I consider myself to be a seasoned gamer, I have played a lot of games, from many different categories and genre, and have been playing video game since I was as young as 3-4 years old, back in the day of Doom day of Win 98 and Battle Chess. Now obviously being a girl, Dooms wasn’t really something I had much interested in, but I have played Doom, experienced it, and had came back and finished the ported game on my PSP. Needless to say, I think it pretty safe to say that I played a lot to know about many different great games and that each game have its own uniqueness that might make one like it more than the other, and therefore, I just want to say that this is purely my opinion and I’m only going to talk about the reason why fantasy life appeal to ME. Obviously there are many other great games out there, such as Age of Empire 2 (oh don’t hate), Empire Earth (yeah I love RTS), hell for the sake of fairness I will list popular one like Dota 2 as a really good game that people (and I) like. But Fantasy Life above all game that provoked an emotional response in me much more than any other game that I have played. I will lists the reason why I like the game from the broad overall and slowly get into specific details of why it is such a great game.

Reason why I love Fantasy Life:

1. Overall Impression

I got the 3ds no more than about 2 years ago, I picked up Animal Crossing, FE: Awakening, and a few more games. They were okay, I played AC:NL a lot, but AC:NL lacked things to do and it get really repetitive quickly, and I run out of things to do if I play more than about an hour or 2 a day (Being in school at the time I can’t play everyday and tend to hog a lot of time over a weekend). When I picked up Fantasy Life, I didn’t have much expectation, I did thought it was going to be a mixture of AC:NL, Harvest Moon (hey I thought there was farmer class, I mean they have woodcutter, fisher, and let you ride a horse), and a combat system from Rune Factory. As you can expect, I was in for a treat, it was a lot different than what I expected: the atmosphere of the game is so different, there were no building/big customization other than customize yourself and your 6 rooms. However, I was delighted at what I see, yes the atmosphere might be different than what I expected, but in term of aesthetic, it was quite pleasing. I had many more customization options than I have in Animal Crossing and the choice of nursery music at character creation had me smile while I make my character. I won’t talk much about music now because I want to dedicate a whole paragraph to that, but for someone who didn’t have much expectation, fantasy life music was amazing, epic and very very good compared to other games on the 3DS at the time. Overall, this game is a very good game on its own, having its own class system, challenges, quirky and cute dialogs, great character casts, great music, in term of game play (excluding storyline), I think I can say that objectively there are a lot of potentials (such as learning to use shield as a paladin or do the 5 buttons combo properly as mercenary). Of course, there are also room for improvement, such as refining the feels of combat, it feel a bit clunky because you can’t switch your actions when you are doing something (if your character is in a middle of a swing and you try to raise shield, you can’t, you have to wait for it to be over THEN press the shield button).

2. Music

The biggest and most important pull for me in Fantasy Life is the music, and I don’t say that lightly. I listen to video games music almost exclusively, I used to listen to my personal top 30 runescape songs (All Fairy In Love and War, Born to do this, The Sound of Guthix, etc), Final Fantasy Tactic Advance (Companions that Surpassed Their Tribe, Marche, Ritz, etc), Cave Story, Metal Slug, you get the point. And I can say without a doubt that Fantasy Life have one of the best video game music for me, and what can you expect? You have Nobuo Uematsu, which is a great musician combined with Level 5, a really good game company. Of course, just like with all games, not all songs are super duper good, but I can easily point out many songs that are simply wonderful. For the sake of reviewing though, I’m only going to talk about my top 3 favorite themes, which are the Main Theme here, Adventure of Warrior here, Theme of Courage here. All 3 of these songs represent Fantasy Life perfectly: Main theme represent the vibrant and lively kingdom of Castele. Adventure of Warrior represent the exciting (and quirky) adventures, fighting cute little monsters and travelling across the land. Theme of Courage represent honor and bravery of the people of the world as they understand the end is coming and they are bracing themselves, gathering hope and faith for one last stand. Even though the story might not take itself so seriously, the musics are able to invoke emotions in the players; I myself had laughed, cried, weeped out of happiness, at the various cutscenes of the game, and I would attribute it to the music. Don’t just read what I wrote though, listen to the music yourself. You will see what I meant.

3. Great Characters and cast

Nowaday, it is very rare that you find an adventure games that have a wide range of strong female leads cast. The second biggest reason why I love Fantasy Life is its represent of female characters (and just their characters in general, really). Even though both the story and the characters lack depth, I still find the cast of the game to be very enjoyable and very good role models in life. It is very rare that I find myself feel strongly connected/related to a character, but Level 5 somehow managed to do that. Take my favorite character for example (AND THIS IS SPOILER, SO SPOILER ALERT), Laura; She LOVE adventures, and will stop at nothing to embark on new exciting adventures (that is, until her dad shut her down because it’s too dangerous). She is also very compassionate, willing to go out of her way to help other, even if it mean putting herself in danger. Laura remind me of myself when I was growing up; I love adventure, I wanted to be either a dashing knight, live by the code of honor, be a sword of justice; or a pirate, I would sail the seven sea, find hidden treasure. And even though I’m definitely not going to wear a chainmail and hold an excalibur anytime soon, I can relate to her passion, since at one point in my life, I would stayed up to 5 am many days, programming my own game, creating my own adventure. Do I need to mention that Level 5 do a great job as keeping the game family friendly? I think it is pretty safe to say that this game do a good job at NOT sexualizing characters, especially female characters. When Laura goes on adventures, she doesn’t dress in revealing clothing, unlike cough cough, Lara. Really, Fantasy Life is just an excellent game if you are looking something that appeal to young girls. It is very rare to find a game with positive images of female characters that isn’t sexualized in a rather hetero-centric society nowaday.

I have clocked over 400 hours in fantasy life, and 40 of those hours were from the first 2 weeks of acquiring the game. It is without a doubt, one of my most favorite game of all the time. And while it is true that my review on this game is very subjective, and that objectively, the game isn’t as good as I make it out to be, I urge you to at least give it a try. Thank you