Level-5 brought a new demo of Fantasy Life to play at Tokyo Game Show. When I saw Fantasy Life last year I played as a Royal Guard. I thought it would be more interesting to try one of the everyday lives so I started playing Fantasy Life as a miner.
The Tokyo Game Show demo lets players try character customization, which is kind of like making a Mii. Players can choose a hairstyle, eyes, nose, mouth, and so forth. I didn’t spend too much time with this so my hero looked pretty generic.
I was more interested to see what Fantasy Life was like as a miner so I rushed into gameplay. My first mission was to find my mentor, Deldas. I ran across town to meet him and then I ran onto the main map with Deldas looking for gems to prospect. The field has monsters like bees and angry carrots that tried to attack me. My miner was armed with a sword, which I used to cut up the carrots. I would say the fighting system is similar to other action RPGs, but the point of Fantasy Life when you’re playing a regular job isn’t to fight.
When I reached the gems Deldas explained how to extract them from stones. First, you have to pull out your pickaxe. Then you hit A while standing next to a rock. When the rock’s life bar is empty, it shatters and turns into a gemstone you can walk on top of to collect. That’s the slow way of mining. You can also press the Y button to do a heavy strike, which is a rhythm based move. You need to tap Y again on queue to hit the rock otherwise you miss. Heavy strikes take more SP while weak attacks only take a little SP. Yes, that’s right there’s an energy meter. It recharges over time and you can still use the weak mining strike even if the meter is empty. After I collected three gems the demo ended.
I got to briefly try the fisherman job too which has players "battle" with fish. First you toss your lure in water by pressing A. When a fish bites it you have to press A to lure it in until the fish’s HP is zero. You also have to watch the line tension strength by using the slide pad.
Fantasy Life has a ton of other jobs too like lumberjack, magician, and hunter which are also in the Tokyo Game Show demo. Level-5 also showed artwork for carpenter, blacksmith, alchemist, and chef too.
Fantasy Life comes out on December 27 in Japan.
