You ever wanted to know what it's like to make delicious food as a Chef, but also save the world? How about as a fearsome fisherman catching rare fish in a dark dungeon? In Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time by renowned Level 5, get ready to take the role of one of four combat lives (Paladin, Mercenary, Hunter, Mage), three gathering lives (Miner, Fisher, Woodcutter), 6 crafting lives (Artist, Blacksmith, Carpenter, Cook, Tailor, Alchemist) or all of them at the same time, and save the world from the super bad guy!

It's part Animal Crossing, part Final Fantasy, and 100% addictive, cozy fun!

🎮 GAMEPLAY

✅ Fantastic QoL that respects your time
✅ fast travel from almost anywhere
✅ jump over/climb cliffs
✅ craft from any Life in the same workbench
✅ Robust Menu using your Weird Pad
✅ Logs, Guides, Encyclopedia 
✅ Rearrange your icons/apps 
✅ Equip weapons & armour for every Life
✅ Optimize (auto-equip) for ease of use
✅ Outfit system so you can dress up/mix & match
❌ Outfits needs to be in your inventory to use it
✅ Great Inventory system
✅ INFINITE Inventory
✅ Great sorting and many ways to filter
✅ Co-Op gameplay sessions
✅ Crossplay

Gameplay is where Fantasy Life i shines. It has A LOT of it! Maybe too much at first glance, but with a robust quest system, encyclopedia, log, guide and the ability progress at your own pace, it is easy to pick up and get lost in as much as you want. I haven't even mentioned the amazing fact that you can fast travel from almost anywhere, have a jump button, and even climb cliffs! It's a game that encourages you to "waste" your time by being engulfed and immersed within it, while at the same time respecting it! I won't go into too much detail about most of the options within your Weird Pad (yes, that is what it is called, it's basically Breath of the Wild's Sheikah Slate) because the review would be over 2000 words long, so instead, let's get a Life!

Life

✅ 14 Lives (classes) to choose from
✅ Complete the game with 1 or all or them
✅ Cook, Blacksmith, Carpenter, Tailor, Alchemist, Artist, Miner, Woodcutter, Angler, Farmer, Hunter, Paladin, Mercenary, Mage
✅ Skill tree for each
✅ Quest line for each & pre-complete activities even before you have them
✅ You can skip the tutorial quest after the first one
✅ Crisp combat, feels good & satisfying
âž– mediocre enemy variety
✅ "boss" encounters for Gathering Lives
✅ ability to reset skills

As mentioned, Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time is all about living your best (fantasy) life and there are 14 of them in total! They are divided into combat, crafting, and gathering lives. The unique aspect of this game is that you can complete the game choosing only 1 Life (as a Cook for example) or all of them simultaneously. Of course you are rewarded with better gear and will have a more fulfilling experience if you choose to take on more, but it isn't necessary. 

To begin your brand new Life, you head over to your local Guild Office, choose the Life you want, meet its master and follow their guidance. To progress in your chosen Life (from Fledgeling, Apprentice, Adept, Expert, Master to Hero) you need to gain experience, acquire new skills and passives from your Skill Board and complete Life-specific quest for each one. 

Progressing your combat life will happen naturally, as fighting enemies is mandatory in this game. If you decide to not choose a combat life, there is a default branch wielding life called Brand New. There are no skills or quests or special abilities associated with it. Otherwise, as you level and gain skill points, you learn a few skills & passives you can use throughout your adventure.

Progressing your gathering life requires you to fish, mine ores, or chop trees you see in the world. These fish, ores and trees have levels and types which will determine how much EXP you receive from it. Each "encounter" starts a mini game of sorts where you locate its weak spot and attack it until their HP is gone. Overkilling them will also net you more materials, replenish more SP and net you more experience, and the occasional item. Just like the combat life, you'll later gain special abilities that will enable you to be more proficient. 

Progressing in your crafting life means making lots of things within that Life. The more difficult the item is for you and the better the quality, the more experience you'll get from it. This is the best way to get items for your personal use, the items you make will almost always be better than ones purchased from vendors or found in chests. As with combat and gathering lives, crafting lives puts you into a relevant crafting mini game every time you want to make an item. You need to perform a set of QTE actions within the time limit and the quicker you complete it determines the quality of the items. Later on, you'll learn skills to make crafting easier for yourself, as well as the ability to auto craft items in the Standard quality. Although, in my opinion, this is only useful for creating furniture as quality doesn't have any special effects, otherwise, it's recommended that you craft everything yourself, or at least recruit your buddy to do it for you.

Buddies

✅ 3 party members 
✅ 50 recruitable buddies
✅ 3+ buddies for each Life 
✅ they help you gather, fight, craft
✅ 5 ❤️ levels gaining new passives/skills the more you use them
✅ they level with you during fights, gathering, crafting
❌ gathering buddies feel useless if you level yourself

Just like in real life, things are easier and more fun with buddies. They support you in your adventure and can maybe do the things you don't want to. Living the life of a blacksmith? Surround yourself with combat buddies to make adventuring easier! Switch them out and take other anglers with you to help you tackle a difficult fish boss! Or, you're too lazy to keep crafting furniture items and don't want to do the mini-game? Get your buddy to do it for you! Just don't forget to equip them with the tools or weapons they need, and they'll be set!

Town Building

✅ Animal Crossing-like town building
✅ performance doesn't suffer from too many items 
✅ build houses for your buddies & structures
❌ limited house quantity = many homeless buddies
✅ farm crops, & fish
✅ decorate your house and town with furniture or art you've made
✅ change elevation, water, roads 

If you're gonna catch them all (buddies) and rebuild the present, you're gonna need the help of Hagram to create a place for all to stay. As you progress through the story you'll have more items to make (or buy) to place on your island and more abilities for Hagram to modify it.

📝 STORY 🌏 WORLD

✅ simple story
✅ time travel to restore the present & defeat the bad guy
✅ 7 chapters ~30hrs main story
✅ three main areas, Past, Present, Ginormosia
✅ Treasure Trove stages

The world in Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time is full of activities for you to do, if you choose to do so. The Present houses the driving force of your main story. You start the game in a ship and you land on an island with nothing but these Depths that you attempt to explore. As you explore through the Depths, you encounter obstacles that you overcome by recruiting buddies in the Past as they have abilities you'll need to progress. You'll also open up Treasure Trove, a special gameplay element that you play through, gain items, exp, enemies, power ups, travelling from present all the way to 1000 years in the past.

The Past is where you will spend most of your main story. There are 4 main islands, each with their own biomes, quest lines, and main story Buddy in order for you to progress in the Present. 

Lastly, Ginormosia is a huge optional continent that has 15 regions. These regions has it's own little villages within in it, complete with their own side quests, items to acquire, and buddies to recruit. Picture Breath of the Wild. You get to a tower, the tower reveals the region, it has shrine with puzzles & Buddies as the reward. Each region has its own progression where the more you complete quests, kill monsters, gather materials, the higher the level you can make the region thus yielding better rewards and experience points.

🎵 SOUND 🏞️ GRAPHICS

✅ Nobuo Uematsu
❌ minimal voice acting
❌ repetitive Buddy call-outs
✅ simple and crisp art style
✅ cute NPC and enemy designs 

With great gameplay and world, graphics and sound can be easily overlooked, especially since it didn't feel like it was their main focus. While it was neat to hear Nobuo Uematsu's tracks, many familiar with the previous games will notice that there aren't many new songs. There are some great atmospheric, grand music, especially during boss dungeons but there are also light hearted, upbeat ones for crafting and gathering bosses too. Unfortunately, not even the full main story of Fantasy Life i is fully voice acted. This made some of the narrative feel disjointed and ruined a bit of the immersion. To add salt to the wound, the ones you'll hear the most are the annoying, repetitive comments you hear from your Buddies as you're gathering or while fighting enemies. Unfortunately, there isn't even an option to turn off or lessen their commentary. 

They're lucky the Buddies are well animated and well designed, if they weren't so cute, I'd definitely be more annoyed. It’s not only the NPCs, the enemies and world design is beautiful, crisp and colourful to adventure through. Best of all, all these prettiness is not hindered by any drop in performance (on PS5 Pro) while I played in Enhanced Graphics Mode.

⚙️ ACCESSIBILITY/OPTIONS

✅ typical audio and graphical toggles
✅ graphics mode v. Standard mode
✅ keybinding options
✅ 9 text language option
✅ 2 voice language options

Besides the typical audio options, there is also some surprising graphical ones like Motion Blur, a standard Mode, Enhanced Graphical Mode, Depth of Field, and HDR settings. 

Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time has 9 language options: English, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, Cantonese, Mandarin, and French.It also includes 2 voice options: English and Japanese. These are only changeable while on the main menu screen.

Also, since this game features some cooperative gameplay, there's also a crossplay toggle enabling you to play with others from different platforms.

🫂 Co-op

My husband and I briefly tried co-op while playing Treasure Trove, here are our experiences:

✅ individual drops
✅ both gain exp regardless of distance
✅ exp gained is for currently equipped Life
✅ great connection
âž– activity needs to be specified at the beginning 
✅ able to send 1 gift to your partner 
✅ time limited

You're able to create an online sessions once you open up the Guild on your Island in the Present. When you do, you specify the activity you'd like to do (Explore specific islands or Treasure Trove). During our experience in the Treasure Trove, I was in charge of fighting enemies and he was in charge of gathering (when necessary). What we noticed was that while I killed enemies, I gained combat experience, while he gained gathering ones, and vice versa. 

Overall, it was a seamless experience, with great connectivity, and something that I would recommend doing if you have a real life buddy that you'd like to play some quick sessions with. (They are quick sessions because depending on the activity you choose, determines how long the activity lasts).

FINAL THOUGHTS

Typically, a game that dips its toes into many genres and attempts to accomplish many things at the same time is unable to deliver on it or at best is mediocre. I went into this game, with such fond memories of with the IP, with high expectations, and has surprisingly exceeded them all! This is a game that is fun, looks great, and runs well! A triple threat! If you're into cozy, fantasy RPGs, I would highly recommend it! It’s Level 5 at their best!

Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time was released on May 21, 2025 and was played on PlayStation 5 Pro.

It's currently available on PlayStation 4/5, Nintendo Switch 1/2, Xbox Series, and Steam