You know I’ve had some concerns about Fantasy Life i despite my initial excitement when it was announced, both due to the increased scope and its several delays.
Well, thanks to a new Level-5 blog post, we’ve gotten some insights into what happened during Fantasy Life i’s development.
The biggest revelation is that Keiji Inafune left Level-5 last year.
In case you’re unfamiliar with how things went, Inafune’s studio Comcept was acquired by Level-5 in 2017 and became Level-5 Comcept, and they were in charge of developing Fantasy Life i. According to this blog post, his departure meant they had to “reassess and restructure” the game.
This included “adding open-world exploration and parkour-style actions, restructuring the system’s progression flow, improving the core mechanics, and refining the scenario to be even more emotionally impactful.”
Knowing this makes me feel better about the game’s expanded scope. At the time, it had me worried they were making it bigger just for the sake of being bigger, but now that I know it happened as part of the project being overhauled after the producer left, it makes a lot more sense. Level-5 CEO Akihiro Hino took over as producer, and since he was the producer of the first game, that makes me more confident too.
Meanwhile, the blog post goes on to mention that Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road might be delayed again due to all the trouble with Fantasy Life i. That poor game’s been delayed so many times it’s almost funny. More information about Inazuma Eleven will be coming in a showcase on April 11.
It’s funny to read a blog post about troubled development and delays and come out feeling more optimistic about the game, but this look at what was going on with Fantasy Life i did clear some things up. I’m looking forward to Fantasy Life i when it launches later this year – hopefully without any further delays.
What do you think about the latest Fantasy Life i news?
(No we don’t have a special Valentine’s Day romance review after all, since I’m still grievously behind on my game-playing.)
So, let’s talk about Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time.
Once one of my most-anticipated titles, Fantasy Life i is one of several upcoming games from Level-5 that has been delayed repeatedly. We last discussed it after last year’s Level-5 Vision 2024, when it was delayed out of 2024 to this April.
Well, it’s been delayed once more, this time to May 21.
(The specific release date might be an encouraging sign, but then again, I remember when it was set for October 10.)
This new release date comes alongside an overview trailer that shows off the game’s various features, as well as the confirmation that it is now a multi-platform title.
The digital deluxe edition will include early access on May 18, for all versions except the Switch version, for some reason.
Unfortunately, even though it was originally expected to have a physical release, it is now confirmed to be digital-only outside of Japan. This is disappointing to me, so I might import a physical copy if they’re multi-language.
I say “might” because I have to admit, I’ve gotten nervous about Fantasy Life i. I loved the original Fantasy Life, and the trailers for Fantasy Life i look good, but all the delays and increasingly bigger scope of the game have me nervous enough about how it will turn out that I might wait a bit after all.
Are you looking forward to Fantasy Life i? Do you think May 21 will be its final release date this time?
Yesterday was the Level-5 Vision 2024 showcase, and it was a mix of highs and lows.
They started with Fantasy Life i. We already knew it had been delayed from its October 10 release date, and it sounds like that was done to make it even bigger (and hopefully better). I have mixed feelings about that, but fortunately the game looks great!
I do find it amusing that they’re marketing it as having “the largest open world in the history of Fantasy Life,” considering that as far as most people are concerned, this is only the second game. It’s technically the third, because of the mobile game, but still.
Anyway, Fantasy Life i has been delayed all the way to April 2025. Well, at least that gives me time to catch up (hah) on my backlog.
The next game they showed was Professor Layton and the New World of Steam.
As a huge Professor Layton fan, this is the one I’m the most excited about, and I loved what I saw. The town being menaced by a ghostly gunslinger named Gunman King Joe is the sort of insanity I look for in my Professor Layton plots. On top of that, the gameplay looks like exactly what I’d expect from the series – with even a glimpse of the map used for traversal – now in a 3D world.
Some of the characters looked a little off to me, especially Luke, but overall I’m really excited for New World of Steam.
It still only has a general 2025 release window, but at least it hasn’t been delayed yet.
The next trailer was for Decapolice, showing off the theme song and several of the characters (why are these characters named things like Harvard and Cambridge?), and it all looks pretty neat. I started to think that maybe Decapolice wasn’t delayed even farther out after all.
But it is. Decapolice is now set for 2026.
They didn’t give specific reasons for the delay, only that they’re evolving it into a better experience, which has that same “bigger and better” impression I got from Fantasy Life i.
After that, they finally showcased Megaton Musashi W: Wired, to announce a new mode and other additional content being added in November.
Next up was the long-delayed Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road. The new trailer introduced a ton of stuff, such as a new mode with a customizable character and town-building, and ended by saying it “will evolve into a game that can be played infinitely.” It’s now set for June 2025.
This speaks to the same thing that has me worried about Fantasy Life i and Decapolice. It’s good that they want their games to have a lot of content, but it feels like they’re pushing that so hard that they can’t actually finish them.
After that, they revealed a remake of the first Inazuma Eleven, set for 2026. That was the first of their two new games.
The second was, as expected, the Yokai Watch spiritual successor that was teased last year. Now, this is the game behind the “Ghost Craft RPG” trademark, but apparently that is actually what they’re calling the genre. The game itself is called Holy Horror Mansion, which I’m not crazy about as a title.
You use a camera to interact with ghosts, and while there is definitely some Yokai Watch DNA here, it looks very different. Its release date is “Who knows?” so at least they’re self-aware when it comes to the delays.
The announcement of Holy Horror Mansion made a lot of Yokai Watch fans lose their minds. With the game being teased as the next concept for Yokai Watch, a lot of people expected it to look and play like a new Yokai Watch. I don’t share those complaints. While I’d love to see more Yokai Watch, Holy Horror Mansion looks like it could be a fun game in its own right.
Unfortunately, my impressions were tarnished by the concerns that the backgrounds used in the teaser trailer were made with generative AI. I don’t support the use of generative AI in creative works, so that was disheartening to see. Now, I can’t actually tell if art is AI or not unless there’s something blatantly wrong with it. Maybe it’s just concept art with some oddities. But you can take a look at the evidence and see what you think.
The more concerning part is that this controversy led to people bringing up a report from Level-5 last year about how they were using AI in their work, which includes using ChatGPT to come up with concepts/details for side quests in Decapolice. Now that’s disheartening. Experiencing stories thought up by AI just isn’t what I want to do. At all. Even aside from all the other AI concerns, that makes it feel like those side quests are just filler, nothing that really matters to the world, since their concepts could just be generated.
So yes. I love Level-5’s games, and I think their upcoming games look great, but between the constant delays, the apparent scope creep, and now the AI concerns, I ended up with mixed feelings about the whole thing. Maybe the long delay to 2026 is enough time for them to change their minds about using AI?
How do you feel about the games shown in yesterday’s Level-5 showcase?
You know I’ve had some concerns about Fantasy Life i despite my initial excitement when it was announced, both due to the increased scope and its several delays.