[REVIEW] Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time

An action RPG built on rotating between interconnected combat, gathering, and crafting grinds. An action RPG where the gimmick is that you play all parts of an MMORPG-like economy. There are four combat classes, four gathering glasses, and six crafting classes each with their own progression and you can play any and all of them. You also accumulate AI-controlled “buddies” of each class who can help and to some extent cover for kinds of gameplay you may be less interested in, but no individual type of gameplay is especially deep: the core appeal of the game is being able to rotate between them in a complex-but-not-overwhelming set of interconnected systems where advancing in each one helps you advance in all the others. The game is beautiful, the soundtrack is solid, and the world is visually enticing. But the story, characters, and worldbuilding are extremely thin. This is the game’s most prominent flaw, as it’s present from the beginning and the story is forced on you despite not…