Kitaria Fables is a game that heavily focuses on grinding, but it doesn’t feel that way due to how combat works. And no, it’s not a farming game.
Type: Single-player
Genre: Action Adventure
Developer: Twin Hearts
Publisher: PQube Limited
Release date: 2 Sep, 2021
Intro
Kitaria Fables is an action-adventure game with farming elements. It tries to emulate the gameplay of open-world MMORPG games that focuses on grinding. Mini-bosses will also spawn on the map, letting you challenge yourself to their bulky HP and nasty damage for a unique item drop to upgrade your gears.
Visuals
The game uses 3D graphics. It doesn’t look as good as AAA-level graphics, but it gets the job done. Characters look cute with their animal characteristics and the backgrounds do a good job of portraying the rural village and its surrounding areas. Each explorable region captures the intended theme while still making them unique from each other.
Story
The prologue does a good job of giving a premise on what happened, but the lack of a proper follow-up ends up ruining it. The story ended up straying from its intended premise, even brushing it off like it’s not important, and introduced another event instead that serves as an ending. Moreover, the events that happened at the ending feel weird with a revelation that suddenly appears out of nowhere to complement the story.
The storytelling also needs some work. It tries to be mysterious by introducing a “shady” character at the start, but they end up revealing a piece of important information casually in a random talk. I feel that it would work better if it was told in another event to give more impact and understanding to the whole story.
The Game
Gameplay
The gameplay reminds me of old MMORPG games where you have to mindlessly grind enemies over and over. Enemies will drop materials that can help to craft gears, which in turn help in defeating tougher enemies. Some quests will also require you to defeat X number of enemies, furthering your reason to grind them.
I like the fact that you can choose between upgrading your gears or continuing with the main story. Upgrading gears will take a longer time because of the number of enemies that you have to kill, and the highest tiered weapon that you can craft at that point will be enough to beat the game. However, enemies will get stronger in the tougher areas, making it harder and longer to beat if you still use the basic gears.
Quest progression can be vague sometimes. Some quest givers will only be available at a certain time, while some will even stand in a place that you won’t expect. People who are not exploring the area thoroughly will have trouble finding these quests, and some of them are needed to progress the story. Strangely, some quests are also marked as side quests even though they will be leading to main quests.
Farming
There isn’t much farming in the game. The only thing that you need to worry about is to decide which seed that you need to plant, and tending your crops doesn’t take a long time to finish. You can even skip the whole farming element if you want, although you will miss a good source of income that way. Most gear upgrades require a lot of money to craft, so farming can be mandatory for those who need to get the quick bucks.
Combat
Combat is played out like Dragon Nest where enemies are having a red marker whenever they are attacking and you have to press a button to gain an iframe to dodge their attacks. Getting hit by the enemy will prove to be fatal, especially if you are dealing with a boss.
Fighting bosses and remembering their attack patterns is something that I enjoyed from the game, especially since there are a lot of mini-bosses with unique attack patterns that you can find. They might take a long time to defeat due to their bulky HP, but dodging their damage to avoid getting killed can be quite a challenge if you are in the fight for a long time. I always try to challenge myself to defeat the mini-bosses with the lowest gear that I could do because of it.
There doesn’t seem to be an auto-targeting system to the nearest enemy when you are attacking, and enemies have a very small hitbox – your skill might miss if your position is slightly off from the enemy. You can try to lock your target to an enemy to mitigate this, but it proves to be problematic if you are fighting a lot of enemies at the same time. The auto-lock will make you unable to attack other enemies except for the ones that you locked, even if they are not in your attacking range. Moreover, there is no option to cancel the lock and it doesn’t always target the nearest enemy.
Enemies can stunlock you until you die. Sometimes, normal enemies will be gathered in one spot, and fighting all of them at once can prove to be fatal if you are not careful. Some enemies can either stun or freeze you, and getting hit by these skills one after another will eventually kill you. Luckily, dying will not give any penalty apart from skipping the current day. It also proves to be an easy way to return back home since there is no way to do such a thing at the beginning.
Length and Difficulty
I finished the game in 24.2h, but that’s mainly because I took my time and tried to defeat some mini-bosses several times with lower-tier gears. Moreover, I was also collecting materials to craft all gears without even making them, which is completely unnecessary to finish the game. The game’s difficulty depends on how good you are at dodging, but if you are not good at it, you can always try to grind to get the highest tiered gear and bring a lot of food items to use. I did find difficulties in the final dungeon because of its number of enemies, but they don’t give any problem once I switched my skills and upgraded my weapon.
Problems
The unnecessary backgrounds at the bottom of the screen can make it hard to see what’s happening in combat. The game also can benefit from bulk buy options – it can be time-consuming to buy 300+ items in one go.
Specs
Intel Core i5-9300H 2.40GHz, 8GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650
Verdict
The only thing that I remembered from playing Kitaria Fables is its grind, but strangely, I didn’t feel bad about it at all. It reminds me of my younger days when I played MMORPG with a lot of grinding at its core, and beating the mini-bosses is fun. The repetitiveness might not be suitable to some people, and I admit that the story feels short compared to the amount of grind that you need to do, but if you enjoyed the gameplay somehow, do give it a try. Make sure that you are aware of the grind though, and do not buy it if you are looking for a farming game.
