tl; dr:

It was everything I had hoped it could be and so much more. I've been playing that since the pre-release during my free time.

I failed to read the fine print and didn't realize it wouldn't be releasing for Switch on Sunday. Instead, it was PC and PS5 that were able to play pre-release with the deluxe edition. I wasn't willing to gamble that it might be able to play under proton on one of my intel boxes, so I bought it for PS5. It works for steamdeck users, so it should work for the rest of the Linux crowd, but there was a chance it just might not work on my hardware.

I have no regrets. It has been a bliss-filled couple of days. Bliss in the colloquial sense, not the terminology of the previous game. It's been awesome.

Fake complaints so far:

• it's too tempting to skip helpful quest dialog

• the loading screens are too fast on PS5 to read the tips

• there is barely enough time on the switch to read the tip screen

Real complaints:

• annoying blur at the edge of the screen (1080p and higher)

• very pronounced with docked switch play (1080p, 720 is fine)

• I would gladly murder Trip and get a companion like Flutter, instead

That last one needs more context. In the first game there was a butterfly companion named Flutter that would attach itself to the hero's outfit and only occasionally pop out for story reasons or dialog. Trip is a bird that's out whenever you are not in combat or not mounted. I would gladly get rid of Trip in exchange for a companion like Flutter again. Any other character could take Trip's place and help to advance the story.

Multiplayer is time limited and a little awkward to get started, but works much like the previous game. Or it will soon. It was originally not a stated goal to be able to play multiplayer and complete quests, but for PS5 (at least) there have already been patches to make it possible to advance non-story quests while in multiplaye.

So I started playing on the PS5 on Sunday during the day and the weekday evenings until Wednesday arrived. I deemed that Fantasy Life Day (after a few false starts) and had requested that off from work in advance so I would be able to devote lots of time to it.

I completed the main story after about 35 hours of play on the Switch. Despite that cross-save progression exists, I didn't set up an Epic games account and link it to my games in order to take advantage of it. Instead I just started over on Wednesday morning when the game was released.

The opening cinematic reminds me a lot of monster hunter. The story starts immediately. The thief of time was not who I thought it would be. I had thought that maybe Yuellia would be back to learn some sort of lesson and break some rules in doing so, but it was an entirely different celestial. An immortal dragon shirks its duties and is punished by being reincarnated as a human. Meanwhile another semi-immortal is slighted by fate and decides to remake the world.

The result is there are three major worlds: past, present, and Ginormosia. I think Ginormosia is the present and not the past, but I could be wrong. The present is a ruined version of the past and the player gets to customize it as their own personal island. As the story progresses, the player rescues Strangelings. With the help of the Goddess Statue these Strangelings are turned back into humanoids and they join the player's island. Up to four of them at a time can adventure with the player. The rest remain on the island. So-called phantoms can also be located that are able to join the player's party.

Ginormosia also features some neat stuff. It's divided up into sections. Each section has a tower, a number of shrines, random challenges, and locatable Leafe folk. Finding the tower lifts the fog of war on the map obscuring that section. Completing activities in a section unlocks the ability to level up that section so that the contents are of higher level and value. Completing shrines is also part of the story. Challenges are in the form of combat and gathering. Shrines are combat, gathering, or puzzles. The Leafe folk are stuck in the ground and must be located and pulled out. This leaves a band-aide marker where they are pulled out, but before the disappear they give a random award. There are also bosses, which are stronger forms of various monsters, I'm not sure if any of these are actually new or are straight from previous games.

The game features classes that are called lives. Players can switch between the lives at will without having to visit a guild hall. Previous versions required heading home to the guild hall, picking a new life, and heading out again. This was a hassle in multiplayer in the 3DS version. So it's very convenient in Fantasy Life i.

Each life gets a skill board where the player can unlock skills in the order of their choosing based on gaining experience and leveling up their player's level in that life. Skills are gated by points awarded at level up, but also by rank, number of points spent on the skill board, and a rough map of pre-requisites like in Path of Exile.

Ranks (fledgeling, apprentice, adept, expert, master, hero, ?) are awarded based on completing life-related quests. These are generally based on using a particular skill to accomplish a particular objective. The life master then rewards the player with ranking up when they have completed a certain number of points based on solved quets.

There are three classes of life: Gatherer, Crafter, Combat. I forget the actual names, but it must be something close to this.

These are angler (fishing), farmer, miner, and woodcutter.

Once unlocked by the player, just attempting to gather the corresponding resource causes the player's life to switch to that life as they begin the collecting mini-game. They remain in that life until explicitly picking a different one or entering combat, which switches back to the previous combat life.

Gathering is skill level based with special abilities that are unlocked while leveling up via a skill tree. Gathering is not used to pick up alchemical reagents, those are simply picked up as an action.

These are alchemist, artist, blacksmith, carpenter, cook, tailor, and painter,

Attempting to craft any recipe causes the player to immediately switch to that profession and begins the dialog that starts the crafting mini-game.

Crafting is skill level based with special abilities that are unlocked while leveling up per a skill tree. The goal of the minigame is to minimize the time needed to craft any given item, which is accomplished by carrying out actions at three different stations. The actions are generally pressing the action button, rotating a stick, holding the action button, or repeatedly pressing the action button. It's very similar to crafting in Fantasy Life on 3DS.

Skills help to decrease the time needed to complete rounds and fill the completion status of the overall crafting activity.

These are archer, magician, mercenary, paladin, and a nebulous new life class that so far appears to only be able to hit things with a stick. A tree-branch like stick. I went straight for the magician (which was called a wizard in the previous game, depending on the localization region.)

Combat is similar to the previous version, but basic attacks no longer use SP for any class and attack power is no longer based on the item and the player's use-based skill with that item. Now it's item stats and skills from the skill board.

There are a hodge podge of other features that I'm just lumping under the heading of cozy stuff:

• island customization (like ACNH terraforming, but easier)

• island decoration

• home expansion and decorating

• relationships with islanders (more like ACNH, less like other sims)

• activities (like daily quests, but closer to ACNH things that reward miles)

The island has a rating which makes converting strangelings back to humanoids cheaper. I'm not sure what other effect the rating has. It improves with the addition of homes and decorations.

There's only one boss combat music track, the rest of the time music cycles between different tracks from the previous game and some new ones. I can't tell if any area has its own music like what the 3DS had.

There is a sort of random dungeon (so-called grove) accessible from the player owned island. It presents challenges as a tree of levels that the player must defeat in order (difficulty increases with depth) to be able reach the final boss. The grove can be replanted after defeating the boss. It might be possible to destroy it and plant a new one if the paths don't look favorable. Every time the grove is defeated, the player has the option of starting the next one further on. There's a chronological component to the grover where each level down is further back in time, but I'm not sure what effect that has yet.

The player has a gear set per life and also an outfit. The outfit can be used to customize the appearance of any gear the player has in their gear set so the player can change the appearance of their character without worrying about the stats on the gear.

There's a sort of portal that can be used to move in and out of Ginormosia. I suspect it was the main mechanism until a manager said to just make it possible to navigate there from the map. Fast travel is very convenient in this game. Most points of interest have some sort of fast travel option.

There are a handful of other features, but I think I covered the main ones above. This was all just from the top of my head, so it's probably full of errors, too.

In Fantasy Life on the 3DS it was possible to pick a combat class and then grind through the story pretty quickly without necessarily having to have any of the other lives at a particular level. The story progressed and other than a handful of battles (where the player could rely on allies to fight) the player didn't even really have to level up a combat life very far -- or even at all -- to get through the main story.

That is not the case with Fantasy Life i. The player still doesn't really need to pick a combat life, they can simply rely on their party mates to carry out that part, but the player generally must level up each non-combat life at some point in the story in order to progress. It's also possible to get around some of these by finding allies in the form of rescued strangelings or phantoms, but I didn't have much luck there. With few exceptions, my allies weren't high enough. A longer time investment might net some stronger allies, but at that point it seems like it's easier to just level up the lives of the player and call it a day.

It's kind of a cute story. I'm not going to spoil it beyond what I already have. It was in the same vein as Fantasy Life on 3DS, but was its own new thing featuring some recycled cast, but the main players were entirely new.

I would not recommend playing the PC version under windows. It has a kernel level anti-cheat engine that has known vulnerabilities (Easy Anti Cheat). While it is possible to manually neuter the anti-cheat engine, it prevents multiplayer from working. I would suggest playing it on a console or under Wine or Proton and not under Windows

I was just going to relay a handful of details, but I got carried away here. I'm loving the game. I had purchased additional consoles to be able to keep playing the 3DS version long past the end of life of the game and the console. I wonder now if I should have gotten a PC version of the game so I could create a wine bottle and save off different versions and configurations for playing on future hardware just in case the world moves past Fantasy Life i like it did Fantasy Life 3DS.

I will be playing this game for a long time.

Tags: index, fantasylife

created: 2025-05-22

(re)generated: 2026-07-17