in 3DS games. What I do love is the tutorials explaining what the controls are. It’s extremely annoying when some games expect you to figure out what they are on your own.  They think it makes the game more challenging but it doesn’t.

Fantasy Life is very user-friendly and a game for all ages. It is very addicting, has a lot of content, and fun. Even after you beat the main story there is still tons of stuff left to do in the game. If you choose to master all 12 life classes you will have about 100 hours or more of game time locked in. Fantasy Life is definitely a welcome change to the whole RPG genre.Fantasy Life has done what so few games in the genre have failed to do. It’s a mixture of Animal Crossing, Dragon Quest, and life sim rolled into one game.  I found very few faults with this game. I was hooked the instant I started playing .

REVIEW CODE: A complimentary Nintendo 3DS code was provided to Brash Games for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to editor@brashgames.co.uk.