Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time Review – A Delightfully Chill Grind

Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time Review

My favorite part of any RPG is the job system. I love mastering a whole host of different classes, slowly turning my fledgling hero into a straight-up juggernaut. Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time is mostly made of my favorite bits. Mastering classes, breezy combat, and endless side quests are the bulk of the game’s content. Which I love, but I understand if it’s not for everyone. There is a proper narrative, but I found it more of a bonus than the main attraction.

You play an archaeologist’s assistant who’s stumbled into a time-travel adventure on a mysterious island. Along the way, you’ll embark on one to fourteen new lives, build a whole village, and explore a sinister wasteland. Also, there’s a whole world to save, if you can get around to it. I did so eventually, though much heel-dragging happened beforehand. I’d just much rather be doing the important work of mastering every single Life in the game. It’s satisfying stuff, you see. Whereas the main quest lacks this same tangible feedback loop.

Every Life in Fantasy Life i is mastered through a series of challenges issued by the master of said Life. You’re either making things, murdering things, or harvesting things. All of the crafting is done through a set of minigames that ensure you’re never totally bored making like, shirts or whatever. The four combat classes are distinct enough that choosing one over the other has distinct repercussions in battle. Plus, a lot of Lives have synergy with other Lives. You need Woodcutter skills to harvest the trees, Carpenter skills to make the furniture, and a combat class to ensure you survive the harvest. It’s even more complex if you’re making armor. Gotta have a Tailor to prepare the cloth, you know?

The Art of Making Swords

The point is, it doesn’t take long before you’re dipping into six different Lives just to solve a single problem. But I love this element of the game. It feels like every disparate element is connected. I love being involved in every step of the creation process, and dividing things into separate jobs really highlights how complex making a sword can be. The Artist Life is even more complex. You’ve gotta make the paints yourself, on top of preparing the raw materials from a variety of other Lives. When you eventually do finish an especially complicated item, it’s terribly satisfying.

Combat is simple and approachable. In fact, it’s more like another kind of harvesting. Only, instead of collecting ore, wood, or flowers, you’re gathering kills. The boss fights are slightly more involved, but still pretty relaxed. You’ve got CPU party members who help you out a great deal, for one thing. They restore health and stamina, unleash their own attacks, and draw aggro away from you. There’s also a limited number of unavoidable battles. Most combat encounters feel more or less optional. Like the various Lives you can start, battles are a choice you make.

A Relaxed Approach to Combat

The aforementioned party members aren’t just useful in battle. Depending on which members you’ve got on hand, they can also help out with crafting tasks. A mining master, for example, can give you an extra hundred or so skill points in that area. So an impossible recipe instantly becomes extremely manageable. In other words, we’re not here for an intense challenge. Fantasy Life i is all about having a cool, chill time killing monsters, making furniture, and growing crops. Even the high-level missions are a reflection of the time you’ve spent, rather than the skills you’ve cultivated.

On the other hand, the higher-level Life challenges do get rather grindy. While I still enjoy this kind of labor, I also recognize that it’s not great game design. Having a variety of Lives to switch between helps alleviate this exhaustion, to a degree. But the core gameplay loop is similar enough from Life to Life that it may wear you down. I spent an entire afternoon making swords without meaning to. It was a ridiculous amount of work, but it flew by in a blink. So the grind is intense, but you might not notice.

That Meditative Grind

Though most of the systems included in Fantasy Life i feel meaningful and connected, Ginormosia (the open-world zone) does not. Instead, it feels like something tacked on at the last minute. Maybe the devs were worried the game didn’t feel big enough? You’re introduced to the area in the beginning of the game, and then no one ever mentions it again. It feels very weird! It’s almost like they gave you access to the post-game content in the first two hours. While I appreciate the sentiment, somehow it feels like a waste.

I loved playing the first Fantasy Life game to an unhealthy degree, and the sequel is no different. Grinding away to master all the Lives is deeply satisfying, there’s a wide variety of systems to mess with, and the overall pace is very chill. On the other hand, I recognize that much of what I love about this game isn’t necessarily good, it’s mostly just addictive. A mishmash of my favorite dopamine receptors are getting smashed to bits when I play this game, and I’m fine with that. If you’re looking for a cozy, compelling Skinner box of a game, Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time is perfect for you.

***a PS5 code was provided by the publisher***