Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time is fantastic on Steam Deck, but what about Nintendo Switch?
Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time from Level-5 is finally available worldwide for all consoles and PC (Steam) after a long wait. While I need more time to play the game for my full review, I wanted to cover how the game feels with over 20 hours played across the Steam Deck, Nintendo Switch, and ROG Ally. This feature will cover Fantasy Life i Switch performance impressions, Steam Deck recommended settings, thoughts on the PC port, and more. Note that I've removed any story spoilers by redacting quest names on the top right of the screenshots when required. I've also tested cross save back and forth across Steam Deck and Switch to ensure it works well.
Fantasy Life i Nintendo Switch performance impressions
While most of the hours I've put into the game have been through the Steam release, I've since tested the Nintendo Switch version after my digital pre-order unlocked. Fantasy Life i has cross save, and I've synced my Steam save to check out the busier areas and also to try out a brand-new save on user profile. I wanted to see how the opening felt to get a good idea of Fantasy Life i's Switch performance from day one. Note that this is with version 1.1.0, which is a bit behind the PS5, PS4, and Steam versions. The Switch version also did not have an early unlock for the Digital Deluxe Edition like other platforms.
Fantasy Life i on Nintendo Switch runs better than I expected based on the Switch footage from the last Direct. I've only played it handheld so far, and the overall visuals are softer than you'd expect on Switch even when played on the go. Load times aren't bad, but the performance is sadly inconsistent with dips below 30fps often including in a few cut-scenes. Even when it seemingly holds its target frame rate for some time, frame pacing or hitching issues dampen the experience. This happens in busier areas like the sandy parts of Ginormosia or even near the Capital of Mysteria with a lot of NPCs. I was definitely expecting a rougher experience than this, but it isn't close to ideal.
I hope Level-5 patches in the ability to disable the depth of field like in the PC version because I hate how it blurs the edges of the screen in specific situations. One more thing I hope to see in an update is touchscreen support. While it isn't something you'd need during combat or exploration, having touchscreen support to progress cut-scene conversations or navigate through the menus would've been nice. Beyond that, the Switch version has decent HD Rumble and is playable, but I wouldn't recommend getting it unless you are playing the game on another platform and using the Switch version with cross save as your way to play on the go when needed.
It remains to be seen, but It would be great if the Switch version's current performance issues can be resolved when played via backward compatibility on Switch 2 before the official Nintendo Switch 2 Edition releases. Until then, this Switch port is good to have to play alongside another version, but not one I'd recommend as your main way to experience Fantasy Life i right now. Hopefully some of the performance issues can be addressed in updates.
Fantasy Life i PC graphics options and port features
Because Megaton Musashi W: Wired had such a great PC port that scaled well on handhelds, I wasn't too worried about Fantasy Life i, but I'm very impressed with the Steam version. It has loads of graphics options, scales well, and works quite nicely with mouse and keyboard input as well based on the little I played with those controls.
If you are playing on Steam Deck or other handhelds running SteamOS, you might run into an issue where the game locks you out of changing display mode and resolution. I'll get to that below. Fantasy Life i lets you adjust display mode (windowed, borderless), resolution with support for 16:10, toggle v-sync, limit frame rate (30, 60, 120, uncapped), toggle motion blur on, use a graphics preset (low, medium, high, custom), enable HDR, and adjust screen brightness.
The Fantasy Life i graphics preset automatically adjusts specific settings that you can also adjust individually. These are shadow quality (low, medium, high), anti-aliasing (FXAA, TAA), toggle global illumination, toggle ambient occlusion, toggle screen space reflections, toggle depth of field, adjust object quality and display count (low, medium,high).
Fantasy Life i Steam Deck impressions
Fantasy Life i is Steam Deck Verified. I know that doesn't mean as much as it did before when it comes to new games, but in this situation the rating is absolutely justified. While it initially might take a minute or two to download or update Epic Online Services when you launch it for the first time, everything works perfectly out of the box. Yes, despite it using anti-cheat, it works fine on Steam Deck. I've put in around 20 hours just on my Steam Decks out of the total playtime so far. Everything from text input bringing up the keyboard to performance is flawless with HDR supported on the Steam Deck OLED.
There is one small issue right now that may or may not affect you when you play it. If you try to change any graphics settings, the game will switch from 800p / 16:10 to 720p and 16:9. Since Fantasy Life i on Steam Deck locks the display mode and resolution option by default, the fix involves using the "Steam Deck=0 %command%" (without the quotes) as a launch option. This lets you adjust whatever settings you want in-game.
Barring that, Fantasy Life i is perfect on Steam Deck. I've tested over a thousand games on Valve's handheld over the years and regularly check out new and older titles for our RPGs on Steam Deck feature , but Fantasy Life i is one of the best by far for how well it plays and suits the system. You can even tap to progress dialogue and use the right trackpad for precision placement during the building section (through Steam Input).
Fantasy Life i Steam Deck recommended settings and a fix
Since the Fantasy Life i cut-scenes are capped on PC to 60fps, I recommend aiming for 60fps on both Steam Deck LCD and OLED for the most consistent experience. If you play on an OLED, make sure you aren't running the game capped at 60fps in-game on the 90hz display. I ended up sticking to the game uncapped, but using the Steam Deck quick access menu to cap it to 60hz for a smooth experience throughout. In fact, I've only had a few instances that lasted a second or two in menus where the frame rate dropped below 60fps in the time I've put into Fantasy Life i on my Steam Decks.
A lot of the options that affect performance aren't really useful when played on the smaller screen. The first setting I recommend across the board is disabling the depth of field. I hate how it blurs parts of the screen. Beyond that, you could just set the game to medium and not worry about anything else. Using the High preset will result in drops well below 60fps so I do not recommend it on Steam Deck. I also turned down shadows like I usually do.
Fantasy Life i ROG Ally impressions and recommended settings
As usual, my ROG Ally testing has been done on a ROG Ally Z1 Extreme with the GPU set to 5GB VRAM. I'm on the latest driver update that was shipped last week and everything is up to date. I didn't spend more than an hour with Fantasy Life i on ROG Ally as of this writing, but when testing on Steam Deck, I discovered a few stress test locations which made this easier. I wanted to see how much I could push the visuals on ROG Ally across its different modes and also see if I could hit 120fps on it in handheld mode.
For the best possible visuals, when playing at 1080p and using the high preset, you can get a solid 30fps in the 30W mode. When trying this on the 25W mode, I noticed it drops a bit to the high 20s in very busy areas. I don't recommend aiming for 30fps in Fantasy Life i given the visual differences does not justify the high performance penalty.
When running at 1080p and using the low preset, Fantasy Life i in the 25W mode runs at 70fps or more. Dropping to the 15W mode results in frame rates in the mid to high 60s here. I then turned the resolution down to 720p and used the low preset. The result was between 100 and 120fps. Getting 60fps locked when using the 15W mode is not possible unless you drop to 720p. The 900p mode is close, and VRR helps, but you will see drops into the 50s often.
Having now played Fantasy Life i on Nintendo Switch, Steam Deck, and ROG Ally, I'm curious to see how it feels whenever the Nintendo Switch 2 Edition releases. Stay tuned for my coverage on that as well as my full review of the game.
Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time will release worldwide simultaneously for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and PC (Steam) on May 21. It releases later for Nintendo Switch 2 as Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time Nintendo Switch 2 Edition. If you're planning on getting it or already have it, make sure to check out all our Fantasy Life i game guides here.