Starting Over

I finally finished Fantasy Life i.

After well over a hundred hours, countless quests, a whole bunch of Lives, and more time spent gathering random materials than I’d probably like to admit, I reached the point where I was ready to move on.

Not because I had done everything. I definitely hadn’t. There were still challenges I could complete, things I could collect, and probably entire corners of the game I could continue poking around in. But like I wrote about recently, I didn’t feel like I needed to check every box. I had gotten everything I wanted out of the experience, and it felt like the right time to say goodbye.

So I did something I haven’t done in a couple of months.

I started a new game.

My next stop is Donkey Kong Bananza, and after spending so much time in Fantasy Life i, it’s strange being completely clueless again.

I’ve only played for about an hour, which isn’t nearly enough time for me to tell you whether the game is great, good, or something I’ll still be playing a month from now. I can tell you that I’m enjoying it so far, but that’s about as close to a review as I’m willing to get.

What I can say is that I’d forgotten how much fun it is to start from zero.

By the end of Fantasy Life i, I knew how everything worked. I knew where to go, which tools to use, what materials I needed, and how all of the game’s different systems fit together. There was comfort in that familiarity, and it’s probably one of the reasons I kept playing for as long as I did.

Now I’m back to figuring out what buttons do.

I don’t know where I’m going. I don’t know what’s important yet. I don’t know which things I’ll eventually spend way too much time obsessing over. I’m still learning the rules of the world, and there’s something refreshing about that.

It’s one of my favorite parts of playing a new game, although I don’t think I appreciate it enough while it’s happening. There’s a relatively short period at the beginning where everything is a discovery. Every new area is actually new. Every mechanic is something you’re seeing for the first time. You haven’t looked anything up yet, you don’t have a routine, and you certainly haven’t developed strong opinions about the best way to do anything.

You’re just playing.

That’s where I am with Donkey Kong Bananza right now.

Maybe a few weeks from now I’ll have plenty to say about it. Maybe I’ll love it. Maybe I’ll finish it and immediately move on to something else. For now, I don’t really need to know.

I spent the last couple of months in a game that became incredibly familiar and comfortable. Now I get to experience the exact opposite.

I don’t know if Donkey Kong Bananza will become another hundred hour game. After an hour, I don’t even know if it will become a twenty hour game.

But right now everything is new, I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing, and there’s an entire game in front of me waiting to be discovered.

That’s a pretty fun place to be.