Fantasy Life for the Nintendo 3DS is a life worth living (review)

Where can I start with Fantasy Life? Level-5’s latest RPG is so much more than just a roleplaying adventure.

A time sink for days to come, Fantasy Life for the Nintendo 3DS allows players to take up a myriad of jobs, or Lifes, to progress through the vast, fictional world of Reveria. You can choose from combat classes like paladin, mercenary, and hunter, to crafters or gatherers like woodcutter and carpenter, and even to the arcane arts, like alchemy and wizardry. There are a total of 12 lives in the game that you can switch to-and-from at will.

Each Life provides you with unique quests, and on top of those you get more from non-player characters (NPCs) and your trusty Butterfly companion. There’s a central storyline that ties everything together, and this is jogged along by Butterfly, who is integral to the game’s plot. It’s like Animal Crossing and Rune Factory, but bigger, better, and more fulfilling.

In summary, you’re a typical silent protagonist who has just moved into a new town, and who teams up with Butterfly to explore the world of Reveria. Of course, you’ve got a big part to play in saving the world. I won’t go further into details so as to not spoil the game, but the game’s main story is well-paced, compelling, and filled with amazingly-developed characters. Fantasy Life’s inhabitants are neither one-liner NPCs nor overwhelmingly stereotypical; they’re all characterized by the humor and wit developer Level-5 is known for.

Apart from this central storyline, which moves along in chapters that you must complete in order to progress through the world, Fantasy Life is otherwise very open-ended. If you so choose, you can linger in the starting town of Castele and hop from Life to Life until you’ve sunk a full 20 hours in the game. Or you can hurry along to the desert town of Al Maajik with one or three Lives under your belt.

There’s always something to do in the game, be it fish up new monstrosities from the deep, chop down exquisite trees, craft furniture or sew clothes, or even the simulation game player’s favorite: shaking trees for fruit. If you’re bored with gathering stuff, you can also go hunting. There’s even a mini combo system in Fantasy Life for combat classes, where tapping the A button at a specific tempo forms chain attacks. And of course, there are rare world bosses with equally rare drops for you to pursue.

Once you finish the main story, there’s an option to purchase DLC, which opens up Origin Island. This new area provides its own quests, new sorts of pets, a new home, a new ally system, pretty much a new everything you could want for Fantasy Life.

The game does lack some social simulation features, like the ability to woo NPCs and get married, but it’s hard to argue that it needs them at all. An endless number of quests, a main storyline that progresses comfortably, and multiplayer functionality serve an RPG like Fantasy Life much better than being able to give a female NPC roses so she’ll like you better. Did I mention you can buy and upgrade homes, just like in Skyrim but with cuter furniture and no dead bodies? You can also invite friends into your world and trade items with them while in multiplayer mode, and this can be done over the local network or the internet.

There’s a lot that can be done in Fantasy Life, but writing about it all does the game no justice. If you’ve got a Nintendo 3DS and are looking for a new time sink or social adventure, this game just might be the one for you. It’s less hardcore than Monster Hunter, boasts more features and quests than Disney Magical Life, and is definitely more exciting than the serene Animal Crossing: New Leaf. It’s a great mix of social simulation with the roleplaying game genre, and I hope to see Fantasy Life endure far into the future. Or at least, until its next iteration.