Kitaria’s Fables Review (Switch) | Nintendo Life


It’s been seven years since Level-5’s RPG masterpiece Fantasy Life hit the 3DS in the West, and as addicts looking for our next hit, we’ve been looking for something that replicates that sentiment ever since. Between games like Ni No Kuni (also Level-5) and curious Rune Factory like Littlewood, we’ve gotten closer … but in a surprising twist, Kitaria Fables is Fantasy Life’s little brother we never saw coming. .

The countryside doesn’t do the game justice: “a delightfully cute action-adventure RPG with farming and crafting” makes us feel like another-farming-game The fatigue that followed Stardew Valley, and the cat theme, we’ll be honest, left us expecting something cheesy and hollow. After all, we’ve been burned by cute things before.

Instead, what we found was a wonderfully robust and surprisingly extensive RPG that is really cute – So many games do not achieve cuteness, but the moment we met Timmy, the young chinchilla who has a small shop in your hometown, they sold us.

The central conflict in Kitaria Fables is a pretty standard RPG: monsters get more aggressive, ‘we need a hero’, ‘oh look, here’s a hero’, ‘it’s dangerous to go alone’, etc. nature, too, since magic has been forbidden to secret reasons.

You will quickly be introduced to the “classless” combat system, where you can use a sword, bow, and all four elemental magics to create your own melee and spell load. Weapons and armor can be upgraded with monster materials and a large amount of change, making your attacks stronger and your health lasting longer.

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So yeah, Kitaria Fables is certainly not trying to break the mold, but that linearity isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Playing Kitaria Fables feels like stepping on the tables of a cafe you go to every day – it’s comforting, warm, and comforting. If you like games that engage your brain with a mindless but enjoyable routine interspersed with extremely light farming and the occasional search or a new area to explore, then Kitaria Fables is perfect.

However, the part that is more Fantasy Life is the combat. Just like Fantasy Life would allow you to change classes to face monsters such as Paladin, Mercenary, Hunter or Wizard, Kitaria Fables allows you to choose how you want to defeat the slimes (“Gooeys”) and the golems. If you prefer the hard-hitting, visceral sword (and don’t mind the risk-reward factor), then you can dump all your materials to upgrade it; If you prefer the slow-burning archery and magic range, there are plenty for you too. And of course you can mix and match on the fly, depending on the enemy or terrain.

Again, like Fantasy Life, there are a number of distinct themed areas: a desert, a frozen mountain, several cave dungeons, and a forest, each having different Things to kill in the wild that are adapted to the climate. There are bosses too, ranging from the most difficult for beginners to this guy who can kill you with a glance, and only by leveling up your team will you get a chance to kill. them. They also respawn every new day, so you will be able to practice a lot, but since the damage increase and HP are tied to your ability to collect materials and cash, and not your XP, it will require a lot of grinding.

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Between the story missions and light farming, it’s grinding that makes up the bulk of the game: collecting materials that sell for big money, investing that money in weapons, using upgraded weapons to kill monsters for more materials, rinsing, and repeat. That routine isn’t for everyone, but it certainly is for us, and while there were times when the game dragged on (specifically when a mission required a bunch of veggies that took several days to grow), it resumed once we did. done the necessary work.

A few minor issues spoil the experience, like the strange audio bug that seems to cause the water.wav sound effect to play over itself a hundred times, meaning that walking alongside a serene river sounds like standing at the foot of the river. Niagara. Falls This is easily fixed by closing and reopening the game, but it is quite jarring in a game that has a lovely soundscape.

A more serious bug is the tendency for enemies in certain areas to fall off the map, which is only really a problem in certain circumstances where the path is blocked until you can defeat all the monsters, which will trap you in a cave and it will force you to do it. to restore to the last save (which is usually once a day). The patch notes for the 1.0.4 update hope to fix this issue, but this patch has not been shipped to the Switch at the time of writing (we just got 1.0.2).

The slightly shaky pace and lack of knowledge of where to acquire certain materials hinders progress in the first few hours, but we can’t say we really cared about it, as it was during those first few hours that we fell in love with the game, after all. We wish there were more fast travel spots, some of them are oddly spaced, and a couple of cities only have one-way portals, although it’s hard to tell if this is a mistake or an oversight.

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One thing we really can’t let Kitaria Fables get away with is the lower case text. There are three UI sizes, and we had it set to “Large” all the time, but on both the handheld and the TV, it was like reading a book from across the room. It’s surprising, because other accessibility considerations, like fully remappable buttons, are there from the start, but the tiny text is something that will hopefully change in the future, because right now you’re going to give yourself a headache from all the squinting. eyes. Have to do.

However, even with these mistakes and problems, Kitaria Fables has been an absolute delight. We’ve played for 30 hours in total, and while the ending is a bit abrupt, almost all of those 30 hours have been filled with hopeful joy that Fantasy Life lives on in the DNA of indies like this.




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