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Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time (Switch 2)

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Aaaaand I’m done. Yes, I completed it a couple of weeks ago, but I had to go back and do some more, getting my different Lives levelled up and completing some of the side missions and ranking up regions in Ginormosa. I also collected the remaining Strangelings, and delved to deeper depths in the dungeon tree.

But, I realised – everything now is just grinding. There’s no purpose to anything. Sure, I can get to higher levels, and get better weapons, but why? It doesn’t really do anything. Grinding to achieve something is (mostly) fine, but grinding just to make numbers go up for no reward (there’s no more story content either) seems… pointless.

Maybe I’ll go back in at some point, because it wasn’t that I wasn’t enjoying things any more, it was just that I had no purpose and I’ve still got a big pile of other games vying for attention.

Virtual Boy Wario Land (Switch 2): COMPLETED!

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Yes! I was one of those idiots that paid SIXTY SIX POUNDS for a piece of plastic that you put your Switch (or Switch 2) in, so you can sit awkwardly while playing games made for one of the worst consoles ever made! It’s like having two red-tinted Game Boys stuck in front of your eyes that you can only really play at a table (or, as I did, on the sofa with a teetering pile of lap cushions), all so you can get a not especially impressive 3D effect in some poorly realised games. Idiot.

Just lookit though. LOOKIT.

Although I’ve never owned a Virtual Boy, I have played on a few and can say that this Switch peripheral manages to recreate the ridiculous of the original flop console admirably. With my Nintendo Online subscription I also get access to 7 games (about a third of those ever released – most of the rest are on the way), and having tried them all only Virtual Boy Wario Land really works.

And, against all the odds, it’s great.

It’s a pretty straightforward platformer, with about 20 levels and some power ups that let you smash blocks or shoot fireballs, but the 3D comes in as there are “front” and “back” layers to the playfield. Much like Mutant Mudds, I suppose, which I know came much later. There are special blocks that “throw” you in and out of the screen, as well as pipes and doorways that sometimes do the same. Some of the levels are almost 3D mazes as you try to find a key to open the lift to the next level. Every few levels you get a boss, which also tends to swap plane in some way or another.

The 3D effect is subtle, but it’s nice. I don’t think the game would have suffered by being a straight Game Boy or SNES title, though. It’s hard to see from the screenshots how well it works because it seems so damn dark and the dual-screen thing (one for each eye) means you lose the 3D completely. But anyway, nice game shame about the delivery mechanism, I suppose.

Tomb Raider: Peru

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This is the 1996 game called Tomb Raider, as opposed to the 2013 game called Tomb Raider.  I completed the 2013 game called Tomb Raider back in 2014, and then I completed the sequel to that game (a 2015 game called Rise of the Tomb Raider) in 2024. I have previously completed the 1996 game called Tomb Raider, back in 1998, after I had completed the 1997 game called Tomb Raider II. I have also completed a 2006 game called Tomb Raider Legend and (I think) a 2007 game called Tomb Raider Anniversary which was a remake of the 1996 game called Tomb Raider but not the 2013 game called Tomb Raider. I have also played a 1998 game called Tomb Raider III and a 2008 game called Tomb Raider Underworld but have not completed those, and neither of those was a remake of the 1998 game called Tomb Raider.

In fact, this is only sort of the 1996 game called Tomb Raider. This is a game called Tomb Raider which was released in 2024 on a compilation of three games, which collectively were called Tomb Raider I-III Remastered. Within the game you can play a port of the original 1996 game called Tomb Raider, or a remastered version which updates graphics, allows you to use different controls, and changes saving mechanisms. This remastered version is much closer to the original 1996 game called Tomb Raider than the 2007 game called Tomb Raider Anniversary.

I hope that’s clear.

My intention with this was to try to complete Tomb Raider III, which still eludes me, but I have fond memories of the first and second games and I didn’t feel capable of just ignoring them. A refresh of story, controls, and mechanics was also useful. So, I’ve started at the start and have taken Lara through the caves of Peru, completing the first four levels of the game. There’s a lot of stuff here which I don’t think I’ve appreciated before, such as how combat and puzzles are largely kept separate, and (so far) there’s been no respawning enemies when you retrace your steps. This is something I was very glad of when I ran back past the (still warm) T-Rex corpse having collected three gears for the sluice gate machine in the third area. The camera is a bit frustrating, with little user control (especially when using original graphics) and sometimes it just won’t show you what’s ahead of Lara until you’ve nearly fallen off the ledge that’s around a corner. The modern graphics are, on the whole, a very welcome addition, other than the fact that they’re just so dark. I’ve found myself having to switch between the two just to see where the walls are, at times.

I’m glad you can switch between graphic modes on the fly

Some of the notes I made from the modern Tomb Raider games apply here as well. If you have your guns drawn, Lara will automatically aim at enemies, and this means you can sidestep across blind corners knowing that the game will tell you if there’s anything to be afraid of. Some of the game is more like a puzzle, identifying how to get somewhere, although this first game has less of the verticality that I know happens later in the series. You can easily see how the new games drew on the first for inspiration, but there are some aspects where game design has inevitably moved on.

In a surprise to nobody, having found the artifact I was charged to get, and while retracing my steps to leave the tombs, I was ambushed by my employer’s sidekick (Larson) who wanted the scion for himself. I jumped around and shot him multiple times, and then, crucially, didn’t kill him. This is the 1996 game called Tomb Raider, and while Lara’s happy to kill off a lost valley of dinosaurs, and wolves, and other wildlife, it was always made clear she wasn’t a murderer – not until the end of the game, at least. In Tomb Raider Anniversary, it is explicitly clear that she kills Larson, and that was the first time she killed a person.

Not my video, but it’s basically a cutscene anyway

So, i have the first piece of the puzzle, and have watched a (very dated) cutscene of Lara raiding the offices of her now-former employer. Off to find someone else now.

Super Mario World: completed!

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I didn’t get lost again, but that was largely because the game’s designers had finished messing around with the world map and everything was fairly linear from that point. I did find a couple of extra exits on Chocolate Island, but maintaining my aim of ignoring the red blinking markers and just pushing through to the end, I finished off Wendy and progressed through the shipwreck down to Bowser’s hidden valley, previously submerged beneath the suspicious big empty sea in the middle of the map.

I was expecting the Valley of Bowser to be more difficult, in fact, but actually the levels themselves didn’t present much of a challenge. There was one annoying level where the big moles kept getting in the way and I couldn’t find the way out the level, meaning I died a couple of time running out of time, but one I realised that I could go out and get a Yoshi, and then eat the moles, things became easier.

What was tricky was the final boss battle, and I felt I was fighting against the controls much more than in the rest of the game. To defeat Bowser you had to attack him from above, and the only way you could do that was to jump on one of the clockwork bomb things he was throwing down to stun it, grab it, and then throw it up so that it would land on Bowser’s head as he swung his ship back around. Obviously, this had to be done while avoiding the other clockwork bomb things and his ship.

Peach really needs a better tailor.

Still, it only took me a couple of goes, and then I saw the credits, meaning that the game is completed. Sure, it’s not completed completed, since there are a lot of secret exits I’ve not found, and I believe there’s a star world somewhere to be discovered. I’ll park it here, much as I did with Galaxy and 64 and Odyssey, and plan to come back to it one day soon.

Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time (Switch 2): COMPLETED!

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Almost exactly 11 years ago, I played and completed (and then played some more) the original Fantasy Life game on the 3DS. I really enjoyed it, and after all this time I was excited to play the sequel.

Only, it isn’t really a sequel. There’s nothing, plot wise at least, that links this game to the previous one. Sure, the mechanics and graphical style are nearly the same, but there’s no story continuation or even, as far as I can tell, any shared characters or history. Actually, “history” is one of the main plot points in “i” (no, it’s never explained what the “i” is for), since the game takes place in two different eras, 1000 years apart. Gameplay-wise, it isn’t too different from before – choose a Life, level up by doing Life related things, complete quests for people, and so on. So it’s similar.

One big difference, is that you’re pretty much forced to change Life (a Life being a trade or character class) as you progress. In the first game, I completed the story without ever swapping from my Paladin Life, but in “i” you can’t do certain story-based things without changing to be a miner or an alchemist or whatever. Swapping between Lives is a big thing, and as each one levels up separately, there’s a lot of grinding. Certainly more than I remember from the original, and my play time – over 50 hours by the end of the game (with some Lives still untouched) compared with less than that to 100% the original – showing it in cold hard stats. Some of that extra time is that there’s more to do, but a lot is grinding.

Thankfully, a lot of the grinding is done by exploring a separate, and huge, game area called Ginormosia. Here you can level up by chopping trees and swording bees and whatever else, unlocking new companions when you complete shrines you find, and making areas of this continent level up too. It’s fun to just wander and complete challenges like fighting or farming while you grind. I also found a way to quickly level up a new Life. Get one of your miner companions to mine ore while you hang around as an artist or carpenter, and when they are done you get a all the XP. With a miner on level 50 and some level 40-50 ore, you can get your “new” Life from level 1 to level 40-odd in minutes.

In terms of plot, there’s stuff about you and your archaeologist mate flying a dragon to an island, then getting separated as you end up in the past, and then lots of back-and-forth between eras while you build a new village in the present (in a definitely not Animal Crossing type way) whilst finding items and advancing your Lives in the past. There’s loads to do, millions of items, weapons, foods and furniture to craft, people to meet, side quests to complete, and that’s before you even hop over into Ginormosia or do the dungeon tree thing or the dream world stuff. What are they? Well, Google exists.

So, I completed the game as (mainly) a Mercenary, swapping to most of the other Lives along the way. I’ve already made a start on trying to get them all up to at least Expert rank, and have started the other Lives too. Still lots to do, and still having a lot of fun. Is it as good as the original Fantasy Life, though? Well, there’s certainly more, but I’d say overall, it loses a bit of focus as a result. Still excellent, but not quite as excellent.