Fantasy Life Catch-All

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IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/pJX6Igpl.png)

Fantasy Life is an upcoming 3DS game developed by Level-5 (Dragon Quest IX, Ni No Kuni) and published by Nintendo. It's a fantasy life simulation role-playing game. Think Rune Factory Frontier with class swapping and online multiplayer, or Dragon Quest mixed with Animal Crossing.

The trailer does a better job of summarizing it than I will:

And here's the opening cinematic:

It's out September 26th in Europe and October 24th in North America. It's been out for some time in Japan, naturally.

Woot! I liked the concept for this one when I saw the demos from the Nintendo E3 event. Definitely going to be something I try to pick up.

What is this "europe gets games early" nonsense? Is capitalism not good enough for the video game industry any more?

Looks like a more interesting Animal Crossing, I'm so in.

So can I lead a duck knight into a dungeon?

Ive been putting off buying a 3DS because I already have a tablet, and a Vita. But this comes out 2 days before my birthday so that's totally a sign right?

Fastmav347 wrote:

more interesting Animal Crossing

That has been my impression also. I'm interested, but I need to see more details on the mechanics.

Really looking forward to this one. Will it fill the Rune Factory IV-shaped hole in my library? Only one way to find out.

I'm not sure how this game and I would meld. I've never played Animal Crossing as it never really appealed to me from previews, reviews, and trailers, but a preview for Fantasy Life in Official Nintendo Magazine left me wanting to know more. The first trailer above has increased that interest ten fold! It looks like a game that could be a lot of fun. I am very intrigued by the ability to change class on the fly to further progress your overall life. It's a nice touch to have the oft overlooked roles of Miner and Blacksmith as class choices. I like it!

And now I have another potential title to look forward to, for my as yet absent 3DS/2DS.

frogbeastegg wrote:

Really looking forward to this one. Will it fill the Rune Factory IV-shaped hole in my library? Only one way to find out. :D

My undying love of Rune Factory Frontier (still haven't played IV) is a big part of the reason I'm interested in this.

Oh why not? Preordered. It's currently £27.99 on amazon.co.uk if there's anyone else in Blighty with a need for more fantasy in their life.

The cinematically looks great; the actual in game graphics: eh. I'm still cautiously optimistic for this: Animal Crossing with less village interaction and more questing sounds right up my alley.

Looks interesting. I have never played an animal crossing game before nor a rune factory game either but this one looks interesting

Okay, it's out Friday. Who's getting it? I'm torn between this and Bayonetta 2.

I will be getting it... eventually, end of the year is usually tight for new game purchases for me.

Someone needs to buy it and talk about it. I'm tempted by it, but there's just too much other stuff coming out...

cube wrote:

Someone needs to buy it and talk about it. I'm tempted by it, but there's just too much other stuff coming out...

^

Definitely interested, but I'll be waiting for some impressions.

Let's make it a Kickstarter. You each give me $5, and I'll buy it and post impressions.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Okay, it's out Friday. Who's getting it? I'm torn between this and Bayonetta 2.

Both for me

Physical for Bayonetta, digital for Fantasy Life.

Waiting to hear some impressions before I pull the trigger as well: early reviews I read of the import version left me feeling doubtful that there's much meat to the gameplay.

I've had it for a week because the European Release Gods decided to bless us instead of smite us for once. I've not had chance to play it much so far, so I can't give many useful impressions. I'll do what I can.

It's charming. Just utterly charming. It's very Dragon Quest in that regard, with cute characters and plenty of wonderfully-awful puns in the writing. I started as a magician and my character is actually kind of cute with her serious expression and big witch's hat.

Character creation has a lot of options available, including gender and skin tone. Think of the Mii creator and you're not too far off. All lives are available for you to select at the beginning, none are locked until you reach a set point in the game.

I'm finding it slow to get going. After 2 hours I've completed the initial tutorial section and can leave town to undertake some adventuring. I still haven't unlocked some of the basic features such as purchasing a house and getting a pet. I'm not sure if I can change lives yet either. There is a lot of talking to get through, and quite a bit of running back and forth between the same few locations in order to get the next lot of tutorial text. I expect I have more tutorial material to go through. Despite this I'm a little overwhelmed by how much content there is. It seems I can't walk around town without seeing people with quests for me to do. The town itself is quite large, and I've only got what looks like a fraction of the overworld available.

It's pretty easy. It may ramp up later but I doubt it. Casting magic is as simple as bashing a button, or holding it down to charge up your spell. You get spells in 4 categories: earth, air, fire, water. Instead of freely casting you select which school of magic you want to currently equip and them fire the spells from that class. You can freely swap between classes on the fly though, so it's possible to blast away with fireballs, swap to earth to heal, then swap straight back to an offensive school and resume the damage-dealing. MP regenerate slowly. Not sure how melee or ranged combat will work.

You can have up to 3 save files on the cart so sharing with family is possible.

I like it but I'm not in love with it. That might improve when it stops hitting me with tutorials.

I'm scared that the Level-5-ness of the combat and whatnot will bore me to tears before I get to the "good" stuff. Ah, Level 5, how I just can't trust you.

But then Jeremy Parish tells me I can spend all day crafting. Dammit. I'm a crafting maniac. This has surely got to be better for me than $15 a month in whatever MMO I'm feeling at the moment, right?

I actually like the look of this. I topped out at like 5 hours with Animal Crossing: New Leaf because there wasn't enough there. This seems like a better compromise.

http://www.usgamer.net/articles/fant...

This doesn't match up with the general critical reception, but Jeremy Parish is one of very few reviewers whose opinions I tend to share. I'll probably look for this one on a lightning deal sometime this holiday.

I'm not sure if the Animal Crossing style gameplay is for me, but I'm curious enough to give it a whirl with this game.

I am weak. If anyone wants to play online let me know.

I spent 4 hours mining copper and then smithing goodies. This game is amazing.

Eager to try out the online play / buddy modes as well.

I bought and downloaded it, but don't know when I'll actually get around to having a crack at it.

Just picked this up, and I've spent an hour with the Paladin life, and hour in woodcutter, and an hour in mining (trying to grab all the gathering jobs before heading out of the city). Very very fun so far: definitely feels like a single player MMO. My friend code is in my sig if anybody wants to meet up!

I'm in as well and yes this is totally scratching that MMO explore and crafting itch without having to pay for a sub or get in a queue.

Charming is the right way to describe it in total. I just love that "you just gained some stuff!" fanfare theme which sounds like someone playing a kazoo and another singing along "Bub bub ba-bup da daaaaaa!!" So cute. I can't help but smile.

Started out as a Carpenter but looking to move into all the gathering Lives before heading into Hunter and Chief.

The multiplayer options sound really interesting. As I recall there actually three types:
Streetpass - people with the game you have streetpass with can have their avatars from the game show up in your town as NPCs. You can befriend them and get a bonus or an item.

Link - If both you and someone on your Friends list is both in your own game at the same time, you can choose to get updates of what they are doing in their game as well as encourage, send messages or even items.

Real-time - you and two other friends are actively adventuring in the same world which works over local or online. You are free to go and do anything and the map will show you where your friends are and be able to teleport to them. Real-time chat is available as well and there seems to be World Boss monsters that can only be taken on in such a group.

I've played about two hours, the game seems like a really solid blend of other titles that hit similar notes but with less cohesive results. It feels a bit like if Fable were actually open-world and had simpler combat but more robust character development systems.

I'll have more to say about it after the weekend.

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