Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time Review – Wondrous adventures and mysteries await

Reviewed June 4, 2025 on PC

Platforms:

PC, Nintendo Switch, PS5, Xbox Series X|S

Released:

May 22, 2025

Publisher:

LEVEL-5

Developer:

Level-5

A fisher. A woodcutter. An artist. A farmer. A hunter. A Paladin. A hero. Fantasy Life I: The Girl Who Steals Time is the sequel to the cult-classic Nintendo 3DS life simulation game, where you can take on many jobs and live multiple lives. Now, after a few delays and a lengthy wait, the latest Level-5-developed joint is finally released on multiple platforms, with high hopes weighing on it. Thankfully, it pulls off those ambitions, not just presenting a vibrant and charming new RPG adventure but making the entire series a quintessential ‘numbers go up and watch the hours melt away’ franchise for years to come.

When you and your motley crew of journeymen happen upon an uncharted, mysterious island, your call to adventure begins. A giant abyss of a hole, a bone dragon and a message from a girl begging and pleading you to save the world beckon you forward out into the great unknown. The threads to solving the mystery include, thanks to your new fandangled time-travelling powers, visiting the archipelago in your near vicinity, made up of islands in the present day and one a thousand years in the past.

I’m going to get this out of the way first: Story is not at the forefront of Fantasy Life, and that remains the case with The Girl Who Steals Time. Being functionally a tutorial to the greater world and the many jobs (labelled ‘lives’ in this universe) you’ll embark on, the narrative is very stitched together with cutscenes introducing a boatload of characters, all with their own conflicts. Tying it all together is a mystery dripped in fantasy; a magical and mysterious elf keeps visiting you when you least expect it, and dark energy seeps out of the ominous dark hole situated on the island in the past. What it all means doesn’t amount to much that exciting, because Level-5 isn’t exactly interested in telling a good story. However, that didn’t stop the team from overloading it with cutscenes aplenty and conversations that hold little value and go nowhere. Fantasy Life fans already probably know this well, but you should be warned: The Girl Who Steals Time is a game where you’re going to want to (and just might) be holding the B button to skip through the long lines of dialogue.

Though you can be interrupted by meaningful game progress or levelling up a life by a story moment, at least the world’s charm is always there. There’s delightful humour and whimsy wherever you look. The simple quests that flood the map often make for oddities in character exchanges: one side quest had me gathering honey for a young girl’s mother who had fallen deeply ill… only for the mother to sheepishly admit that she was just constipated. One of the main things you do to progress in the main story is rescue one of your bumbling adventurers, Edward. You do this constantly, and it’d be maddening if it weren’t for the overzealous comedic value of say, finally levelling up mining enough to break that big boulder that stands between you and him… and then he gets trapped in another part of the mine, now tasking the player with saving him from behind a giant turnip once you amply level farming. The game offers you all these bizarre moments and one-liners that’ll make you snort, and it does it while having the cute, cosy and chibi aesthetic you know from games like Animal Crossing. Perfect. No notes.

Of course, the draw for Fantasy Life is the everything else of it all, and it’s almost flawless. There are fourteen lives to take up, broken up by combat, gathering and craft categories. Those are: Paladin, Mercenary, Magician, Hunter, Angler, Miner, Woodcutter, Alchemist, Cook, Tailor, Carpenter, Blacksmith and the two new lives, Painter and Farmer. With all of these new specialisations, you can pick any of them up at almost any time, and you can go about your merry way and level them up, completing the many quests and tasks on offer. So much levelling, loot and gear for each life… the world is your oyster.

Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time can be surmised as an MMORPG distilled down to only a maximum of four people able to play together at the same time. Movement and how abilities and classes work are incredibly similar to that genre. Combat lives have combos, light and heavy attacks and area of effect attacks. Players will undoubtedly find their favourites. Mine was Hunter, the archer life that can zip around environments and arenas with the right bumper button, doing a spin dodge, freeing up space to line up devastating piercing shots in a straight line or a torrential rain of arrows from above. The Mercenary lives use this same button to strengthen their sword, doubling damage and so on. Crafting lives like cooking and blacksmithing throw you into minigames where you need to position your character at the right spot at a workstation before entering a QTE prompt. Gathering lives like woodcutting and mining have you managing a meter, to net the resource before your SP (special points) fully deplete and prevent you from continuing progression. These are all incredibly formulaic, but they are satisfying to use and grind away at.

“So much levelling, loot and gear for each life… the world is your oyster.”

Why this all works so much is due to the constant visual and audio feedback that’s being provided. Enemies can be stunned and also vaporise into a little cloud of smoke when slain. For mining and woodcutting, you’re hovering around an ore or tree trying to find the sweet spot where you’re doing the most damage to the source’s health, working to chip down the resource before that meter runs out. Heavy and charged attacks do more damage and pack more punchy swings. Performing overkill damage (delivering a blow that delivers well beyond 0HP) lets you regather some SP to perhaps save you from needing to drink a potion before moving on to your next source. These challenges, where you’re tasked with chopping down a tree or taking on a boss many levels ahead of you, are also achievable and more tolerable with additional party members in NPCs with specialisations or online multiplayer co-op partners.

What the Fantasy Life franchise does really well is make even the most monotonous tasks seem exciting. Bosses don’t just come in the form of enemies that you need to slay with your sword. There are legendary trees or ore minerals, or fish to conquer that have their own boss-like gauge. Suddenly, you’re not just seeking to slay that dragon, but your other white whale, your other want, in the world is to finally chop down that rare cherry blossom tree.

Additionally, The Girl Who Steals Time is an RPG that is excellent at having every little thing feed into one another. There is a bounty of skills to unlock that bolster every little facet of your combat wits and gathering, unlocking new strong or charged attacks and lessening the SP required for actions. There are plenty of quests for each life too, tasking you with killing x amount of y type of enemies or finally taking down that legendary fish. Cross the threshold for a required number of completed quests for a life, and you rank up, unlocking higher-level gear. I cannot emphasise enough that the grind is very akin to an MMORPG, but nevertheless a straight shock of serotonin to the brain.

Even while Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time is doing ten million things at once, it’s also like three games in one. There’s your main stuff where you’re completing quests and working through levelling up your lives. Then, in your downtime, you’re also essentially making your own Animal Crossing village on an island, welcoming in villagers that you’ve rescued from dungeons, building houses and terraforming the environment.

There is also a separate instanced island that’s an open world and features a zone that you explore and climb around in, unlocking towers to defog a map and entering shrines to complete puzzles and earn a reward… just like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. This latter reference is less subtle and almost coy; the first time you happen upon a shrine, you discover it’s green and glowing and has an inviting entrance, only instead of being inside an almost rock-like structure it’s inside a luminescent poop. The characters even comment on and question why this shrine has taken this shape, but both you and I know it’s to get as close to the likeness as possible while giving a wink and a nudge.

You could almost accuse these elements of being derivative because of how familiar they are with their inspiration. Yet they hold their own well, so it’s hard to stay mad for all that long. The Fantasy Life series already wears its inspiration and heart on its sleeve, having a gorgeous and colourful art style that is very Nintendo, despite no longer being a third-party exclusive to said platform. Everything is so bright and full of life and charm that you forgive small oddities like the invisible walls you run into a little too often in the open world, or yes, the nonsensical, frankly boring story. If you were to take an MRI brain scan of me while playing Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time, you’d see me enamoured and enlightened, filled with activity. It’s simply that good to see the numbers go up.

9

Amazing

Positive:

  • A vibrant colourful and exciting world with plenty of humour and charm
  • Incredibly fun grind as you work through the many lives and complete quests
  • Smart interconnected skills and systems that all feed into one another
  • They jammed a Breath of the Wild-like open world and Animal Crossing-esque village in here and its good!

Negative:

  • Story is a bit nothing
  • Occasional annoying invisible walls in the open world

Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time is amazing and well worth the wait, and Level-5 bringing it to multiple platforms to experience it in all its whimsy and wonder was an incredibly smart and measured decision. I’d struggle to find anyone who wouldn’t gel with how effortlessly endearing it is, with its vibrant world and charm, dopamine-providing levelling system, a bounty of activities and things to see and do. The side-games that feel like their own games, whether that’s exploring a Breath of the Wild-like open world or creating a cute and cozy village of locals à la Animal Crossing, are substantial and meaty, adding to the fun and delight that awaits around every corner. Even the most monotonous task of chopping down a tree is suddenly super exciting. The Fantasy Life series, and The Girl Who Steals Time, are just that magical and effective in doing so. This is a level up for Level-5. Job complete.