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Best of the Rest: Danny's picks of 2014
ATTENTION: The year 2014 has concluded its temporal self-destruct sequence. If you are among the escapees, please join us in salvaging and preserving the best games from the irradiated chrono-debris. Fantasy Life Sometimes, you just wanna sidequest. For those times, there's Fantasy Life. Fantasy Life is fun in the way that checking off items on a checklist is fun. There's a solid action-RPG here from Professor Layton series creator Level-5, sure, but much of my time in Fantasy Life was spent completing sidequests, crafting equipment, and hunting down component items so that I could craft more equipment and complete more sidequests. You don't even have to kill anything to complete the game - you can smith, cook, sew, and alchemize your way to victory if that's the way you want to play it. Fantasy Life is an endless grind that remains compelling even after I've completed hundreds of its quests. If you don't fit into its niche, you'll be bored immediately. If you're a specific breed of completionist, Fantasy Life is impossible to put down. In either case, beware.
New Nintendo eShop releases: Bayonetta 2, Fantasy Life, Aria of Sorrow
It's a busy week on the Nintendo eShop, with PlatinumGames' inimitably stylish action game Bayonetta 2 premiering on the Wii U while Level-5's RPG Fantasy Life leads the charge on the Nintendo 3DS. Players who purchase Bayonetta 2 on the eShop will additionally receive a copy of the original Bayonetta for free starting this week. Other Wii U games premiering today include Ubisoft's Just Dance 2015, Activision's karaoke sim The Voice, and a Virtual Console port of Konami's 2003 Nintendo DS platformer Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow. Over on the 3DS side of the eShop, Nintendo's instructional app Pokemon Art Academy and WayForward's exploratory platformer Shantae and the Pirate's Curse headline a selection of 10 new games. 3DS owners may also want to check out Detune's portable synthesizer KORG DSN-12, Bandai Namco's Power Rangers: Super Megaforce, and Activision's The Legend of Korra: A New Era Begins. Nintendo additionally teased next week's Virtual Console lineup, revealing that Capcom's ghoulish side-scrollers Demon's Crest and Gargoyle's Quest 2 will launch alongside Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land on October 30. Hit the jump below for a full list of this week's featured releases.
Fantasy Life, Captain Toad to feature in Nintendo's livestream
While more than half of Nintendo upcoming "gameplay" live-stream is just for the 3DS Super Smash Bros, the company's also giving some lower-profile games their time in the limelight. The eight-hour broadcast starts at 10AM PT (1PM ET) tomorrow, with Smash 3DS going on the air at 1PM PT (4PM ET). The games starring in the first three hours include Bayonetta 2 and Hyrule Warriors, a duo Nintendo's already provided individual Directs for, but also three less high-profile games in Fantasy Life, Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker and Ultimate NES Remix.
Launch day DLC coming to Fantasy Life, Hyrule Warriors
Among Nintendo's swath of announcements this morning is word that both Legend of Zelda-themed musou brawler Hyrule Warriors and open-world fantasy adventure Fantasy Life will receive downloadable additions at launch. According to Nintendo, once players fire up Hyrule Warriors they will find an eShop download that adds a new weapon, new gameplay mode and the option to select your own background music to the Omega Force-developed Hylian melee. Fantasy Life, on the other hand, will receive new geography. Specifically, a place called "Origin Island," which is described as "a new area that is home to an ancient culture and powerful enemies, additional story content, new ranks to achieve in Life Classes, access to even more powerful equipment and two new varieties of pets to adopt: birds and dragons." While the Hyrule Warriors DLC will be available at no cost to players, pricing details on Fantasy Life's Origin Island are currently lacking. Nintendo states that the DLC will be "available for purchase" at the time of the game's launch, but makes no mention of how much it might cost. [Image: Nintendo/Koei Tecmo]
Level 5's Fantasy Life becomes reality in Europe next month
Finally, Fantasy Life is confirmed for Europe with a regional release date of September 24. Don't let the proximity of finally to fantasy in that opening sentence mislead you, the 3DS RPG is a Level-5 joint, even if it does feature music by Nobuo Uematsu. It's taken a while for Fantasy Life to head West after it charmed Japan back in 2012 with its mix of action-RPG combat and Animal Crossing-like vocational fun. According to Nintendo of Europe's press release, the game features a Link Mode tool that lets you chat online with other players while you adventure, a separate feature to the local and online co-op (for up to three players.) That suggests the new version includes the Link expansion released in Japan, which also added new areas, quests and items as well as the chat functionality. As Nintendo revealed at E3, Fantasy Life is also coming to North America on October 24. Below the break you'll find a new trailer showcasing the game's various features, including the ability to buy a faithful doggie pet. Truly, that is the Fantasy Life.
Level-5 RPG Fantasy Life coming to 3DS
Level-5's Fantasy Life will be released in North America for the 3DS, a Nintendo representative announced today. After creating their own avatars, players can set out to save the world or unwind with low-speed events like cooking or fishing. The game features music from Nobuo Uematsu and illustration from Yoshitaka Amano. Fantasy Life is coming to the 3DS on October 24.
Two more Level-5 games moving to 3DS
Level-5 showed strong support for the 3DS platform at its Level-5 Vision event. In addition to revealing Professor Layton vs. Gyakuten Saiban, showing off Professor Layton and the Mask of Miracle, and announcing Time Travelers' migration to the 3D handheld, the developer also showcased two other 3DS games, both recently moved to 3DS from other platforms. Fantasy Life, Brownie Brown's game about performing various jobs in an RPG-style town verging on apocalypse, was first announced for DS last year, but will now be released on 3DS, with a new polygonal art style, in 2011. It features contributions from Final Fantasy vets Yoshitaka Amano (doing illustrations) and Nobuo Uematsu (composing). Level-5 also announced a 3DS version of Kyaba Joppi, a hostess simulator originally for the mobile game service ROID. Andriasang has screens of this adorable game -- which, we expect, won't leave Japan. It features guest customers like Lupin III.
Fantasy Life's collection of lives
Level-5 released character art of people working in the twenty different job-based "lives" in the developer's newly announced Fantasy Life. The designs show the very Little King's Story-esque style being used by character designer Hideo Minaba, which is going to charm the money right out of our bank accounts. Each one of these lives represents a unique set of quests, and a unique ending with a different Nobuo Uematsu vocal theme. The identity of each Life isn't labeled, though Andriasang printed a list from Famitsu magazine of all the jobs to go along with the picture. Many of them seem pretty obvious given the tools in their hands, and six of them are outright revealed by a second picture. Both images, and the list, are available after the break.
Level-5 invites players into a 'Fantasy Life' ... in a doomed town
In addition to the London Life RPG inside Professor Layton and the Devil's Flute, Level-5 announced another collaboration with Brownie Brown, the Sword of Mana developer and Mother 3 co-creator: Fantasy Life, a town simulation in the vein of Animal Crossing. Fantasy Life occurs in the world of Fantazeal, which shows prophesied signs of impending destruction after a shadow passes over the moon. If this were a normal RPG, you'd portray some kind of teenaged hero fighting to save the world from this catastrophe, but in this game, it basically doesn't seem to matter: you choose a job and undertake daily "Life Quests" related to that job, to improve your wealth and happiness levels. The game includes local and online wireless functionality, allowing others to visit your town. Aside from Level-5 and Brownie Brown, Fantasy Life features more big names. Nobuo Uematsu is composing an opening theme, as well as ending themes for the ending of each job's "life," and character design is being done by Hideo Minaba, a Final Fantasy series alum who most recently designed the characters in Little King's Story. [Via Andriasang]
Mabinogi lives!
On March 27th, Nexon America will launch the North American version of Mabinogi, the wildly popular MMO that has, until now, been commercially available only in Asia. This launch will bring a whole host of new features, including the opening of the Nexon Cash Shop, where players can get their hands on microtransaction-enabled items to enhance their 'Fantasy Life'. While Mabinogi will still be free-to-play, upgrading to one of three monthly fee packages will also allow the player to participate in the mainstream storyline, which will advance through each generation of the game.Additionally, today's the last day for players to enter one of 3 contests to win fabulous prizes. The first contest goes to high level players, to reward their ongoing participation in the game. The winner will receive a GeForce 9600GT 512MB DDR3 video card, with 20 other winners receiving 14,000 in Nexon cash. [Thanks, Robert!]
