Fantasy Life

Fantasy Life is a life-simulation RPG from Level-5 that combines free-form job collecting with a traditional adventure in an open fantasy world. At the start, the player picks one of twelve jobs – from warrior to blacksmith to alchemist – and can change it at any time, allowing them to alternate between fighting monsters, gathering materials, cooking, carpentry or fishing depending on their mood. Besides the free-form lifestyle, the game is also driven by a main story full of humor and a gentle tone, accompanied by strongly stylized characters and a lightly fairy-tale visual style typical of Level-5. Each job has its own experience ranking, special abilities unlocked through progress, and a set of tasks from local masters, so a player can build a character specialized in a single profession, or freely switch between several at once depending on what they feel like doing.

On 3DS the game uses stereoscopic 3D to highlight its colorful, cozy world and also offers local multiplayer for playing together with friends, including sharing characters and completing tasks together. The music was composed by Nobuo Uematsu, giving the title an unusually lavish soundtrack for a game of its genre, and the overall pace is relaxed, with no pressure to rush or perform, so the game can be played just as well in short bursts as in longer sessions.

Fantasy Life was praised at release for how elegantly it links a laid-back simulation with structured RPG content, which allowed it to appeal both to fans of farming simulators and to players craving a classic adventure with a story, bosses and a branching world map. It is still considered one of the most accessible titles of its kind on 3DS today, and its influence can also be seen in a later attempt at a spiritual successor from the same studio, which tried to carry the same recipe into a larger, online-connected world.