In a fantasy world full of talking dogs, cats, goats, bears, and others animals, trouble is brewing.  An ancient calamity has returned, making monsters more aggressive and endangering the lives of the people.  You play as a young cat imperial soldier, sent to a small town to help defend the village.  There you’ll discover that to keep the calamity at bay, you must collect several relics from dungeon caves.  And so your adventure begins!  Kitaria Fables is a top down action adventure game, similar to titles like Zelda or more obscure ones like Brave Fencer Musashi.  There’s a heavy emphasis on crafting materials and items, too, so you’ll do a lot of mining for ores and farming crops.  So the game has a lot in common with titles like Rune Factory as well.  It’s available on most current consoles and PC, but reviewed on Switch here.

Most of the time, you’ll talk to animals in villages and accept quests.  Then you’ll go out into the field in top down fashion to explore the land and defeat monsters.  You swing your sword with one button, and enemies telegraph their attacks and you can roll dodge them with another button.  Later you’ll learn magic spells you can cast to hit enemies from a distance, as well as other sword skills.  The game also places a big emphasis on crafting weapons, armor, and healing items, so you’ll do a lot mining and farming similar to a Harvest Moon or Rune Factory game.

I had a few minor problems with the game, but they were big enough to cause me to become disinterested after a while.  Minor ones include slightly unclear goals from time to time, and text that’s too small to read, especially in handheld mode.  But my biggest problem was the menu system.  You can’t hold very many items at first, and I find that kind of item management not very fun.  They also don’t explain some things to you very well, like where your farming tools are.  And equipping, moving, and using items is just too fiddly.  Even worse, enemies can still move around and attack you while you are wading through menus, so that really turned me off right there.  However, if you can look past those problems, Kitaria Fables is still a good game.

Kid Factor:

Kitaria Fables is rated E-10 with an ESRB descriptor of Fantasy Violence.  Defeated enemies just fall over and disappear, but that’s about it.  Because of the high level of reading involved and slightly more complex gameplay, I’d say this one’s best for older kid gamers.

Tags: Game Reviews