FANTASY LIFE i: The Girl Who Steals Time sees you take on different "lives" and traveling through time! Read our review to see what it did well, what it didn't do well, and if it's worth buying.

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FANTASY LIFE i: The Girl Who Steals Time Review Overview

What is FANTASY LIFE i: The Girl Who Steals Time?

FANTASY LIFE i: The Girl Who Steals Time is an upcoming social slow-life RPG developed and published by LEVEL-5, scheduled for release on May 21, 2025. This title serves as a new installment in the Fantasy Life series, following previous entries such as 2014’s Fantasy Life on the 3DS and 2021’s Fantasy Life Online on mobile platforms.

In the continent of Ginormosia, players are introduced to a ruined island where they are tasked with restoring its former glory. Central to the narrative is a time-travel mechanic that allows the characters to journey between the present and a thousand years into the past to uncover the island's mysteries and facilitate its reconstruction.

As with previous installments in the series, gameplay here is a mix of life simulation and role-playing elements. The game offers players the choice of various "Lives" or professions, including returning classes and new additions like Farmer and Artist. Unique systems, such as town planning and island restoration, are integral for players to build and customize their own cities. The game supports single-player and multiplayer modes, including two-player couch co-op and four-player online cross-play.

FANTASY LIFE i: The Girl Who Steals Time features:
　⚫︎　14 Unique Jobs
　⚫︎　Shape Your Island and Home
　⚫︎　Explore the Open-World of Ginormosia
　⚫︎　"Slow-Life" RPG Elements
　⚫︎　Cross-Play and Cross-Save Functionality

For more gameplay details, read everything we know about FANTASY LIFE i: The Girl Who Steals Time gameplay and story.

Steam
PlayStation			Xbox			Switch
Price		$59.99
Switch 2
Price		TBA

FANTASY LIFE i: The Girl Who Steals Time Pros & Cons

Pros	Cons
Rewarding Life System With Job Synergies Cozy World Full of Humor Massive Single-Player Content	Multiplayer is Nearly Pointless There’s Voice Acting… at Times

FANTASY LIFE i: The Girl Who Steals Time Overall Score - 80/100

FANTASY LIFE i: The Girl Who Steals Time doesn’t reinvent the wheel for the franchise, but it polishes the systems and features of the original 3DS game with a kind of earnest charm that makes even the most routine tasks feel like small triumphs. It’s less concerned with its overarching narrative and more invested in the joy of simply doing—of gathering, crafting, helping, and existing in a world that appreciates your existence. It stumbles in its attempts at shared play, yes, but alone, it becomes a place you’ll want to return to for the simple pleasure of getting really, really good at being useful.

FANTASY LIFE i: The Girl Who Steals Time Story - 7/10

The story here isn’t trying to be profound, and that’s exactly what makes it charming. It’s a simple game with a simple story that never overstays its welcome. Its twists and turns are telegraphed from a mile away, and many of its characters often feel like quest-giving mascots, but there’s a surprising amount of heart—and a lot of genuinely funny moments—that give it soul.

FANTASY LIFE i: The Girl Who Steals Time Gameplay - 9/10

FANTASY LIFE i: The Girl Who Steals Time thrives on the quiet satisfaction of doing a little bit of everything well. With 14 different Lives to master, each feeds into the other in a loop of crafting, gathering, and battling. Progress is more attached to being useful than to defeating stronger opponents. It’s simple, yes, but this simplicity is a strength, an invitation to play at your own pace and find meaning in the mundane. Too bad I can’t say the same praise for its multiplayer, however.

FANTASY LIFE i: The Girl Who Steals Time Visuals - 8/10

Visually, FANTASY LIFE i: The Girl Who Steals Time is an appealing evolution of its 3DS predecessor, as though someone took the original game, polished every edge, brightened the palette, and gave it just enough glow to feel new without losing its roots. That said, the environments can feel a little blocky and static at times, with some areas lacking the finer environmental details that make other life sims feel truly lived in.

FANTASY LIFE i: The Girl Who Steals Time Audio - 7/10

The game’s audio perfectly suits the moments they’re played in, but they’re unlikely to turn heads. The soundtrack complements the rhythms of its gameplay, yes. It is music that does its job with grace, though you probably won’t find yourself humming any of its tunes once you’ve turned off your console. Voice acting is sparse, too—just enough to give characters a little color, but not enough for them to leave a lasting impression.

FANTASY LIFE i: The Girl Who Steals Time Value for Money - 9/10

At $59.99, Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time might seem like a steep ask for a cozy life sim, but it more than earns its keep if you’re here for the solo experience. With 30 to 100 hours of potential playtime, depending on how many Lives you pursue, the game offers a generous return on investment for players who enjoy slow-burning progress and fun worldbuilding. Its replayability is high, its systems are satisfying, and there’s almost always something new to try. Just don’t go in expecting to have fun in its multiplayer, though, and you’ll find a solo experience well worth the Dosh.

FANTASY LIFE i: The Girl Who Steals Time Review: Get a Life You’ll Like Here

Picture this: you are sprawled on a couch in 2014, Nintendo 3DS in hand, eyes glued to a screen not because of flashy cutscenes or sweeping orchestral bombast, but because a talking butterfly just asked if you’d rather be a paladin or a tailor—and somehow, both felt equally important. Fantasy Life on the 3DS wasn’t the loudest or most glamorous RPG on the block, but it was a cozy, hybrid life sim, where slaying dragons and baking pies held equal narrative weight, kind of similar to the Rune Factory series. It was part of a short-lived golden age for the 3DS, when every few months seemed to bring games that, despite their technical limitations, understood the value of personality and play. Fantasy Life understood better than most games then or now, that alongside being strong, power fantasy is also about being useful, needed, or just really, really good at carpentry.

Naturally, I played it to death.

I poured hours into its world not because I was chasing high-level loot or mastering its relatively simple combat, but because there was something endlessly gratifying about inhabiting a world that rewarded you for doing things—anything, really—with care and consistency. It was absurd, yes, but it also captured the magic of the "slow game" before that became an indie-dominated trend.

It also meant that when FANTASY LIFE i: The Girl Who Steals Time was announced, I approached it with a mix of cautious optimism. There’s a weight to revisiting a series that imprinted on you a decade ago. Especially one like this, where the emotional bond is more so tied to the daily hum of quests, the soft chimes of level-ups, the way the game gently nudges you toward mastery of a life.

After delays upon delays, now that the game is here, it feels like a long-awaited reunion. And reunions, as we all may know, come with a mix of excitement, hesitation, and the nagging question: Does its magic still hold?

A Jaunt Through Time

Your adventure begins in earnest as you, an assistant to the archeologist Edward, set sail in pursuit of a mystery regarding the fossilized remains of a dragon. Guided by the resonance of this ancient relic, you and Edward’s journey leads you to an uncharted island. Just as the island’s jagged shores come into view, a Dark Dragon erupts from the skies and hurls your plans into chaos. But before despair can take root, the fossil reveals its true form: a Bone Dragon, ancient and defiant, who bursts to life and charges into the fray. You give chase through an otherworldly gate—and suddenly, the barren island is behind you. Through this portal, you’re pulled into a land untouched by the turmoil you’ve just escaped: the strangely serene village of Eternia.

Or at least, that’s what it seems at first glance. The village is perched in a corner of the past, full of residents blissfully unaware of the calamity looming on the horizon. This is where The Girl Who Steals Time earns its name. You’ve been flung backward in time, and your journey begins anew amid a civilization frozen between tradition and transformation. You soon meet Rem, a girl who, you meet again in the present as a ghost who implores you to "destroy the cog." What this means—or what consequences it may bring—is left deliberately vague.

It’s a setup that’s far more ambitious than the original Fantasy Life’s modest narrative framing. This time, your actions in the past ripple forward. This shapes not just your own journey, but the fate of the island and those who call it home.

If you’re coming into The Girl Who Steals Time expecting a Shakespearean tragedy brimming with moral ambiguity and multi-layered characters worthy of a thesis paper—I admire your optimism, but that’s not quite the story this game is trying to tell. Instead, what you get is something much simpler and sillier: a lightweight narrative scaffold designed to support your leisurely stroll through its world. And you know what? That’s perfectly okay.

The story here doesn’t do much twist and turn as it gently loops and meanders. You can see most of the "big" reveals coming from half a continent away, and the character motivations are rarely deeper than what’s needed to move you from one questline to the next. None of it is going to keep you up at night, furiously speculating on lore threads. And yes, it’s not supposed to. The narrative is merely an excuse to push you into new areas, introduce a bunch of colorful characters, and occasionally drop a mild "oh neat" moment when a past event connects to a present development.

What the story does have, however, is a big, unapologetic heart—and a sense of humor that caught me off guard more than once. I’ll admit it; I laughed more than I care to admit to the game's often juvenile humor. Not the air-out-of-nose sort of laugh either. I mean, full-on laugh-out-loud, often at 2 A.M. in the morning while reading a line of dialogue that veered mildly into the absurd. One minute, the characters acknowledge the game fading to black for a quick transport to another part of the questline. Next, a Goddess Statue bites her tongue and repeats her advice with an embarrassed air. It's the kind of exposition that cares not about the emotional gravitas of the scene but more about delivering information in the most entertaining way possible, and I’m all for it.

From One Life to Another

The Girl Who Steals Time’s story may not be Oscar-worthy, but the game, at its heart, is less about saving the world and more about shaping your place in it. The game’s defining feature, much like its 3DS predecessor, is its "Lives" system, and it’s still brilliant in its simplicity. There are 14 different Lives in total, split across three broad categories: combat, gathering, and crafting. Each life comes with its own skills to level, quests to complete, and progression tree to climb.

What’s wonderful is how seamlessly these roles feed into each other. As you take on tasks and complete Life challenges, you earn Stars, which raise your rank in that Life and unlock new abilities, tools, or techniques. A Blacksmith might craft a powerful new sword for a Mercenary, who uses it to farm materials dropped by enemies that a Tailor then turns into a fashionable gear. A Cook might need ingredients fished out by an Angler, who in turn needs better tools from a Carpenter. The loop is circular, yes—but that’s where the satisfaction lives. Every job supports another, as though you’re gradually mastering a whole ecosystem.

You’re never punished for switching Lives—quite the opposite. Trying a new profession is as simple as chatting with Auntie Anne and slapping on finishing a short beginner quest. Even professions like Woodcutter that demand time and stamina aren't restrictive, as stamina replenishes over time.

The crafting and gathering mechanics are simple, often reduced to timing-based mini-games or tap-and-hold sequences. These make them approachable. You’re rarely doing anything difficult, really. If you’ve played the original Fantasy Life, much of this will feel familiar—and The Girl Who Steals Time doesn’t stray far from that formula. But that’s not to say it’s lazy; rather, it’s iterative, as it refines the mechanics that made the first game so special while adding a bunch of new elements to keep things fresh.

Combat is likewise serviceable. It’s more refined than the original’s—you can now dodge, for instance—but it’s still similarly basic and occasionally floaty. There are arena fights that sort of pass as boss fights, but they’re rarely difficult; they’re merely there to punctuate the narrative. That said, since combat is just one of the many avenues you can pursue in the game, it doesn’t drag down the experience unless you’re expecting a full-fledged action RPG.

Breath of the Wild Lite

The island of Ginormosia itself is designed to be your new open-world playground. Scattered throughout the land are shrines reminiscent of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, each holding a small puzzle, a battle, or a quirky encounter that nudges the story forward. These aren’t particularly difficult, but they serve their purpose well: they give you a reason to explore and just about have fun with what you’re given. There’s a spirit of discovery baked into everything, whether you’re tracking down rare ingredients in a remote valley or unlocking fast travel points that make your life easier across Lives.

And then there’s your home. You have a little house to decorate, furnish, and nap in when your stamina’s low or when you want to fast-forward to nighttime for a particular quest. It’s not a sprawling life sim à la Animal Crossing, but it scratches the itch just enough. It’s fun to just place a bookshelf next to a bed you crafted yourself, with walls painted to match the floors.

Why Is There Even Multiplayer at This Point?

Unfortunately, for a game that so warmly celebrates the idea of shared adventures, The Girl Who Steals Time delivers a multiplayer experience that is, quite frankly, baffling in both its design and execution. The concept of teaming up with friends in a life sim RPG—gathering, crafting, exploring, or simply cohabiting a digital world like in Animal Crossing or Stardew Valley—should be a no-brainer, yes? It practically begs for co-op! However, the reality is a deeply disappointing and seemingly half-hearted attempt at integrating multiplayer.

First off, the fundamentals: yes, you can join your friends in the same world. Technically. You and your friend can enter the same instance of the world, sure. You can see their avatars, wave at them, maybe admire the way they’ve decorated their house like a cottagecore fever dream. But that’s where the interaction ends. You can’t progress the story. You can’t complete Life challenges. You can’t hand in side quests. You can’t even check your own quest log. The entire infrastructure of the game’s progression systems is locked down the moment multiplayer is started.

What’s worse is that players are tethered to the host like overgrown toddlers! Stray too far and you’re booted. If you want to explore a different region, the host has to fast-travel everyone there. The illusion of freedom evaporates quickly, and you’re left with the question of why even play with your friend at all if both of you can’t even progress an inch in the entire game?

Even basic functions are disabled. You can’t switch your Life class while in multiplayer or access menus tied to your skills and equipment. The whole thing feels like a cruel joke—especially when you consider how much effort went into enabling cross-play and cross-save functionality. These are features you’d expect in a game designed for long play sessions, and yet they’re yoked to a system that won’t even let two players complete a simple fetch quest together. It’s maddening.

Is FANTASY LIFE i: The Girl Who Steals Time Worth It?

Yes, but This One’s Best Played Solo; Trust Me

At $59.99, FANTASY LIFE i: The Girl Who Steals Time carries a price tag that might initially raise eyebrows, especially for a game that, on the surface, appears to be a cozy life sim. But spend even a few hours in Ginormosia and Eternia, and everything becomes clear. If you intend to play just a few Lives and follow the main story to its conclusion, you’re looking at roughly 30-40 hours of content. But that would be missing the point entirely. The game excels when approached with curiosity—when you dabble in multiple professions or simply wander to see what’s waiting around the next bend. Push deeper, and that playtime easily stretches into the 60 to 100-hour range. There’s plenty of replayability here, especially if you’re a completionist.

For all this praise, however, it must be said that the multiplayer experience is a bitter thorn in the side of what is otherwise a good game. This feature diminishes expectations, especially for those who envisioned shared adventures with friends. That disappointment lingers.

Still, as a solo journey, The Girl Who Steals Time justifies its cost. It’s a comforting getaway where the little victories feel huge, joy is found in small routines, and time is something you feel like you truly get to steal back, in the metaphorical sense.

Steam
PlayStation			Xbox			Switch
Price		$59.99
Switch 2
Price		TBA

FANTASY LIFE I: The Girl Who Steals Time FAQ

How Long To Beat FANTASY LIFE I: The Girl Who Steals Time

A typical playthrough of the game, which spans 7 chapters, lasts around 30-40 hours, depending on how you approach the game. Completionists can expect to invest significantly more time, potentially doubling or tripling that duration.

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FANTASY LIFE I: The Girl Who Steals Time Product Information

Title	FANTASY LIFE I: THE GIRL WHO STEALS TIME
Release Date	May 18, 2025 (Early Access) May 21, 2025 (Worldwide Release) TBA (Switch 2) More Details
Developer	LEVEL-5 Comcept LEVEL-5 Osaka Office
Publisher	LEVEL-5 Inc.
Supported Platforms	PC (via Steam) Nintendo Switch 2 Nintendo Switch PlayStation 5 PlayStation 4 Xbox Series X|S
Genre	Social Slow-Life RPG
Number of Players	Single-Player (1) Local Co-Op (1-2) Online Co-Op (1-4)
ESRB Rating	ESRB Everyone
Official Website	Official Website for FANTASY LIFE i: The Girl Who Steals Time

L A R Opalec

Lloyd grew up bonding with his big brother over video games. While RPGs like Disco Elysium and Final Fantasy IX hold a special place in his heart, he's always up to try new genres.