Quick Verdict
Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time might be the most accurately named game of 2025 because it literally steals your time. Like other genre greats, I found myself losing hours with each play session, wondering where the time went when my Steam Deck warned of low battery. Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time has an overwhelming amount of content, to the point that I wondered why Level-5 didn’t market how packed the game is. It’s possibly my biggest surprise of the year, as numerous delays had me questioning if it would be a worthy successor to the original Fantasy Life on 3DS.
The game successfully pulls in the best parts of Animal Crossing, Harvest Moon, and Stardew Valley while adding a rudimentary combat system and a spacious world to explore. Though combat isn’t very deep and the story is rather predictable, this lighthearted adventure stays relaxing and filled to the brim with activities, ensuring you’re never bored.
A Link to the Past
Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time feels like the opposite of No Man’s Sky. Leading up to the launch of No Man’s Sky, the features that were shown off suggested a massive game with diverse gameplay appealing to a wide audience. As many of us know, the game’s release was largely a letdown due to high expectations. Still, it’s fair to say No Man’s Sky didn’t deliver on many of its pre-launch promises, although the game and its developers deserve credit for continuing to support it, turning it around, and making it the success it is today.
Meanwhile, discussions about Fantasy Life i mostly revolved around its frequent delays, causing skepticism among fans. Developer Level-5 initially described the new entry as a game where players build their own city while adventuring on a new island. The ability to travel between the past and the present was one of its main selling points, along with the return of some familiar faces. Some of the game’s trailers tried their best to highlight all its new features, but there’s only so much you can cram into a short video.
As a fan of the original Fantasy Life on 3DS, I’ll admit my interest in the sequel dropped with each announced delay. Remember, since that game’s release in 2014, we’ve gotten genre standouts like Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Much to my surprise and delight, Fantasy Life i can stake a claim as the best cozy life sim—it’s that good. Nintendo should take notes, because the next Animal Crossing game now has a lot to live up to.
Cozy Corner
Fantasy Life i begins with a relatively robust character creator, at least for games within this genre. I was a bit surprised by the number of options available, which was my first clue that Fantasy Life i had a lot more to offer than I assumed. From there, I was introduced to Edward, Trip, and a bone dragon fittingly named Skelegon. Right away, I could tell I was embarking on a whimsical adventure thanks to the campy writing. Let’s get this out of the way: the game’s story isn’t a selling point. It’s serviceable and does what it needs to do to move the plot forward, but it’s not very memorable. The story’s main characters are charming but lack real depth. This is very much a casual adventure with its story beats lying somewhere in between Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Stardew Valley, rather than something like Harvestella.
Naturally, the first thing Fantasy Life i introduces to players is the set of 14 Lives, although two are initially locked behind story progression. Each Life comes with its own skippable tutorial that teaches the basics of the role. The different Lives are separated into three categories: Combat Life, Gathering Life, and Crafting Life. Combat Life roles include Paladin, Mercenary, Magician, and Hunter, while Gathering Lives are Angler (fishing), Miner, Woodcutter, and Farmer. Crafting Life has the most options: Alchemist, Cook, Tailor, Carpenter, Blacksmith, and Artist. For the most part, the mechanics for each role are similar, with crafting and gathering both having minigames associated with them.
Each Life has its own skill tree and ranks, with certain nodes on the skill tree locked behind rank progression. Ranking up requires completing a number of quests unique to that Life, ranging from killing enemies to gathering certain materials. Many of these quests will naturally be completed while playing as that Life, but ranking up usually requires intentionally targeting specific tasks. While this may sound like a chore, I was able to complete the entire story portion of the game ignoring the Life quests and naturally only ranked up a few of them. It’s simply another path of progression players can enjoy if that suits their playstyle.
Trip or Treat
When it comes to combat, it’s easily comparable to the 2D Legend of Zelda games or a simplified version of combat from the Mana series. Each Combat Life has several attacks available, including a charged attack activated by holding down a button and a special attack that charges over time. For the most part, I found myself spamming button presses, with an occasional dodge here and there. Certain enemies and boss fights feature basic mechanics that require moving out of telegraphed areas or dodging.
The Paladin and the Mercenary are both melee classes, with the Paladin offering a sword and shield setup, while the Mercenary wields a slower but more powerful two-handed weapon. Meanwhile, the Magician and Hunter are ranged classes; the Magician casts elemental spells, while the Hunter rapidly fires arrows from a bow. Each class generally plays similarly within its archetype (melee or ranged), though they each offer unique special skills. For example, the Magician can heal, while the Hunter has a quick spin dodge maneuver.
My biggest gripe with combat was losing the target lock whenever an enemy moved out of attack range. This became frustrating since I mainly played as the Hunter, a ranged Life, and frequently lost my target lock while dodging attacks. Fortunately, combat isn’t very punishing, even during boss fights, but losing the lock-on was still annoying when it happened. True to the game’s “slow-life RPG” mantra, combat remains casual overall, but it’s engaging enough not to detract from the experience.
Village Strangelings
Obviously, a fantasy life wouldn’t be much fun without companions. In Fantasy Life i, your buddies start off as “Strangelings” that need to be converted back to human form. This process requires Celestia’s Gifts, blue flowers that bloom on your island—more on that in a bit. Once a Strangeling becomes a buddy, they’ll freely roam around your island and can be added to your party as a companion at any time. Each buddy has its own Life, and while all of them will engage in battle, buddies with Combat Lives are best suited for that task. However, bringing along Crafting and Gathering buddies is also helpful, as they provide other benefits while adventuring, such as using stamina regeneration items on the player character while it’s gathering. If you’re planning to gather materials from trees and rocks, you’ll want to bring along a buddy with that specific Life. You can command them to gather independently, but they’ll also assist you when gathering from nodes. When crafting, buddies contribute to your overall progress, making it easier to craft higher-level gear or giving you extra leeway in the minigame to achieve success.
The gathering system in Fantasy Life i is a little more complex than just hitting a tree or mineral over and over. Each node has a level, indicating how difficult it is to gather. There’s a small minigame of finding a sweet spot, which increases the damage you deal. You can also earn an Excellent rating by achieving “overkill” on a node, granting extra rewards and stamina replenishment. It’s another detail Fantasy Life i gets right: casual players can easily ignore the mechanic, while min-maxers have more gameplay depth to explore if they’re interested. Like combat, there are different ways to hit a gathering node that impacts damage done and stamina used. Finding the sweet spot involves walking around the node and tapping it, though eventually each Gathering Life gains an inspect skill, allowing you to spend less stamina locating it. All of these mechanics combine to make getting an Excellent rating a fun minigame, as you want to get as close to completing the bar before doing a charged attack to finish it off.
Crafting is also a minigame that involves executing multiple actions as quickly as possible. For each Crafting Life, there are three different actions in the crafting process. The goal is to follow the instructions, which involves moving left and right to each of the corresponding actions, and doing either a single button press, tapping the button multiple times, holding a button down, or rotating the right thumbstick. It’s similar to a simpler version of gameplay found in Cooking Mama. Progress is based on the player character’s skill as well as the buddy’s skill if you have one, and how quickly the actions are executed. Of course, failing is possible, since you must hit 100 percent on the progress bar within a certain number of steps. Again, it’s nothing too complex, but offers just enough gameplay to feel interactive rather than tedious.
Island Living
If you’re an Animal Crossing fan, you’re probably most interested in how robust the island customization is in Fantasy Life i. The game does some things significantly better than Animal Crossing: New Horizons, but it also has a few frustrating limitations. In terms of size, the island offers plenty of land to build on and customize, but there are only a certain number of houses and infrastructure (bridges and stairs) you can place. What I did love, however, is the clever use of a robot named Hagram for customization. It gives the player a bird’s-eye view, making it easier to plan everything out. This also makes it more convenient to flatten or raise terrain, fill in water, or create your own lake or river. Only one mechanic introduced after finishing the game requires waiting real-life days; otherwise, everything else is built in minutes.
Like Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Fantasy Life i features an island rating system based on placed decorations and infrastructure. Having a higher star rating grants more Celestia’s Gifts, which are necessary to convert Strangelings you find throughout the world to buddies, as well as to upgrade them. Hagram can also quickly collect all the Celestia’s Gifts that bloom throughout the island. As a bonus, visiting an island allows you to gather your own allotment of Celestia’s Gifts, incentivizing players to hop online and check out other players’ creations.
Decorations are plentiful, with many unlocking as you complete quests in each specific zone or rank up your Crafting Lives. I didn’t really engage much with customizing my island until after I completed the main story, and it’s incredible that after 30 hours of story content, there’s still enough content in Fantasy Life i to rival what Animal Crossing: New Horizons has to offer. One disappointment, though, is that while you can increase bonds with your buddies, it doesn’t have much of a significant impact. From time to time, your buddies on your island will request items, but that’s mainly a way to earn currency. Still, there’s enough here to satisfy most Animal Crossing fans, but don’t expect to sink hundreds of hours since only one feature is time-gated.
Larger Than Life
At this point, you’d think that’s all there is to say about Fantasy Life i, but there’s even more. Along with the main story areas and the customizable island, there’s an entire open world area called Ginormosia. The main story does eventually lead the player here, but even then, it’s optional (though highly recommended). Like many other aspects of Fantasy Life i, Ginormosia borrows elements from other games, including map-revealing towers, Shrines, and hidden collectibles called Leafes. Yes, Korok Seed hunters can get their fill in Ginormosia.
While Ginormosia primarily serves as an area to explore, gather, and hunt, it’s also home to Shrines, where most of the game’s Strangelings can be found. Each Shrine has its own objective, whether it’s solving puzzles, defeating enemies, or gathering nodes within a time limit. There’s also a good variety to the puzzles, but we won’t spoil them here. The continent is also where you’ll find Phantom Buddies that can join you temporarily while you’re adventuring, which is helpful if you don’t have a buddy with the Life you need. When I began fully exploring Ginormosia, I was genuinely shocked by how much additional content there was beyond what I’d already experienced. This game truly has multiple games packed within it.
What makes Ginormosia even better is that you can control each region’s scaling, allowing enemies and gathering nodes to increase in level. Unlocking higher tiers involves completing objectives within each zone, and thanks to scaling, you’ll always have a reason to revisit Ginormosia. For those who love exploring and collecting everything a game offers, Ginormosia is a dream come true. It’s also worth mentioning that Fantasy Life i provides your character with a mount for faster travel, and climbing doesn’t require stamina. And yes, you can swim across water without limitations. In this zone, the quick Life change system really shines, automatically swapping you to the correct Life for whatever you’re doing. For example, if you’re running around as a Combat Life and approach a tree to gather materials, the game will automatically switch you to Woodcutter.
Hidden Groves
The final feature worth mentioning is Treasure Groves. These are planted on your island and act as randomized dungeons with selectable paths that culminate in a boss fight. Resources and enemies from throughout the game can appear here, and we found it a lot of fun in co-op multiplayer. Again, players have options in how they approach each Treasure Grove run: you can head straight to the boss or slowly clear every route it has to offer. With its eclectic mix of resources, it’s a great place to explore when you’re not targeting anything specific. After completing a Treasure Grove, you can replant a new one—if you have another sapling—to explore an entirely different dungeon. In multiplayer, all visitors also receive a branch that can be paired with a sapling to revisit the Treasure Grove they experienced with the host. Treasure Groves are yet another way Fantasy Life i caters to different playstyles.
While we mainly enjoyed Treasure Groves in co-op, multiplayer is arguably the weakest part of Fantasy Life i. Anyone who played Animal Crossing: New Horizons will be familiar with the online setup, which involves cumbersome steps to join a session. Alongside Treasure Groves, online play lets players complete challenges and quests together, but not the main story. Each multiplayer session also has a time limit, and we couldn’t figure out how to start a new Treasure Grove without ending the session. Developer Level-5 would do well to improve multiplayer post-launch.
I had a few other minor complaints from my playthrough, but most of them feel patchable. Having to visit specific locations just to change party formation felt unnecessarily tedious and it really should be accessible from the menu. While the game offers a convenient auto-equip function for each Life, you have to apply it individually. It’s unclear why there isn’t a one-button auto-equip for all Lives, since it’s something most players would likely want. Enemies would also occasionally reset for no reason, and it drove me crazy that a quest always had to be selected. This was frustrating when I just wanted to explore, as the quest arrow would constantly push me toward the objective. After decades of following objective markers, it was hard to ignore that arrow, forcing me to have to remember it wasn’t my intended destination.
Simply Delightful
Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time is genuinely one of the biggest surprises I’ve ever played. Although I went in with low expectations, the game packs in a ton of content and is well-balanced to appeal to different playstyles. If something doesn’t interest you, you won’t have to engage with it too much. This is truly one of those games where you can play how you want, and there’s plenty to enjoy. Ultimately, many of the game’s systems lack depth, but that’s intentional. After all, this is a slow-life RPG, not a game meant to be taken seriously.
As for performance, I didn’t encounter any issues or bugs on PC. I even spent evenings playing on my Steam Deck, where it ran flawlessly at mostly 60 FPS with great visuals. It’s quickly become one of my favorite Steam Deck titles, and one I’ll revisit often on the handheld. I can’t speak to console performance, but on PC you should be fine so long as you meet the system requirements.
After spending the last month playing through Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and DOOM: The Dark Ages, Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time was more than just a breath of fresh air. It served as a palate cleanser, reminding me that not all games need a deep story or engaging combat to be fun. I always say a game is great if the first thing I do after the credits roll is jump right back in, because I want to keep playing and see everything it has to offer. Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time is one of those games—and it didn’t require a global pandemic to keep my attention.
Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time has a scheduled release date of May 21, 2025, for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Switch, and PC. It is also scheduled to release on June 5 for Switch 2. This review is based on a purchased retail copy of the game on PC. While FullCleared does have affiliate partnerships, they do not influence our editorial content. We may, however, earn commissions for products purchased via affiliate links.
Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time Review Gallery
