Is this like a better animal crossing? I can't figure it out.

[White Knuckle]

It looks so fun, and I'm primarily wanting to play singleplayer. Is this sort of like animal crossing with combat? It looks like a lot of genres mixed and I can't really tell. Thank you for taking the time to reply.

[Mobile Suit God Damn]

Well yes, but no, but yes.
It has the same chill vibe as a AC game but there's fighting and a story and a whole bunch more. There's oh so much more.

E: And you can give a toss about the multiplayer. It doesn't really bring anything to the game.

[Drew]

It's sort of like if you mixed old school runescape, animal crossing, and the legend of zelda breath of the wild.

It has some good parts from all 3, but it wouldn't be a good idea to expect it to be exactly like any one of the three games I mentioned.

[Caradog]

Its making me want to play animal crossing.

The building stuff here just feels cheap and throw away personally. I know people will love the convenience of terraforming but its meant to be slow manual work in animal crossing thats the pace of the game, you aren't meant to bee line to an end but relax and develop over time.

its an idea they've shoved in here without really understanding the concept. Like a few other things, or basically the entirity of palworld where they so clearly don't understand the reasoning behind a design theyve stolen or what made it popular (like all the backward steps from the original, multiplayer, ranking up, life quests for combat basically all being the same), even within this town idea, like thats the point of the lily of the valley knock off, they are thrown at you by the hundreds, its a currency that might as well not exist.

I'm not saying this isn't a fun game, but that the devs really needed to spend more time on considered design elements, which is weird given all the delays but delays so often do mean a conflicted development process and I think thats whats happened here.

[Mimi]

This lacks a few things that gives animal crossing most of its charm. Like…

real life time with seasons and holidays (who knows this may come later)

Many functional buildings with reasons to regularly visit them

A huge variety in styles for furniture

I’ve done over 20 hours in the game so far and haven’t felt any drive to make my town nice yet. It missing the secret sauce that so far only animal crossing has ever done right

It’s a LOT closer then most games get though, and if the keep updating it they will rival animal crossing that’s for sure, it’s just not there yet

[gwendy]

I would say Fantasy life i is similar in its own way. I love animal crossing and Fantasy life has been so much fun

I love how you can have your own island where you can terraform, decorate, build houses, assign houses, and fulfill allies's quest.

You could also collect up to 49 allies with different professions and buy a makeover box which will unlock different outfits for them. (im a sucker for cosmetics)

Theres so much furniture and food to craft or collect from different shops/regions. If you want to take a break from the story, you could explore Ginormosia or go into your treasure trove (unique mini dungeon generated and changes every time you clear it).

Theres so much to do and I really looove this game

[Caradog]

Originally posted by Mimi:

This

Many functional buildings with reasons to regularly visit them

Is there even a reason to enter a building besides a shop or guild other than the tutorial life quests taking you inside a few. So far I've not found one npc with a request in one. Or an item hidden in them.

They've really killed the livelyness of the cities here, even for the stories it's such a flying visit through them compared to the time spent in all majick or something, basically the houses and npcs including ones related to your life are nothing more than set dressing. Between that and random easy enemies giving me huge tool upgrades it kills interactivity of the lives themselves.

[sears.exe]

Better is subjective.

On a scale between 'Rune Factory' and 'Animal Crossing' it's almost fully on the Rune Factory side. You've got the cozy cartoon life sim aspect and the (mostly) kid friendly visuals, but you've also got an entire RPG with various interlocking mechanical systems you exploit to make your numbers go up, until you can punch a dragon so hard Easy Anti-cheat crashes and blue screens your computer.

[No' Name]

Personally, I like this game way more than Animal Crossing games so far.

Animal Crossing doesn't have Mini games to keep you occupied or invested while crafting. The real time in Animal Crossing can be looked at from perspectives, a unique feeling of the game, but also a way to time-gate/lock you out of content depending on where you live, set your time to, or due to your real life schedule, it's always been a "hit or miss" for Animal Crossing which is why so many people "Time Travel" in it, because of it acting basically like every other time-gated mobile games, before that was a thing.

Love the class/life system in Fantasy Life i, it can be directed more towards gathering/farming, or more towards fighting, and it's much closer to Rune Factory games than Animal Crossing.

I will say though the map you're given to craft on (at least where I am now), is much smaller than the newest Animal Crossing game, or at least it "Feels" that way.

Kind of sucks there's no clothing designing/custom designs in Fantasy Life i, where there is in Animal Crossing, but outside of talking to people in Animal Crossing a few times a day, just to turn the game off until the next day, not much else to do in it, where as there seems to be a bunch to do in Fantasy Life i.

Long Story Short; Animal Crossing is basically something you turn on for maybe 2 hours a time per day. Fantasy Life i, can be played through Longer sprawls of gaming, and likely not something you're going to want to turn off after a couple of hours.

[AlasseEarfalas]

It's got a similar aesthetic to Animal Crossing, but it's really a completely different genre.

Fantasy Life is an RPG where you can freely switch between several "Lives" (basically classes) that include several combat, crafting, and gathering-oriented Lives. This means you can gather ore as a Miner, then use that ore to smith up a snazzy sword as a Blacksmith, and then use that sword to fight monsters as a Mercenary.

It's a really satisfying way to play an RPG, imo. You could probably go through the entire game without touching any of the combat-oriented lives if you really wanted to; I know you could technically do that in the old 3DS game, but I'm still in the starter area right now, so idk what the rest of the game has in store.

[Grubadubdub]

Originally posted by Caradog:

Its making me want to play animal crossing.

The building stuff here just feels cheap and throw away personally. I know people will love the convenience of terraforming but its meant to be slow manual work in animal crossing thats the pace of the game, you aren't meant to bee line to an end but relax and develop over time.

its an idea they've shoved in here without really understanding the concept. Like a few other things, or basically the entirity of palworld where they so clearly don't understand the reasoning behind a design theyve stolen or what made it popular (like all the backward steps from the original, multiplayer, ranking up, life quests for combat basically all being the same), even within this town idea, like thats the point of the lily of the valley knock off, they are thrown at you by the hundreds, its a currency that might as well not exist.

I'm not saying this isn't a fun game, but that the devs really needed to spend more time on considered design elements, which is weird given all the delays but delays so often do mean a conflicted development process and I think thats whats happened here.

Yeah, there's nothing cheaper and more poorly designed than not requiring you to wait 24 real-world hours to access your buildings, and *several* days to accumulate enough currency to accomplish minor tasks. Nothing says quality gameplay like overly long time gates.