Fantasy Life has strong female characters, and that’s awesome

Women in gaming have fought against tropes and stereotypes in games for a long time now, but it’s hard to sway an industry initially built for a male audience. Japanese game companies aren’t known for being supportive either; just throw a stone in Tokyo Game Show and you’re probably going to hit a company that banks on scantily-clad, overly-sexualized women as a marketing sell.

Yet Level-5 has done the complete opposite with its recent Fantasy Life game for the Nintendo 3DS. It’s great, as we elucidated in our review, but it shouldn’t just be known for its compelling, fulfilling, RPG adventure. Fantasy Life defies tropes and stereotypes commonly perpetuated by Level-5’s fellow Japanese game developers in favor of strong, well-rounded female characters.

Spoilers abound from here on.

Princess Laura, Lady Olivia, and… me.

There’s Butterfly, whom at 14 hours into the game I surmise has run away from a celestial home in order to help the folk living down in Reveria. She makes it a point to grant wishes, speaks up even when she’s afraid, and has dialogue that’s full of snark. Butterfly knows she shouldn’t be down in Reveria, but she’s there anyway because she wants to help.

There’s Princess Laura of Castele, who needed to be saved from being locked in her room. That’s really all the saving she needs, though. Before that, she’s prancing around the plains with you in disguise as a boy; after you help her escape, she is hot on the heels of the court scientist in order to save the fabled Napdragon from ending up as a lab rat.

See: Commentary: what it’s like being a woman in the Southeast Asian gaming industry

Out in the field with my favorite girls.

Then there’s Olivia Pescado, Pirate Governess of Port Puerto. Olivia has led a conflicted life up until the point where you start the Port Puerto chapter of the game. The daughter of a noblewoman and a pirate king, Olivia’s blood sings for the ocean but her feet remain planted firmly on land. In the game, she struggles to live up to her noble-born mother’s expectations of being a lady, but constantly finds herself at loggerheads with the local pirate captains in her dock. Later, Olivia confesses that she realizes just wearing a pirate outfit won’t make her a pirate, but neither will wearing a pretty gown make her a lady. She’s finally comfortable just being herself.

None of these princessy individuals act like princesses. None of them want to be princesses. They’re young ladies who know their places in the world, yet understand that the Life you’re given isn’t the one you have to accept. As multidimensional individuals with wants and needs that go beyond “distress at getting confined,” “joy at getting rescued,” or “gratitude to the (male) rescuer,” they’re just not the sort of creations you’d expect from a Japanese game developer.

In Dragon’s Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Sky, Level-5 had several female characters, all of whom were your standard country girl or city princess. They served their purpose in the game, but didn’t do anything beyond that. The princess wanted to sacrifice herself to keep her city safe; Princess Laura would have realized that dying solved nothing.

Butterfly, Laura, and Olivia are more reminiscent of the bespectacled inventor Lucca from the 1995 RPG epic Chrono Trigger, who created the teleporter that would set the entire game’s events into motion. And let’s not forget prehistoric tribal queen Ayla from the same game, who fights to protect her tribe from the invading Reptites.

Ayla and Lucca are the 2nd and 3rd from left respectively.