Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time Review

The idea of a slow-life RPG is an odd one. Real life lacks any sort of adventure for a lot of us. There are still plenty of battles, of course, but boss battles are mostly replaced with bills. Most of my battles involve just trying to figure out the right amount of coffee to get me through my day after being woken up at 4.30 by either my kids or my cats. That's the final boss for me, and no amount of grinding is going to help, but hey, they're all pretty cute.

Anyway, Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time describes itself as a slow-life RPG. You could interpret this in plenty of ways, but for me, it's about the fact that you're allowed to take your time. A lot of the pressures in the game aren't as pressing as in plenty of other RPGs, which is probably why you can choose to just spend a huge amount of time fishing or cooking instead of just fighting off a bunch of monsters. It's a lot more Stardew Valley than it is The Legend of Zelda.

Fantasy Life i has a massive 14 different lives to try out, which range from things that would be considered classes in other RPGs, like a mage, to ones that would be considered a down-time distraction, like cooking. You can level all of these up separately, and take your time working your way through the skill trees and individual quests as you do so. This all offers a lot of replayability, and also definitely appeals to my ADHD because I can just randomly quit my job and do something else. It might actually be too relatable.

It's a very different kind of game to what you might be used to, one that's meant to be taken at its own pace, and I'm certain that's going to be immensely freeing for many people. However, it doesn't hit for me as much as I'd like it too, but I know that's just because my brain needs to go brrr a little faster than Fantasy Life i can manage. I just need a faster pace than the one offered in this game, and while I appreciate that games like this are out here, I'm very aware that it's borderline incompatible with what I'm after.

Your job will dictate a lot about how you'll be playing the game. It changes how you progress at that moment, and the skills you gain can all be used in different ways as well. It's also got an undeniable Animal Crossing vibe in both the character design and in the general feel of the game. The mage trainer is literally a talking cat, for example, and there's a general feeling of freedom that Animal Crossing has always done very well.

However, it's also got dungeon crawling in it, which is fun enough as a distraction and change of pace. I don't think the combat's especially interesting here, and that's because it's not really the focus, but that leaves the more combat-focused lives feeling a little bit lacklustre as a result. You just hit use your light attacks or heavy attacks most of the time, and while some fights do need you to actually move around, you can get by while being incredibly lazy most of the time.

It's all pretty cute stuff, but the game doesn't get much deeper than that in my opinion. Fantasy Life i is a big old puddle with not much depth, and while the vibes are undoubtedly immaculate, I find myself needing a little bit more to bite onto to really get involved with a game. I'm very much a "gameplay-first" kind of gamer these days, and while there's a lot of gameplay here, it's just not involved enough for what I want. I like Fantasy Life i, but I don't completely love it.

7/10

FANTASY LIFE i: The Girl Who Steals Time was reviewed on PC. It's also available on PlayStation, Switch, Switch 2, and Xbox Series X/S.

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