Kitaria Fables [Xbox]
Developed by Twin Hearts and published by PQube, Kitaria Fables is an action adventure RPG set in the previously peaceful land of Kitaria; where the local wildlife surrounding Paw Village has grown increasingly dangerous - and the citizens need help defending against a mysterious threat called The Calamity. You’ll take on the role of Nyanza - an Empire soldier who has come to Paw Village after inheriting their grandfather’s farmhouse. Gaining possession of a mysterious and powerful spellbook, you’ll learn the art of magic; an act outlawed long ago by the Empire. So with this knowledge - and some weapons! - you must fight back, and help to protect the villagers from the lurking dangers.
Split into three main biomes, broken down further into different areas, you’ll come across a range of NPCs you can interact with to take on side-quests and find out information, as well as a variety of monsters that can be killed to gain items and resources. Progressing through the story is interesting, but it can quickly feel quite grindy due to the volume of enemies you need to hunt to gain enough from their item drops in order to craft; and even finding good areas to farm materials such as wood is frustrating in the beginning due to them being few and far between. Each area is quite small, with a low amount of travelling required before you’ll pass through the border from loading screen to loading screen; yet you’re so slow at moving through these areas, you’ll be constantly relying on your dodge roll to pick up speed (constantly running out of stamina in the process). Enemies don’t have to be defeated to move through areas thankfully, as this would slow you down further when you’re doing any backtracking, but quickly taking them out doesn’t feel like too much of a chore. Certain areas have bosses that drop decent loot, and these respawn after a short time so can provide very useful if you’re trying to farm for certain items. There is a fast travel system, but not in every area - so some amount of running around will be required (and that amount is a lot).
The combat system is simple, with enemies having easily readable attack patterns that don’t put up too much challenge. Mixing up melee combat with your magic spells feels decent, and will allow you to manage your stamina and mana meters well; stamina depletes with repeated dodges, but will replenish after a short time - and dodge rolling out of the way of enemy attacks (which will be forewarned by glowing bars on the ground) feels satisfying - even without the challenge. Enemy names will glow in different colours to evidence their difficulty, with some being above your current level - so it gives you something tangible to tell you when to walk away from a fight.
As you progress, you will be able to craft weapons at the Blacksmith, and armour at the Armory - but in order to gain stronger gear you must have built up a decent chunk of change, as well as have the required resources, and this was a bit of a barrier until later in the game, by which point it felt somewhat overdue, as Nyanza’s only way to increase in skill or strength is through these, due to there being no typical RPG-style levelling system. You’ve got two types of armour available, as well as a sword and bow, and there’s a few of each with different appearances - looking better, the stronger they are; however, these are all done in a linear progression, with each one being an upgrade from the one before, so you don’t really get much choice in the matter. You have other equipment such as hats and back items, and these have a little more variety to them, and can be crafted, or found throughout the world.
Visually, Kitaria Fables is cute enough, but does feel like it has something missing. Enemy appearances are well varied, and their overall designs are interesting but the environments are a little bland at times. They are marred by the fact that so many of the areas are short, and become exceedingly repetitive as time goes on due to a distinct lack of variety in things to do, and items to gather. You’ll come across treasure chests on occasion, as well as smashable crates, however once you’ve opened them - that’s it. They don’t regenerate whether you leave the area, nor after a period of time, so each area just becomes a corridor of sorts; its sole purpose being to ferry you from one point to the next. Thankfully the soundtrack is very joyful and pleasant to listen to, with a relaxing, wholesome vibe as you travel through the world - we’ve found ourselves humming along to the tunes a lot.
With your own little garden to maintain and harvest, this looked to be a delightful aspect to the game, but sadly fell short of our expectations, also. Farming is primarily used to grow crops that can be used in recipes; however, to do so you must take the crops to a vendor in town before paying to have the crops turned into various health-regenerating dishes. You can also choose to sell your crops outright to earn some cash for those much-needed upgrades, though this too lacks worth considering how time-consuming it is. The land is a fairly decent size, so you can have plenty of crops growing at once to help speed things up a little, but the process of carting it all back and forward feels pointless in the grand scheme of things, as you can sleep to heal and you can also equip various health boosting items.
Progression is impacted by a frequent suffering from a lack of inventory space; a problem that can be remedied by purchasing upgrades - if you can afford them. Each upgrade costs a lot, with the second being substantially higher than the first, and in order to even be able to upgrade, you’ll need to speak with Pumpkin - a wandering merchant that only pops up in a few certain areas at random, so it can be easy to miss him. You can craft chests to store items in on the go, but this is another problem within a problem, due to the large volume of wood required to build a chest, and the lack of good wood farming spots to build up stock.
The story, and the combat is enjoyable enough, but the huge amount of trudging around from one area to the next does become a bit boring - but maybe we’ve just been conditioned to expect more than what the younger target audience of the game would. Available for £16.99 on Xbox for the base game, or £21.74 for the Deluxe Edition, which also includes a variety of cosmetic items (although you can still customise your character to some degree without these), Kitaria Fables is a fair price - and the cute visuals, engaging story, and fun, simple combat make it a decent contender for a lot of kids looking for a new game to play.
In the end, we decided to give Kitaria Fables the Collecting Asylum rating of 7/10.
Have you played Kitaria Fables yet? What did you think of it?
Let us know in the comments below!
- V x
Thank you to PQube for the Kitaria Fables Xbox review code!
