The map is far too simplistic for its own good. The directions of each area on the map screen seem to have little correlation to the direction each exit actually leads to and there is no indication of which locations are connected to each other. Matters are made worse when you factor in the fact that the vast majority of areas have multiple exits, all of which are miles apart and lead in completely different directions. If your objective is inside a town or fortress, you’re out of luck and the map will give you zero guidance on where to find it. I would have been able to overlook a lot of these faults were it not for the game’s map screen, which is by far the single worst part of Kitaria Fables and the aspect that transforms an otherwise mediocre game into an unmitigated misery to play.įor starters, the map is incredibly zoomed out and, at best, gives you a basic gist of which direction to head in to reach your objective. This amusement turned to dread as I began to realize that this pattern was to be repeated throughout the entire game. The delivery quests are ruined by the almost comically slow walking speed, which makes navigating the world an absolutely torturous affair, and collection quests are horribly overused.Įarly on in my playthrough I burst out laughing at the point a character, like some kind of on-the-nose parody of terrible RPG design, gave me the fourth overly long fetch-quest in a row. Throughout the game, there are effectively two types of quests: delivery quests, where you talk to a character and then walk to the other side of the map to deliver an item, and collection quests, where you kill enemies in specific areas to gain a certain number of items. Sadly, repetition is a problem through Kitaria Fables' roughly 12-hour plotline.
Ironically, fighting bosses is often easier than most normal enemies.
Kitaria fables review upgrade#
You can overcome the scaled-up difficulty by upgrading your gear but the upgrade process, which involves painstakingly collecting huge quantities of materials from dead enemies, is hampered by the same balance issues and, as a result, the sheer time it takes to actually get your gear upgraded far outweighs the time it would take just to grind through the difficult sections. I soon found that battles began to stretch on for minutes of just spamming left-click at a time and, considering that almost every quest in the game involves killing something to collect items, this is a massive problem. My first impressions of the combat systems were good, with a satisfying dodge-roll and an almost MMO-like range of powerful spells and abilities to play around with, but as the story progresses the enemy's difficulty very quickly becomes insurmountably high. Through the main story questline, the player is very strongly pushed towards the action-RPG side of the game - which is unfortunately where everything falls apart. Therefore I was very disappointed to see that these mechanics are criminally underutilized, being entirely optional with the rare exception of side quests that involve harvesting goods. Although it’s incredibly time-consuming, I found the farming to be surprisingly relaxing and far and away the most enjoyable part of Kitaria Fables. There’s a nice rhythm to waking up, planting seeds, watering, and eventually harvesting a variety of fruits and vegetables. The farming mechanics, which involve players buying seeds from merchants to grow crops to sell, are well implemented and make use of the otherwise fairly redundant day-night cycle and calendar system. What little story there is, a basic tale involving a conflict between light and darkness in a fantasy setting is entirely coherent and, although not particularly exciting on the whole, still packs one or two twists that had me genuinely interested at times. The 2D art for items and character dialogue is similarly excellent, with a bright color palette and eye-catching designs that are immediately likable. The graphics, for example, are great with a cartoon aesthetic that is consistently pleasant to look at. Before I dive into the plethora of things that Kitaria Fables does wrong, it’s important to understand that the game still manages to do quite a few things very well.
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