#KITARIA FABLES REVIEW UPGRADE#
Given that numerous primary quests revolve around construction or repairs, and you need to upgrade your gear to progress, this grind soon dominates the experience. Regardless of their source, this means grinding combat for item drops or passing time waiting on resources to replenish. Resource gathering is a bit odd, seeing as the natural resources – think wood, stone, and ore – are either harvested from specific areas (and replenish slowly) or are dropped by monsters. This is reinforced by the fact time progresses swiftly, which is important to a few quests, access to storekeepers, and maintaining healthy crops (at least Kitaria Fables never forces you to go to bed). In theory, Kitaria Fables doesn’t force you into farming unless you’re tackling the many side quests, but you’ll need natural resources to upgrade your gear (and farming tools if you’re planning on doing anything efficiently). The game always highlights attack zones, so you can avoid most damage if you master the dodge, and mixed groups of enemies present the greatest threat.Īnd gather and craft you will, if you want to make consistent progress.
Combat difficulty ramps up swiftly if you don’t periodically upgrade your gear. On the upside, death simply sends you back to your inherited farm and progresses a day, but it serves as a constant reminder you need to get back to resource gathering and crafting better gear. Tougher enemies function as level-gating, often capable of one-shotting you early on, and take even longer to slay. It’s fast, fluid, and easy to master, but it takes too damn long to kill basic enemies from the get-go, even those at your level. Kitaria Fables plays like an ARPG, with several skills slots to assign, an active dodge, stamina management, and telegraphed attacks to avoid – a gamepad is recommended. The combat remains the highlight, though it offers nothing you haven’t seen before in other isometric brawlers. Nonetheless, it still falls back on a well-trod formula, and I soon felt myself slipping into familiar routines. On the gameplay front, Kitaria Fables places a greater focus on real-time action and streamlines farming and crafting. The world is visually diverse and looks huge, but ultimately consists of small surface zones and a few multi-level dungeons. However, it leaves all the NPCs in the game feeling artificial and their motivations paper-thin. Sure, the story functions as a fantastical fable of sorts, so this simplicity is not unexpected. These quests, simple in structure, flesh out several characters – important and secondary – but they inevitably fall in basic archetypes, with anxieties and problems you’ve seen and resolved before. The narrative – although dragged out by multi-part quests that revolve around gaining access to parts of the world map – was an unexpected hook, as both the threat of a new calamity or oppression by the Empire feel more unsettling given the cute, anthropomorphic characters.Īs is common in the genre, you’ll frequently ignore the looming threat to spend time assisting the locals with basic chores and proving your skills to them (always a good excuse to teach gameplay mechanics). However, this path may also lead to conflict with the Empire they serve. That link forms the basis for current events, which sees Nyanza discovering their affinity for magic before heading off on a quest to reclaim magical artifacts that could prevent another calamity. There are several eye-rolling animal puns thrown in for good measure. Dialogue is simple and characters stick to their basic archetypes. Naturally, Nyanza’s grandfather – a former resident of the village – has a link to this time. Magic users emerged to save the world, but the practice was subsequently banned by the Empire once peace was restored. The monsters, who normally coexist with the people of Kitaria, previously turned on them during an event known as the “Calamity”.
Kitaria Fables places you in the anthropomorphic boots of Nyanza von Whiskers, an Empire soldier sent to Paw Village to defend it from increasingly aggressive creatures. It has an intriguing setting and brisk pacing – thanks to several streamlined mechanics – but it still relies on a formulaic and often tedious gameplay loop that has dominated the genre for a decade or more. Kitaria Fables is an isometric action-adventure, with strong farming and crafting components, developed by Twin Hearts and published by PQube Limited.
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