Level-5 must be the eternal foot draggers of the video game industry when it comes to the issue of localization of its titles. Fantasy Life was originally releasing in Japan in 2012, the game finally made it to the West. And the wait was worth it, although the extra wait time hasn’t seen any improvement to the game in any discernible respects.

The game is setup much like am MMO, but stripped of being strictly online focused or turn-based. This is an action RPG, and it even has its own story. The story is very basic stuff, and cute, but you can play a large portion of the game doing things outside of the Tale of Lunares. It should be noted that in story missions you can’t change classes. Classes in the game are called Lifes, and the play-on-word is meant to be something of an allegory for the denizens of the game world and their chosen professions. When you choose a class, you get to undergo a quest to get the associated license to switch it at will. After you get your fist class and try to get another, you do have the option of skipping the quest and just going for the license: Although you might miss out on some funny dialog, as this game is full of it. This game’s localization’s is one of Level-5’s best. Maybe that’s why it took 2 years to translate.

Your classes gain ranks through completion of certain tasks which are somewhat set up like achievements. Completing them gives you stars, which you need a certain amount of to pass to the next rank. The only real problem with this is that you need to report to your master, and you can only change your life at a guild. This can lead to time being wasted despite having the ability to fast travel to a number of locations, including the guild. The tasks are also not retro-active, and despite being able to accomplish most tasks outside of your Life, you need to be the class of the master you are seeking out. More wasted time. Pretty unforgivable design decision if you ask me. Especially considering that you can level up other skills just fine.

On the good side of things though, the Lifes are pretty fun to do things with. You can fish, make potions and items, weapons, tools, and armor. Or you can mine, wood cut, or make clothes. Every activity or request gives you base character level experience as well, and you can put points into your stats to take on even bigger challenges. While stuff like magic and the harvesting skills take SP to use, it will regenerate over time, albeit slowly. But it doesn’t make a lot of sense for sprinting and sneaking to use the same meter. A separate stamina meter could have solved this.

The music is cute, much like the visual, but the songs are mostly mood setting and aren’t really noteworthy. Visuals actually hold up pretty well, although the framerate used in the CG movies is actually pretty choppy. You’d think Level-5 could have got those kinks ironed out by now after Dragon Quest IX. Not game breaking though, just odd. But, at its core Fantasy Life is a fun little Sim-RPG that will provide plenty of content whether you play offline or online with friends. It uses many of the elements that would have been featured in Level-5’s canceled MMO True Fantasy Live Online, but streamlines it for use in an MMO-light setting. This ends up making it a bit more accessible than that game would have been, especially since it can be played on the go. So despite some bad design decisions, the game is a solid recommend for Sim fans who don’t mind some light JRPG elements, and maybe even a bit of cuteness and silly humor.

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