What I did in the game: All Lifes at Hero Rank and LV100. All Perfect True Weapons/Tools of Time forged. All Boards, including Base Camp, at max Level. Encyclopedia completed. All Mounts obtained.
The One Picture I have taken: Life screen which show every Life Level and Rank, alongside my eye, which is a Reward from a Max Base Camp Level, which includes a lot of in-game goals to complete, including maxing out all 50 Residents Affinity.
I can't believe it! After more than 200 hours, I'm finally done with Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time! At the very least for now, because we all know many updates will be made for it, including maybe a brand new story with a LV200 Cap and Creator Rank if the original 3DS game is anything to go by...
But let's go back a little, this latest entry in the Fantasy Life series is quite a big release for me. The original 3DS game was surely one of my most played game on the system. Having a cozy action RPG where every Lifes/Jobs/Classes could be played to complete the game, be it Paladin, Miner or a Cook, was like a dream game for me. And you could master all those Lifes, and they could then interract with one another in a meaningfull way. You could gather ores with you miner, and then forge a Sword as a blacksmith which you'll then use with your Paladin in battle. The game sure was a grindfest, but it was so relaxing, and you always had a new goal to achieve all the time (just for fun, I went back to Archiverse, an archive of old Miiverse posts, and managed to find my completion picture for it back then. A LV200 Hunter with the Perfect Attack Value of 520, at least, that's what I wrote. I couldnt tell you if it's impressive or not, but I remember having done pretty much everything for it back then).
So when a new game was announced for the Switch, it quickly went up as my most anticipated game for the system. Though after years of delay, I was kinda giving up on ever getting it, and if it ever happened, I didnt expected it to be anywhere as good as the original. So, fast forward to 2025, and what do I think about it? It's easily my Game of the Year so far. It's VASTLY improved over the original, and it might just become the most addicting game I ever played on Switch (maybe behind Monster Hunter Rise, we'll see, the game is still brand new).
The game is divided into 3 differents sections: The Past, the Present and somewhere called Ginormosia. The Past is basically everything the original game was. You select a Life, than do Guild Quests to Rank up in them, with every new zones in the story giving you access to more Guild Quests to complete. This time around though, you also have a complete skills tree and you gain points to allocate in it every time you level up. They also improved how you swap up Lifes. If you're in front of a gathering ressource, you instantly change to the specific Life you need. If you then press Y to attack, you change back to your Combat Life. And if you're in front of any Crafting Table, you have access to every recipes from every crafting Life, and you change to the one you need automatically. You can also easily warp to your Life Master any time you need to report via the Life Menu. Overall, everything has been streamlined to make it the best experience you can have while playing the game You can even now select an outfit to wear over you character equipment, so you have a lot of customization to look the best you can.
Now that was only the Past, and if the game stopped there, it would have been at least as good as the original. But nope, you also have 2 brand new game experiences. Next up is the Present. The is basically a complete Animal Crossing experience inside your Fantasy Life game. You can recruit up to 50 Residents for your Island (which you can also bring up to 3 with you in your quest as Buddy, and they will help you fight, gather or craft), create your Home, decorate both the Island and said Home, terraform everything more easily than what was possible in Animal Crossing thanks to an handy Robot. It's like a speed-up version of Animal Crossing where you don't have to wait days to accomplish everything. Sure there might be less activities (for now) to do overall, but what is there is surprisingly complete. You also have access at one point in the game to a Roguelike dungeon called the Treasure Grove to collect rare materials and just grind forever. Really, the Present is bringing Fantasy Life i to a whole new level.
But then, you also have Ginormosia. This a a Breath of the Wild-esque giant open world with Towers, Shrines, new Residents for the Present and small Spirits to find all over the map, all the while again grinding for everything you need. Tons of events are happening all over the maps all the time, so you always have something to do there in between your session in the Past and Present. Taken together, the whole experience just go above and beyond what the original was. There's also a cute story behind all that to help you progress to the next zone you need to grind until you reach the post-game, but to be frank, like the original, I didnt cared much, I was not paying a lot of attention to the story. But it's there for those who like it. I was really here for the endless gameplay loop the game is offering.
If I have one thing to complain, it may be that the end-game is even more RNG based then the original. Building those ultimate weapons/tools ask you for A LOT of Legendary Materials, and you'll be doing a lot of Tower Rank change to see new Legendary Events popping up in Ginormosia, in particular the Legendary Don Woolie (those who know, know), and then a lot of Remaking to get those specific skills you need. The end-game could have been handled better with less RNG and just a long but constant stream of ressources you need to farm. Also shout-out to the horrible Gacha Mechanic to get the Turbo Glider Mount, which asked me HOURS of getting 99 Dreamy Box, and then reverting back to my Cloud Save to try it again (again, those who know, know). But those are problems only for the most completionist of us out there, and it will surely won't affect many people. I've also heard that the multiplayer experience is not the greatest, but to be frank, I played the game 100% solo, and don't plan to do multiplayer, so I couldnt tell you.
It was also the perfect game for me to see the connectivity between the Switch 1 and Switch 2. If you bought the game for the Switch 1, there's a paid upgrade pack for the Switch 2...though it's only $2, so it's almost like they needed to at least charge a small amount for some law somewhere in the world. And you can actually bring your save over to both consoles through the Cloud quite easily. And even if I got the game digitally, it was just a matter of loading the Virtual Game Card on the right console, and boom, I could continue my game on the Switch 1 when the Switch 2 was used by someone else. While it might take some time to adjust back to the Switch 1 30FPS with lower resolution after a long play session on the Switch 2 at 60FPS, they definitely did a good job with the Switch 1 port. You maybe only have 2 more seconds of loading in between screens, so it was still perfect to grind on the Switch 1.
To conclude, Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time is a perfect 10/10 for me, a game everyone should play if they like either cozy games or action RPG with endless grinding loop. Even at the point I'm at, there's still stuff I could do like finding more of those Treasure Grove Fire to power-up my Residents, or leveling every zones to 7 in Ginormosia, but I'll take a break for now, and come back to it eventually once they add more stuff. After those 200 hours, I just need to move on to something else for now.
As a bonus, like I always do after a big completion, here's a video showing pretty much everything completed for my character. Enjoy!
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