Kitaria Fables by developer Twin Hearts and publisher PQube—Sony PlayStation 5 review written by Pierre-Yves with a copy provided by the publisher.
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
Kitaria Fables by Twin Hearts and PQube is an easy going and adorable action adventure RPG that's fun for the whole family. Sent to a remote village from the Capital in order to protect it from monsters, it doesn't take long for our protagonist Nyanza and their companion Macaron to be drawn into a seperate adventure all while performing their original duties as soldiers to the kingdom.
Channeling a bit of XSEED and Marvellous' Rune Factory (4), Kitaria Fables is a toned down version of their action adventure farming simulator creating a low and easy entry point for anyone interested. With bits of exploration, combat of some special monsters and a bit of farming, the adventure may take a dozen hours depending on how fast you move from main plot point to plot point but there's still enough to do on the side if you want to take your time.
Perhaps the one thing that I really appreciated about Kitaria Fables is that while there is a bit of a lengthy intro, it's not overly hand holding in order to teach you the ropes. In a few ways, it explains what it needs to do but it doesn't feel like it assumes that you've never played a game before. So starting off on the day that our heroes show up in town, you'll soon get a bit of the lay of the land with your first quest to defeat some monsters in order to protect the townspeople.
Split up into several areas that are all interconnected by passageways, moving around is easy enough as you simply need to run in the direction you want or do the Legend of Zelda rolling in order to move faster. Regardless of how you move around though, in almost all of these areas there will also be monsters that do not care if you are there unless you attack them first or they'll aim to attack you on sight. It really doesn't take long to figure which ones are which allowing you to easily figure out how to move through each area.
Now one reason that Kitaria Fables is fun for the whole family is that it has a low entry point when it comes to combat. There's no experience grinding in order to get more powerful, instead, you just need to craft new gear found from the various monsters across the land. For the monsters that can be found across the land, whether they be normal or more powerful types granting PSN trophies, they all follow a displayed choreograph of how they are going to attack, and the range of which their attack will be spread out over. This means that at any time you know exactly where to move and where to dodge as there is always time to move out of the way. It felt a bit too easy in the beginning but as you add in numerous enemies, it helps keep things easy.
Aside from all of the adventuring, our protagonist has, like in all good farming simulators, inherited the farm from one of their grandparents. In better shape than most, the fields are already ready to be tended with only a few rocks and tree debris to remove from the way if you really want to plant as much as possible off the bat before even upgrading your farming tools. There’s nothing overly complex and it’s an easy way to make money as you can always sell the final products for much more than you paid for the seeds, but it would have been nice to have a bit to work towards instead of having been given the whole field at the very beginning with nothing to work towards. Because of that, the farming aspect felt more like a small add-on for certain side quests and a way to pad your bank account instead of hunting down materials from monsters that can easily sell for a pretty penny.
Now if there’s one thing that didn’t quite work with this adventure it would be the way in which the checkpoints and portals have been designed as some areas that need to be re-visited often enough had no close points to teleport to. This usually meant that if you were grinding for materials in order to get the Platinum Trophy, every time you needed “one” shell from the turtle boss monster, you had to cross four separate areas each and every time because the closest portal one area away was only to teleport out from and not into. It made this process even over the course of the normal adventure rather repetitive and added nothing to the overall experience.
Summary
Overall though, Kitaria Fables is a fun little adventure which will clock in at about a dozen hours as you explore this cute medieval world. With plenty of side quests in order to help out the local people, several different magic spells to help you out and a giant plot of land to farm on, there’s enough to keep you busy for a little while without the vast time investment that Rune Factory or Harvest Moon would require from you.
Score: 7.75 / 10
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