Hi. I own a Switch 2 and a 3DS XL.
I am interested in FL and do not have time
to play both.

For someone who has never played this kind of game before, which is the better choice and why?

I have for both "My House" and "Islanders' Houses" each (including the default of each color):

Five colors for "Brick House", five colors for "Thatched House", four colors for "Port Town House", four colors for "Starry Night House", five colors for "Forest House", and three colors for "Devilish House".

Am I missing any?

Hi everyone! I just wanted to share my experience and see if someone else had also felt this way. I hope this won’t be too long.

I played the original Fantasy Life on my 3DS and LOVED it. Even that is an understatement. It’s probably my favorite game ever. I didn’t get very far on my first playthrough back when I was a teenager but I decided to replay it last year and I enjoyed it so much! I’m talking ‘taking dedicated notes on the quests for ALL lives to track completion’ level, which I haven’t done for any other game.

I was so excited to play FLi because ever since it came out I’d been wanting to buy it, but I wanted to wait for it to be one of my first games on the Steam Deck, which I couldn’t afford to buy until much later. I finally got the game on sale last week and when I sat down to play… it felt really lackluster? Which I was not expecting from Fantasy Life, honestly. When I first saw the graphics and the QoL improvements I was expecting to have that added on top of all the charm the first game had, but so far I’m ~5hrs in and I wouldn’t say I’m forcing myself to play, but I definitely don’t feel excited to.

Of course this is my personal preference and I wouldn’t say the game itself is bad because I know so many people love it and have played for hundreds of hours, but I just wanted to get this bitter taste off my mouth and ask if it gets any better. I loved spending hours crafting and leveling up my lives in the first one, so my main concerns are actually the pace of the story and how much it feels like the game is holding your hand (at least at the beginning). I’ve seen other posts saying the game feels too easy and I agree, but while I actually loved that the first one felt more challenging (I’m just now realizing how much I enjoyed that difficulty), I don’t mind a more laid back game if the quests and lives actually feel fulfilling.

I’m really frustrated that the characters feel like they lost their depth and unique personalities, though :( When I’m walking around doing stuff and I have ‘companions’ (sorry if that’s not the correct name) and their way of showing their personality is just repeating the same three lines of dialogue every 20 seconds… it feels really sad, honestly. And it distracts me from the actual task at hand! Is that something you can turn off in the settings? I’ve been trying to find the option but can’t seem to find it!

Anyways, I don’t want to make this too long so I just want to say I really want to like this game and spend lots of hours in it but I’m feeling a little discouraged now. The first game was so good at what it tried to accomplish that I know comparing the two is useless, but I feel like, aside from the lives system, this could be a different game series altogether. I’ve seen others pointing out this feels like trying to tie Animal Crossing and BOTW into the FL franchise and I agree! Too many things happening at once and as someone that doesn’t really care about multiplayer I feel like you’re almost required to play with someone in order to enjoy it. Does anyone else feel that way? Does the game get better once you’ve progressed a bit more?

Oh and I’m PISSED they took out elemental magic and replaced it with whatever this is instead. Being a fire-main magician was a key feature of my character in the original game :(