Fantasy Life Online: First Look

[estirose]

Well, it's Fantasy Life... and it's not Fantasy Life. Stuff under cut, partly because of (slightly resized) pics.

So, it is very much a gatcha town building game with all the daily stuff, quests, and chances to buy the currency, though the town building isn't obvious, because I spent the first half hour or so doing character creation, tutorials, and the first part of the storyline. (Because it actually bothers to have a storyline.)

Castele seems to have wandered out of existence for some reason, as has Divinus. Divinus has been replaced by two quarreling gods for no good reason. That, and the fact that both Yuelia and Noelia seem to think their home is "Lunare" are my only canon quibbles. (Well, there is another minor one, but I'll get to that later.) They do acknowledge the end of the storyline in that Yuelia gave up a lot of her abilities to save Reveria.

That being said, the character creation is a bit different than the original game's, but there are no premium hairstyles/face parts. You then choose one of the two gods to represent and they are the ones that give you your (initial only, I hope) character class. They charge you with figuring out an issue with shadow/dark monsters spreading through Reveria.

Once you go through the "how to fight/how to swap characters when fighting" tutorial (which includes what's essentially a dark Napdragon - no, I am not kidding, I recognize the animation from the Napdragon's babies quest in the original game - and then are sent down where Yuelia meets you.

You then have a quest that involves talking to a guard (it's like the first East Grassy Plains cutscene) and fighting a trio of carrotys. The East Grassy Plains are pretty much pulled from canon. The next mission has you trying to get tickets to a concert for the gods. No, don't ask me why and Noelia isn't sure herself. This storyline gets you a wide area of merchants for the various supplies you need for your life classes in the area just into what would be the West Grassy Plains, you get to meet up with Pam (your landlady from the original game), and you also get a merchant for your soon-to-be town and find out that the royal family from Castele has disappeared.

I haven't progressed since then, but I am enjoying the fact that we have several new NPCs, two of which I'd avoid in my fic, but we've got a mysterious boy I'd like to know more about and Snow, the Mercenary turned idol singer.

Some screengrabs from the game:

Oh hey, it's the reps from the twelve Life Classes! I'm blanking who the person between Poppy (Carpenter Life) and Taylor (Tailor Life) is (other than he has to be a Cook), but that may be the art style in the new game. It took me a minute or two to realize the person on the other side of Poppy is Fyra (Blacksmith Life)! ETA: I think that's Flapjack!

Life Selection screen. I chose this one because I like Vulkan, but I didn't choose the Blacksmith Life.

Noelia, why is your sister's name in quotes? (Also yes, I did name my PC Erion, and she is a tailor.)

ETA: Life (character class) selection screens part 1 and part 2 (tumblr links)

So, I got to meet Madam Purl and Taylor, and it says straight out that Taylor is Purl's granddaughter! (Taylor's hair is bluer than her canon appearance but very close.) Once I got my third quest in, the two of them showed up to give Erion the start of her Tailor Life, including providing a tailoring building that I had to place.

First quest was to make dandelion cotton, just like the first Tailor quest in the main game. We then went out to the East Grassy Plains to pick up some dandelion cotton, and met Shea, a young tailor and her brother Mitchel, also a tailor, who are under a different Master. We also meet Chic, who actually knows Taylor (which makes more sense, as it was always odd that Taylor didn't know Chic, her grandmother's apprentice). He makes fluffy ribbon just as in canon, but you get the wool from Shea instead of the sheep, and Taylor's song is different from the American one.

The crafting is close but not completely like crafting in the main game. The Tailor crafting has been changed a bit to align with the other crafting stations - in the main game, there were two "tap when the dot hits the center" and one "tap repeatedly" instead of the usual "tap repeatedly", "hold down" and "tap when the dot hits the center", so they switched the middle station to "hold down". To move between stations you swipe in the direction of the station. You're given a "test" at the end of each Life level, so for this one I had the fluffy ribbon top.

The entire "craft items to get stars" is intact, at least. It's not that different from the main game apart from the NPCs at this point. I'll have to see how this develops. So, the miner characters are in character (and have a younger sister), I'm running across more characters from canon (hi, Spoolie!), and started miner and woodcutter. Miner I'm doing very well at; Woodcutter I just started but now Heyho is way more confident than he was in canon. (Though he still takes about reverence towards nature).

I paid for gems to get a large new-user gacha pull (so you don't have to), and so I seem to be using my tailor Life a lot more than anything else because I got a good pull for that and a couple of other classes, along with a pair of fighter types to keep my PC that tends to be a crafter/gatherer safe. (Among other characters, I also got Allan, from the cook life.) I don't know if it was worth it, but I think it's okay, just one time.