First off what the hell was Level 5 thinking naming there RPG hybrid "Fantasy Life" it sound like a cowclicker you would play on facebook. With that of my chest, let me tell you, why this thing is pretty awesome. So Fantasy Life is the latest game from Level 5 (the guys from ni no kuni). If you can picture animal crossing with a final fantasy job system that features jobs like tailoring,blacksmithing,paladin,hunter and other things mixed up in a open world A RPG. If you mix all these thing up you get a pretty nice formula. So far i played around 8 hours and feel like i just scratched the surface. Why this thing didn't get any attention i have no idea maybe it was Destiny's marketing or people shooting in a cave ? who knows.For the moment the English version is released in the EU. It's coming to the Americas soon.

If you got some spare "dosh" and dont hate yourself for playing the same game 200 hours. Then i would definitely recomend you check out this game duder !

Woah this looks cool

As boringly generic as it is I actually kind of like the stone-faced descriptiveness of the name "Fantasy Life". It's like if Halo was called "Pretend Future Guns" or something.

It does look neat, I might get it.

Yeah, this looks fun. Nice style too.

I first heard about this a month or so back. I've been itching to play it since then.

I've been keeping an eye on this one, but it'll be a while before I buy it.

Just too many releases coming out at this time of year. A couple of months ago and I'd have got it at release.

Now with a wiki page that has actual content!

@soulcake: Fantasy Life is still a few weeks away from coming out in North America. So, once it's released, I imagine you'll see a bit more coverage and excitement around it. Glad to hear it's fun. :)

I'm actually pretty hyped on this game. I love Harvest Moon, Animal Crossing, and RPGs...so hopefully this scratches those itches!

@euandewar: I would totally play a game called "Pretend Future Guns"

So did anyone pick this up? I almost did but then saw there was already $10 DLC, so I decided to wait for some more impressions and a possible holiday sale.

I'm hearing this game is the shit. Why is it getting no hype?

I agree it's not the best name, but here's a little thing to know: Brownie Brown, which are now called 1-UP Studio, worked on it, and they previously created the London Life mini-game in the last Professor Layton title on the DS. So maybe they just like having life in the title. I'm currently juggling London Life, Fantasy Life, Tomodachi Life, and my life.

I picked it up on Friday and I've been enjoying it so far! I've put around 22 hours into it, I think I finished the third chapter. The story itself is pretty fluffy (standard RPG storyline) with a mixture of interesting and grating characters. The class changing system is pretty nice. Once you pick your initial class (Life) and finish the tutorial and prologue of the story, you can go back to the guild and change your Life. From there, you can either complete the starting quest for your new Life, or skip it completely and unlock it. Of the twelve Lives, I completed ten of them. Each quest follows a formula and there's a lot of back-tracking across the town involved so it really comes down to what you want to do. There's no penalty at all for choosing to skip the quest as you still get all the exp and skills.

To rank up each Life, you complete challenges. Most of them are "kill X of Y in location Z" or "make X amount of Y item". Some challenges require you to use a specific Life, others (usually gathering or crafting challenges) don't. More challenges unlock as you rank up or talk to people, but completing objectives even without the challenge will unlock it for you. Also once you unlock skills, you can use it regardless of your active Life.

The big downside is there is a lot of back-tracking involved. While you can always warp to the guild master and your Life master for easy Life changing and ranking up, getting to other areas means either running there or paying someone to transport you to the start of the zone. The cost itself is pretty low, but being able to teleport to any save point on a map would have been much better.

Susan Arendt described the game as a combination of Animal Crossing and Skyrim and I think it's an apt description. If the idea of running around an open world, gathering and slaughtering everything in your path, crafting items, and solving the life problems of the NPCs sounds good to you, then this is a game worth checking out.

I can't comment on the DLC as I don't have it and it doesn't come into play until you've hit level 50 and I think completed the main storyline. It adds more quests and items if I remember correctly.

@alanm26v5 said:

Yeah I have put 20 hours or so into it and i think its a great game. If you like animal crossing with a bit more rpg elements, it will be up your ally. I would also add that Multiplayer is awesome in this game. If you have someone to play with and break up the different life styles with its great fun.

@cateblya: I did not have too much of a problem with the backtracking and i would also agree it falls in the lines of skyrim with the number of quests you will get from random people. The key for me is when you get into the swing of things you will be working on several things while questing or backtracking so it does not seem like a pain.

The game is also really great about letting you warp back to town or your life master. Many of the knights on guard can warp you to the start or end of a dungeon or enemy area. I like to give a special nod to the story and characters because i find it really well done in a charming kind of way. Props to the localization team because the writing is pretty great in this game. Light and fluffy sure, but i have had many laughs from the story.

@phantomzxro: Much like on other Level-5 games like Ni no Kuni and Dragon Quest IX, there are puns, and the best ones are when you speak to the pet shop owner guy. But yeah, the writing is a lot of fun!

This is actually looking pretty good. Now I just need to actually finish Bravely Default so I can justify buying another 3DS RPG.

It's like Animal Crossing x Skyrim? So much fun I'm hopelessly addicted! Everyone should play!

After hearing about this game on the 8-4 podcast I decided to check it out. I have now spent several hours with it and felt like I should add to the group of people here saying that it's a great game.

Nah, people love to dump on Japanese titles because half the time they are just iteration on what the audience knows already. The first time I reacted this way to a japanese title was "Street Fighter Alpha 3 Upper." Even after a good 8 years of everyone joking "they can't count to 3." "Upper" was such an odd word to use.

Still the game look HOOOOOOTTTTTT!!!!! I'm all over that.