Fantasy Life is the upcoming title from developed by Brownie Brown, h.a.n.d., and Level-5 that is set to be released on the Nintendo 3DS later this year. This colorful RPG has a lot of elements similar to what you might find in other games, with a good mix of The Legend of Zelda, Animal Crossing and traditional RPG mechanics. At the Tokyo Game Show, Level 5’s booth was teaming with tons of demo stations for the game and I decided to give it a spin.

The first thing I noticed about Fantasy Life was the amazing 3D effect. Level-5 seems to know what they’re doing when it comes to this aspect of 3DS games and it’s definitely no different here. The colorful visuals give this RPG a very cheerful demeanor and match the overall light-hearted tone of the game. The simplicity of the graphical style mixed with the cel-shaded visuals give the game a very polished look.

The demo at TGS for Fantasy Life starts out by letting you create your character. There are several different body types, head shapes, hair, eyes and other aspects you can choose to change your character’s appearance. After sorting that out, you then get to choose a "life" for your character. The final version of the game is going to feature over ten different jobs ranging from things like soldier to prospector to cook. For the purpose of making the demo a more streamlined experience, there were only a few choices – soldier, carefree person, or nothing. I decided to go with soldier.

After a bit of dialogue, I was on my way to talk to a knight who was going to give me my first quest. He fit me with some armor and weapons and then also gave me a companion to go with me on my journey. After accepting to go on the quest, the game is pretty straight-forward about where to go – just follow the arrow. Along the way, there are tons of distractions that can keep you away from your quest. As I was running through a forest, I came across an apple tree. Being well versed in the world of Animal Crossing, I went up to the tree, and sure enough, I could shake it and then pick up my delicious plunder. Not too far away from the tree was a bridge where I saw another character fishing. As soon as I approached, I noticed a shadow of a fish under the water and also a prompt on the screen telling me to press the A button if I wanted to fish. It was easy and enjoyable.

As I was getting closer to my target, the forest opened up to a large field where I found sheep grazing and other peaceful animals frolicking around. Seeing how I had a sword, I felt it entirely appropriate to see what would happen if I would take a couple of swings at the tranquil creatures. As it turns out, they tried to run away from me, but I slew them and picked up a potion and a few other items that they dropped after being defeated. Attacks are easy to perform with the A button, while the X button is used for the shield.

When I made it to the enemies that were the target of my quest, I found that they were pretty easy to take out. Blocking with X did a great job minimizing damage and I was able to dispatch my foes quickly. My NPC partner was somewhat useless in the battle and was downed before the battle was even halfway complete. However, she still helped get the enemies to take their eyes off of me while I slashed away at them in their backs.

Fantasy Life was a pleasant surprise. The Zelda-like elements mixed in with leveling up, item management, and Animal Crossing-style activities such as fishing or harvesting fruit made this a pretty full experience. As I mentioned above, the final build of the game is going to a have a wide variety of "lives" to choose from, which in turn would probably make your quests pretty different for each "life". As it stands right now, Fantasy Life will be released in Japan on December 27. There is no word about a Western release at this time.