It's somewhat mind-blowing to me that SuperPhillip Central has reached this latest milestone: 1,100 reviews. I have no plans of stopping any time soon, at that!
Our 1,100th review (not-so-coincidentally published at 11:00 a.m. Central time) is a game I've been meaning to cover, but it got lost in the shuffle, like so many games did when I was focused on other aspects of life. Speaking of Lives, this game has 12 of them, but after playing this game over 100 hours over the past year, I feel I have zero, ironically!
That said, Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time is a meaty game, and would have probably been runner-up for my Game of the Year for 2025 behind Donkey Kong Bananza. Does that spoil how much I enjoyed this particular game? Perhaps, but I hope you still enjoy this milestone review all the same.
A game that steals time, too. /complimentary
The original Fantasy Life released in 2012 on the Nintendo 3DS. As a game, it was a life sim that featured plenty of cozy elements, combat, and plenty of Lives to manage. The sequel had been in development for quite a while, even having to retool itself during development. When a game gets in "development hell", for lack of a better term, like Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time did, it's hard not to assume the absolute worst of the final product--or at least worry heavily about it.
Somehow, someway, the sequel released, and it's no wonder why the game took so long to come out of the oven. With three unique worlds, so many gameplay systems interacting with one another, and an overwhelming amount of things to do, it can feel like Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time would suffer from bloat or feature creep. Instead and again, somehow, someway, Fantasy Life i manages to mesh and gel all of these systems into one comprehensive and complete entity.
As the subtitle would suggest, Fantasy Life i's story is a time-traveling tale through the past and present. It's a humorous affair with plenty of chuckles and even laughs to be found, though it occasionally can get slightly serious as well. The latter moments are few and far in between, keeping the game's story light in tone overall.
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| Well, Ranoah, after playing this game for over 100 hours total with every achievement unlocked, I can confidently say that... no. No, I do not. |
It's difficult to describe what Fantasy Life i's main draw is, because there is honestly so much to this particular sequel. There's, of course, the Life system, which essentially puts your character in the role of various jobs. These Lives come in the form of three categories: combat, gathering, and crafting. Each Life starts at level 1 and gain experience points to level up in various ways, and each time a Life levels up, they get points that can be spent on that Life's skill board. This grants them better proficiency and abilities to utilize their Life better.
Obviously, combat-related Lives spend their time battling creatures and other enemies. Gathering-oriented Lives chop trees, reel in fish, and mine for ore, in the case of Woodcutter, Angler, and Miner Lives respectively. Finally, crafting Lives do all their magic at workbenches, using drops from the former two Life categories to create all kinds of goodies, whether that be equipment, furniture, food, etc.
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| Find the sweet spot by circling around this ore, and strike to deal some serious damage! Just be sure to mind your stamina meter "ore" you'll tucker out before you finish the job! |
Each Life starts you off as but an apprentice, but as you complete specific tasks for each Life, you earn points that eventually grant you to higher ranks. These ranks give rewards to your Life, as well as introducing a higher tier of more challenging tasks to complete. For combat Lives, these require felling certain monsters. For gathering Lives, it's all about chopping down certain trees, catching certain fish, or mining specific ore and reaping the rewards from them. Crafting Lives require you to make specific recipes via time-based mini-games, and some need to meet a certain quality as well.
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| Crafting takes the form of these mini-games, requiring taps and holds of buttons and occasional spins of the analog stick to make new equipment, furniture, food, and more. |
In a way, all of the Lives are interconnected. You need combat and gathering Lives to get enough drops and materials to assist your crafting Lives to make the required recipes for new ranks, as well as to better equip your combat and gathering Lives. That's whether with new weapons and stronger tools, or armor in the case of combat Lives.
That's why it's pretty ideal to essentially sign up for all Lives at the start of the game once the Life system opens up. To be fair, it's a pretty tedious process to start the process in 12 different Lives, and it can also be overwhelming to have SO many different tasks available at once. However, it also makes the world much more accessible and available to you, opening up a ton of places and activities to enjoy.
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| You always have something to do within Fantasy Life i, whether you follow along with the story or not! |
That said, Lives are just one part of Fantasy Life i. Another piece of the game is that of an open-world land called Ginormosia, introduced relatively early in the game and not mentioned until close to the very end of the base game's story. Ginormosia is home to various regions, each with pop-up challenges to optionally complete, monsters to defeat, ore to mine, trees to chop down, fish to catch, and so forth. As you complete challenges and perform feats within the world, you gain points for that specific region. Once you reach certain point thresholds, you can speak to the talkative tower of that region to level it up, making the rewards and challenges of that particular region greater.
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| Ginormosia is well, quite a bit ginormous with plenty of points of interests to find and visit. |
Ginormosia also features inspirations from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, between its Korok-like Leafes hidden all around and with its shrines sprinkled and scattered all across the land. Inside these literal shrines are simple enough puzzles to solve and challenges to complete to unlock characters called Strangelings, which can be turned back into human form at your home base.
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| That includes these shrines that are scattered all about the land of Ginormosia. |
This leads me to yet another part of Fantasy Life i: your home island. This can be outfitted with homes (including your own, which can be customized and fully furnished inside), farms, and other buildings for your Strangelings turned humans to live. The indoor and outdoor furniture and other knickknacks can be placed all around your island as well. This is another optional part of Fantasy Life i, but it is rather rewarding. It's essentially something out of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, so if you have any familiarity with that game, then you'll feel right at home (both figuratively and literally) with this part of Fantasy Life i.
Also on your home island is that of Treasure Groves, which grant you access to Rogue-lite dungeons where your Lives are put to the ultimate test. Some floors require specific proficiency in a particular Lives to pass. Some floors are Harvesting ones, needing you to dig up all of the crops. Some are Fishing floors, requiring you to fish up all you can in search of a specific item. If you're not at a proper level with a given Life, you'll find these objectives next to impossible, especially as you go back in time further and further. Each Treasure Grove sapling you plant grows a completely different grove to explore, and seldom are two ever the same. However, both the challenges and the prizes for completing them make the Treasure Groves incredibly fun and rewarding to take on.
So much of Fantasy Life i can be immensely overwhelming when you lay everything out like I just did, especially as there is a TON of grinding is present--whether monsters, monster drops, leveling up Lives, etc. That won't be everyone's bag of Dosh. Fortunately, you're seldom ever really forced to do anything. Sure, you're encouraged to follow along with the story, which helps in advancing the plot and reaching new areas to access better materials and rewards, but truthfully, you're allowed to do what you want when you want.
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| One of the combat Lives is that of a Magician, for magical ranged fighting! |
Thus, if you want to dedicate time to customizing your house to your heart's desires, you can do that. Heck, you can even NOT customize your house to your heart's desires, and you can still enjoy the game fully. Whether it's leveling up your Lives, finding new materials help in crafting better gear, exploring and ranking up Ginormosia's dozen or so regions, tracking tasks to rank up your Lives, or engaging in one of the myriad other overall fun activities in Fantasy Life i, it's all up to you. There is certainly no shortage of things to do and accomplish in Fantasy Life i, and an aspect I really enjoyed is that while playing, while exploring each piece of the game, I was always making progress towards something. There's seldom downtime or the feeling that I was just spinning my wheels for no reason.
Perhaps the most impressive piece of Fantasy Life i is how you have multitudes of all of these contrasting systems, such massive gameplay systems that overlap, that you'd think a game this seemingly bloated just wouldn't work. The mind-blowing aspect of this to me is that it actually all does. Between the Lives, the open-world Ginormosia, the story, the exploration, the island and home customization, the various tasks, challenges, and quests to complete--it all works and it pretty much all complements each other well without feeling like the game is too big for its britches.
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| Speaking of being too big for its britches, this Napdragon is about due to take a dirt nap with our team fighting it! |
It's not all well thought-out, as multiplayer somewhat seems like an afterthought in Fantasy Life i. You can have friends visit your islands, but there's not much interacting or activities to do together on said islands. While you can explore both the Past and all the unique places it entails, as well as enter Ginormosia with friends, you're limited in how long you can explore together. There's a strict time limit, and while you can remake a lobby and rejoin each other after time runs out, there's really no rhyme or reason to why this limitation is required. Treasure Groves, however, can be embarked with a full party of four friends or strangers, offering the full grove to be enjoyed.
Beyond the limited multiplayer options that aren't too impressive, what did impress me was the presentation of Fantasy Life i. The game is positively gorgeous, and moments where you stand at the top of a peak in Ginormosia, seeing the massive draw distance revealing pretty much the entirety of the continent for your viewing pleasure? Absolutely jaw-dropping. The character and creature models are delightful, as are the environments you embark in and explore.
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| Bring along some CPU companions to aid or cheer you on in battle, as well as level up more quickly, too! |
On the sound front, the voice acting is suitably charming, much like the rest of the game, though quips by CPU party members that can optionally join you while out and about can get extremely repetitive. After hearing a companion say, "I'm worried about you" for the tenth time in less than three minutes, I realized maybe this was less commentary on my character's well-being and more on the fact that I hadn't eaten in five hours because I was so enamored with the game.
Musically, many of Nobuo Uematsu's magnificent compositions from the original Nintendo 3DS Fantasy Life make a return in the sequel, but there also brand-new themes and tracks to be heard as well.Either way, the soundtrack is comprised of a lot of lovely songs that seldom if ever get grating on the ears, unlike your companions' various quips.
Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time is a game that after such a long development time and arguable development hell, it shouldn't work as well as it does, and perhaps it's a miracle for that reason. Between its complementing gameplay systems that hardly ever clash against one another, the "play as you want and as the mood strikes" level of freedom you eventually get, utterly massive post-game, and stupendous visual style and presentation, Fantasy Life i is an easy game to get lost in and lose hundreds of hours to. I admittedly did and have no regrets either. Not when the game is such so lovingly crafted and well done as a whimsical adventure.
[SPC Says: A-]
This game was played via the Steam
Deck, PC, and Nintendo Switch 2 versions. Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time is also available on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5.
