Fantasy Life
RPG/Life Simulator
1 Player (Local Co-op)
System: 3DS
Developer: Level-5
Year of Release: 2014
Beaten: Not yet
I was tentatively excited for this game, I love Level-5 even when their games don't quite hit home all the time they always look lovely and have a pleasant plot all wrapped up in a lovely blanket of charm and at least decent game play mechanics. Fantasy Life starts out swell. The charm is there in the look and dialog; I've even laughed out loud a couple of times admittedly. The game is upfront with how massive it is in scope with twelve classes to choose from you can do seemingly any number of things. So you start up your quest, and you talk to some NPC's. Then they keep talking, and then they talk some more and quickly follow that up with a bit more chatter which, of course, is supplemented by good old fashion conversation and most NPC's tend to throw in a bit of yapping around this point to spice it up and holy shit no one ever shuts up.
The overall goal of the game is very open ended, there's a main story to work through, and the aforementioned twelve classes all have several "quests" associated with them. Anytime you want you can buckle down and focus on your class, sorry they're called life's in this game, or you can just progress through the main plot. I tended to switch back and forth, and I feel that was the intent overall. The main story isn't really anything special, typical RPG-inangans are going down. World is ending, we need a hero, that hero is you, travel the lands and gather the relics to win. Most of the characters you run into on your travels are archetypes as well and while their dialog is usually well written it gets to the point where it seems like Level-5 has a fetish for beating dead horses. Most characters have a singular joke revolving around them, and they never drop it. At first these quirks are humorous, if trite, but they quickly lose their luster while you groan and mash A waiting for something of importance to be said. This moment seldom comes however.
Enough bitching about the plot, the class... life system should be the main draw of this game. These life's are divided into three subsets, fighting, harvesting and artisans. Fighting classes (Paladin, Mercenary, Hunter, Magician) focus on various weapon types and have quests usually revolving around killing. Harvesting (Woodcutter, Miner, Angler) classes focus on, well, harvesting materials to sell or use to create goods, their quests are usually just hunting down their life specific materials. Finally artisan classes (Cook, Blacksmith, Carpenter, Tailor, Alchemist) focus on creating things and in turn their quests are about crafting various products for sale or use. Be forewarned, I have yet to play as an artisan life, so while it is possible they play vastly differently I find that doubtful.
"Wow", I hear all of you hopeful people pipe up in unison, "truly this game has a nigh endless amount of variety, no?" Well, no would be right on the damn nose. See the problem quickly becomes apparent. You pick a life and it's dandy, there's a simple mini game associated with your class (let me guess you tap A and sometimes use the control stick to move about huh?) and it's pretty enjoyable if a little simple. Soon enough, well if you're anything like me, you'll switch to another class just to be able to interact with more of the game world and lo and behold. You're stuck tapping that A button and maybe moving that control stick a bit. Quickly the illusion of differentiation is broken. Attempting to gather the shattered remains in your now calloused and bloody hands you weep, for hope has died this day.
What good is charm when they spend the entire game dancing around plot important bits? When meaningful conversation is entirely replaced with fluff, is there anything of value left? When the varied and diverse life selection all boils down to going to a context sensitive area and tapping A to get random drops does it still count as diverse, or more importantly, does it still feel meaningful? To me, this game is either far too ambitious or far too simple and astoundingly I cannot decide between the two. There's a lot of content here, easily well over one hundred hours, but one hundred of hours of mostly tapping A, I can't really say that's a worthwhile endeavor. You could easily counter by saying I'm over simplifying things far too much, after all most games boils down to "just tapping buttons", but I'm not saying this with a cruel intent. I wanted to love Fantasy Life, I love Level-5 and a bit of their amazing charm shines through here. At first I was truly engrossed with it, but it soon wore way to the truth at the games core. Everything is just far too simple in execution.
So what's left to say? I do enjoy the general atmosphere in the game, when the NPC's aren't using their overly verbose dialog's to metaphorically beat dead horses into a fine paste the charm oozes through and even still I find myself chuckling at these one note characters from time to time. There's nothing inherently wrong with the world, characters, story and ideas behind this game. As I mentioned before it all falls apart because of the simplistic execution of the game play. Excitement turned into that feeling when you have a lot of chores to do and you finally decide to stop fucking about and get to it. I can't think of a single person who plays games for that feeling.
There's still an almost worthwhile experience here, surely the less you focus on maximizing every class the less daunting the whole thing seems. But when certain life's are necessary to interact with certain objects in the world (for instance you need to take Miner/Woodcutter/Angler before you can start utilizing all these obvious spots in the over world) it feels like the game wants you to attempt to maximize everything. Even hours into the experience, I cannot deny that Level-5 charm will sometimes manage to make you smile, but there were several dialog sequences I mashed A to just get through. I don't usually do this as I usually enjoy reading everything in a game. In Fantasy Life they just keep repeating the same basic information wrapped up in one note jokes told by one note characters and it just... wears on you.
I feel I may have explained and reexplained my feelings on this game a bit much and while some that might appear sloppy, honestly, it was to intentionally mirror how playing this game feels. It's like an RPG for newcomer's in every way. The story is obvious and over explained, characters have no depth, combat is literally just as simple as chopping down trees which is criminal, and ultimately you're playing to see bars and numbers go up as you level up and complete quests.
I've seen mostly a positive reaction to this game, and while I understand where they're coming from, I have a feeling most of these reviews played the opening bit of the game, or possibly rushed through the main story and didn't really get into what is, arguably, the meat of the game (Life is literally in the title after all). Or maybe I'm just a cynical bastard who can't enjoy things like this? The amount of hours I've spent with Animal Crossing and Harvest Moon say otherwise however.
All in all I don't condemn this game as completely not worth your time, I will fervently argue it's not worth full price, but there's bits and pieces here that can appeal to a wide audience. And surely there is an audience out there who this style of game will appeal to in spades. Hell, even after almost nonstop complaints I'm still playing this, and I while I do intent to beat this someday, contrary to the title of this entry, I doubt I'll ever fully complete it. Maybe one day there will be a sequel where the life's feel different, actually play different, and the writing doesn't beat you over the head to the point you wind up skipping most of it. That would be the life.
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