School, work and the usual Animal Crossing daily tasks have been keeping me away from this recently, but from what I've played it will take a huge wodge of time to play through to vague completion (if such a thing exists).
So today is the day you choose your "Life", a.k.a. you vocation in the game. You can change later on and there are 12 different jobs to to choose from. I decided to go with Lumberjack as a homage to AC. 4.5 hours later and I've finished the prologue chapter. I kid you not. Barely scratching the surface has revealed a game I'm very much going to enjoy. As a lumberjack I go into the woods each day, chop down a few trees and then sell them at the factory to make money to live. You can buy further furniture for your room and arrange it as you like, or upgrade your tools.
The world is viewed from a very Zelda-like 2.5D, with L and R swinging the camera around your character. For my lumberjack, A is the normal axe swing and X is a power swing. Both of these decrease the stamina of your character, X more so. However, finding the "sweet spot" on the tree makes a big difference to the amount of damage each swing does, the closer to the sweet spot, the higher the damage and the quicker the tree get felled.
The game revolves around getting both getting happy and rich. Gaining happiness will give you a choice of one of a slew of extra features, like a horse-riding license for example. Getting rich is all about the money of course. To this end, there are also in game achievements which boost happiness. These are everyday job-related things, like "cut down 5 trees"; "sell 10 pieces of wood". A big part of the game is also taking care of the wishes of the villagers, be they about slaying monsters or selling food items. More happiness also levels up your character, giving more techniques etc. to do your job better.
This is definitely a long haul game, with 12 different jobs are their associated skills to acquire. There's not much of a Story but it doesn't really need it.
Yup, it's a "buy" from me
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