At its core, Fantasy Life i (and yes, it's an "i", not an "I") is an "everything game". There is a part that is a bit like Animal Crossing or Stardew Valley, another part that plays like a pale copy of Breath of the Wild, and some elements that remind me of Palworld, where I collect creatures to help me in my crafting. The general game design of Fantasy Life i is to be extremely wide, while being rather shallow. Nothing is really difficult, this is the one game where in spite of the action combat and the quick time event crafting I have no problems whatsoever with my slow reaction speed. That is mostly because all these systems only to a small part depend on you pressing the right button quickly, but depend a lot on your stats. If you want to craft an item with recommended stat of 150 while having only 100 stat, that would be challenging. But it is easier to just get your stats up to 200, at which point the same item is nearly trivial to craft.

On the one side I would say that Fantasy Life i has a lot of grinding. On the other side, even the grind is wide and shallow. You never have to grind one thing very long, the rewards come hard and fast. But you do have to grind a *lot* of different things. While you only need one combat "life" (aka profession), you need all of the 4 gathering and 6 crafting lives to advance, each of which goes to level 100, with 10 ranks to achieve. That is because of some sometimes curious design elements, where for example in a dungeon crawl a path is suddenly blocked by a tree, and if you haven't leveled your woodcutting skill far enough, you can't proceed. When the game at the start asks you to choose one life, that is extremely misleading. You choose 1 or more combat lives, and then end up doing all 10 non-combat ones.

Thus the title of my post, Fantasy Life i is a game that steals time. There is always something to do, and usually you have something to do in several different lives at once. While there is a main story to follow, you can also end up playing for a day or two while completely ignoring the main story. It is only after a lot of time that you then need to return to the main story, because that unlocks access to new places. You can somewhat play this as a kind of cozy game, and it keeps you occupied for a long time, without ever stressing you out. And sometimes a not so exciting game can be good.

What isn't good is that Fantasy Life i often feels as if it had bought a collection of other games from Temu and assembled them. The Ginormosia part is definitely a copy of Breath of the Wild, having towers to remove the fog of war, and shrines with puzzles. But where the shrines in Breath of the Wild are interesting, the puzzles in Ginormosia are far more mundane and repetitive. You can climb mountains and swim oceans in Ginormosia, but without a stamina system that is rather trivial, and without the glider the verticality doesn't add much to the gameplay. The crafting part of the game is marred by all 6 crafting lives working exactly identical, so you are playing the same mini game, regardless of whether you are tailoring, cooking, or smithing. The gathering lives also work nearly identical to each other, although fishing is a minor variation, and farming is a bit different. If you admired the brilliant game design of the various games that Fantasy Life i is copying, you won't find that same brilliance in here. Fantasy Life i is about quantity, not quality. It isn't downright bad, each system works okay, but it isn't something to write home about.

As a summer holiday game, Fantasy Life i works well enough. If you are looking for a game just to pass time, without having to get too involved or applying yourself too much, this is it. If you are looking for a new and great experience that moves and excites you, you'd better look elsewhere.