The first time I saw the launch trailer for Kitaria Fables I instantly drew a comparison to one of my favorite 3DS games—Fantasy Life. Both have slight isometric views with bright charming environments, both offer a world littered with NPCs and enemies, and both boast lite action RPG gameplay. I feverishly checked my email for weeks after being on the list for a review code and, now that I’ve played quite a bit of it, I’m ready to share my thoughts.
There’s a lot to like in Kitaria Fables. For starters, the anthropomorphic animals are cartoon-y and fun with each having their own personalities. Right from the start, you can choose between about eight different cat types like calico for you sword wielding protagonist and swap them out at will using the standing mirror in your home. Like I mentioned above, I was instantly drawn to the Fantasy Life style of combat. You have light and heavy attacks, a doge roll on a cool down, and magic abilities also on a cooldown. Enemies have an AOE to dodge and typically don’t pose much of a threat early on, that is, until they start gaining up on you and _especially_ when enemies with varying attack types are thrown in the mix. In all honesty, this was my favorite part of the game as I enjoyed mixing up heavy and magic attacks while I took down foes. I also enjoyed the overall cheerful aesthetics and soundtrack, however, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows.
The visuals and soundtrack are good but the sound effects feel…generic. For a game that has pretty good production values, it’s a shame the audio isn’t both varied and of higher quality. It’s the first thing I noticed in _My Time at Portia_ and it sticks out here too. Another issue I have is something that crops up far to often in my opinion, and that’s teeny tiny UI elements and menus. Unlike Fantasy Life whose menus took up the entirety of the display–thanks to the low resolution of the 3DS screens no doubt–the crafting and inventory menus take up a quarter of the screen if that and it’s really annoying. It’s annoying on a small display in handheld mode and it’s equally annoying from across the room on a TV. As is somewhat tradition, the game does offer a ‘Large UI’ mode and, as is tradition, the mode is laughable and is no help whatsoever.
I could get over the issue of small menus if the two other deeply rooted gameplay issues didn’t bother me more, and one ties directly into the other. For me the biggest issue is having to grind for _everything_. In Kitaria Fables you need to kill the same groups of enemies over and over to get material drops. That’s all well and good and wouldn’t bother me if you didn’t also need to hustle and make as many paw pennies as possible. This brings me to my the gameplay element that’s tied to the grinding which is farming. Unlike Stardew Valley which has both grinding and combat, Stardew obviously leans into the former while Kitaria leans hard into the latter. The issue with farming in this game is that one second of real world time equals a minute in game, so a whole day takes about twenty-four minutes which doesn’t sound bad, but it feels like I’m always fighting the clock. My day will be halfway over and all I’ve done is tend to my not-so-big farm. Fortunately, when it comes to the day getting away from you, the game doesn’t have any penalty for staying up late or for death. You either end up pulling an all nighter in the game or you wake up back in your bed in the event you die.
At the end of the day, I had some fun with Kitaria Fables but it’s not a replacement for Fantasy Life for me. It’s a good game in its own right and I hope the developer can work on enlarging the UI as well as extending the in game time in a day. Work has already been done in reducing the grind for early game weapons and armor, so there’s hope. If you liked Fantasy Life, you may like this game, but don’t let its cartoon-y aesthetics fool you into thinking this game is as chill as the Stardew Valley or Fantasy Lifes of the world.
