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I didn't remember what the controls were, I didn't remember anything about my character, I didn’t remember anything about the systems, I couldn’t re-do the tutorial… I find it totally unbelievable that the developers never foresaw a circumstance in which a person would want to delete an old character or start a new one.

I tried to remember where I left off, but too much time had passed and the game is a mess of too many menus, too much information and too much weird terminology all over the place. I found the whole thing incredibly unfriendly, and as much as I like the weird bio-organic visual aesthetic, these developers really don't have any frigging clue how to make it more approachable. I’m not sure they even care. I just deleted the thing and said to hell with it… I'm not going to work hard to get into something if the devs aren’t going to meet me halfway.


Although it popped up on my radar a while ago, I didn't have any plans to play it for two reasons. First, I'm not a big fan of level-5. I think their visuals are phenomenal, but their game designs always feel tired and grind-heavy to me. Apart from Professor Layton, it's been years and years since I've enjoyed any of their work. The other reason is that quite a few reviewers took a dump all over this game, calling it repetitive and shallow. That fit right in with what I expected from Level-5, so I bagged it.

So what made me change my mind and give it a shot? Well, I’m a superfan of the @Gaymebar podcast, and I really respect what those guys have to say. Although I don't always agree with them, everybody on that show is whip-smart and they made an incredibly convincing case for it over the last few episodes. If not for Toups and Jeremiah, there's no way I would have given Fantasy Life a shot, but they really won me over and I'm glad that they did.

So, what about it? Basically, the player starts off with a generic character and the game offers 12 different jobs for them to learn. They break down into a few major groups: combat, crafting, and gathering. Outside of mastering each of these jobs (or really, only as many as you want to) there's also a main storyline and a metric ton of sidequests for people who want more to do.


One of the strongest aspects of Fantasy Life is that there are just so many different things to do. I started off as a Hunter and began killing things, but once I got tired of that I became a Miner and started gathering things. Once I got tired of that, I became a Chef and started cooking things… It's all very simple and open, and the game is all about letting players jump back and forth between activities anytime they feel like it. You're never locked into doing something that you don't want to do, and there's always something else to try if the thing you're doing isn't fun anymore.

The game also goes above and beyond when it comes to keeping organized lists of all the different quests and pointing a player in the right direction. There are lots of reminders about what can be done and how to do it, and there's never really any question about what you should be doing next… There's always a wealth of things to do, and clear instruction on how.

Ironically, a game like this can easily be seen as busywork, but it really captured my attention because I've had such limited free time and no real ability to sit down and focus on anything for marathon sessions, so the simplicity and approachability of the game has been a perfect fit for me. It also helps that it's cute as hell, and there's something very appealing about being set loose in this small-scale world and learning the lay of the land… At some point you'll need to go into a forest to kill an animal, but later on you'll come back to find minerals, or to chop trees. Giving each area multiple uses lends the world a greater degree of depth -- being able to learn the area and see it from different angles is something that few games can pull off easily.
I have to say, something like Animal Crossing doesn't have a fraction of the depth that Fantasy Life does, not to mention AC feels much more limited and repetitive, so I'm not quite sure why so many people were quick to embrace AC while writing FL off as a grindfest. I mean, it’s certainly not a grand-scale RPG with a sweeping narrative and a vast world to explore… It’s a series of small jobs that people can do in small bites, but it does it well and it's all very nice and neat. Maybe those reviewers were expecting something else, but I think Fantasy Life is really great at what it does, and at this point in my life, I am definitely a customer for what it's selling.

	PlayStation Store North America	PlayStation Store EMEA territories	Xbox Live Global	Steam Global
Episode 1	17th February	18th February	18th February	18th February
Episode 2	24th February	25th February	25th February	25th February
Episode 3	3rd March	4th March	4th March	4th March
Episode 4	10th March	11th March	11th March	11th March

*Inhale* Persona 5. PS3 + PS4. 2015.  *Exhale*

Atlus U.S.A., is confirming the news from the PlayStation Experience keynote that development of Persona 5 for North America will include the PlayStation®4 computer entertainment system in addition to the originally announced PlayStation®3.