"Fantasy Life: The Girl Who Steals Time" is the perfect game for my autistic brain

Sorry to spoil this for my family who waited for me to become and adult to figure out for myself that I was autistic but, as my doctor once put it, I am "autistic as fuck". So a lot of times, thanks to my particular neurospice level (a 7 in Indian restaurant terms) I lose interest in video games a LOT.

I got hyped for Forza to land on PS5 but fell asleep to it after my brain realized that it was just open world with no linear paths and no clear progression map. Most JRPGs knock me out like melatonin because of the nonsense levels of grinding. And I went from playing in fighting game tournaments to maybe playing a fighting game once every other month once the competitive scene became all people replicating the same memorized combo over and over again. It takes a LOT for me to get hooked.

That doesn't mean triple A fireworks either. Like, Monster Hunter Wilds is gorgeous and fun but it didn't hold my attention for anywhere NEAR the time that House Flipper or Power Wash Simulator did. And that's the thing, there's a lot of autistic gamers out there, many undiagnosed but I can smell it on you and we crave variety and repetition all at the same time.

With Fantasy Life: The Girl Who Steals Time you're tasked with juggling different "lives". Jobs, essentially. Fourteen to be exact.

You've got your four fighting styles: Paladin, Mercenary, Hunter, and Magician. You've got four gathering styles: Woodcutting, Mining, Angler, and Farmer. And then you've got your six crafting styles: Carpenter, Blacksmith, Cook, Artist, Tailor, and Alchemist.

For the four fighting styles they, like in Monster Hunter, change up how combat is done. Magicians and Hunters are long ranger with different sort of counter measures for those that get in close. Paladin and Mercenary are your more swordy class with Paladin having a sword and shield (a remarkably versatile one) and Mercenary with a massive two handed sword requiring more dodge planning.

Gathering is more like a small mini-game with you finding the sweet spot on whatever it is you're gathering and then, essentially, mashing buttons until the thing you want is in your hands.

And for the crafting, it's a full on, Mario Party-esque mini-game. All six essentially have the same three stations, do everything you're asked as quickly as possible game, but they're all thematically different and change up whether or not a station requires button mashing, button holding, or rotating the joystick.

But the game REALLY wants you to level up everything. Unlike most RPGs where it is unimportant on the backend of the game, you'll fight and slash your way through a dungeon only to find yourself blocked by a large rock that can't be broken by someone of your mining level.

This really helped me stay in the game because every time I'd get burned out on fighting or crafting, I'd be looking for a good place with trees to cut down that would help me level my woodcutting. Or I'd work on angling to see what kind of fish I could catch. Every time I started to feel some sort of burn out, there was an entirely different way I could play the game which was HUGE.

And let's say you get burned out on the main game play if it starts becoming so predictable that even the characters know what's gonna happen.

Through time travel you're able to hop out of the current world and travel to two other worlds.

You have Ginormosia, and awfully named giant open area that players of Legend of Zelda's Tears of the Kingdom or Breath of the Wild will feel VERY comfortable in. You find yourself with a mysterious tablet and a segmented map, and as you find these rune covered towers, you activate them and unlock that segment of the map as well as having them as fast travel points.

In addition, there are also shrines all over the place that, you guessed it, contain small puzzles or combat arenas that earn you prizes when beaten. Normally in the form of "Strangelings", which are sentient objects that are people trapped by a curse. Luckily, in the other world you can travel to, you can save them.

Speaking of.

In the third of the worlds you can go to, the game gets full Animal Crossing. You get to name an island, then design and terraform it. Things you craft can be placed around the island and in your home. And you can chose a handful of the cured Strangeling folk to live on the island with you. Not only are these character cute as buttons, but they have their own personality, they give you small quests, and they help you with the crafting, gathering, and fighting.

It's literally three games in one with a wild adventure RPG and 14 different jobs to take on, an Animal Crossing like design and crafting game, and a Breath of the Wild like open world game with it's own mystery complete with Shrines and a massive castle in the middle surrounded by dark miasma.

Girl, feel free to help.

With all this in mind it's almost impossible to let your brain settle with how often you can change up almost the EXACT level of stimuli you're receiving from this title. Especially in areas like Ginormosia where you can actually alter the average level of different areas of the map so it becomes more difficult as you grow so that you're not feeling burned out. Everything you do is rewarding and I love it.