Kitaria Fables Review – Feline Fine (PS5)

Kitaria Fables is a wonderfully adorable action-RPG which will also have you farming and crafting away to your heart’s content. It’s a game that’s definitely taken inspiration from the likes of Stardew Valley and Rune Factory but has simplified things making it a great game for younger audiences.

You’ll be playing as a young feline soldier called Nyanza who has been sent to Paw Village to help protect it, along with his cute sidekick Macaron. Monsters have recently begun acting more aggressively and the locals are getting worried. Despite the game introducing things like forbidden magic and fearsome monsters early on, you’re never really pressured to get on with saving the world. Instead the villagers pretty much encourage you to just take your time and have fun.

Nyanza is a silent protagonist but you do get to inject a bit of character into the hero by changing his fur color as well as wearing different armor and accessories that changes his appearance. Macaron will do much of the talking for you so it helps that she’s super chatty and seems to get along with everyone she meets.

Kitaria Fables Review – The Good Life

Your Uncle Payne used to live in the village so you’re given his old farmhouse and land as your base. It’s a bit of a shame that you can’t upgrade and decorate your house but you do have a nice big field that you’re free to farm. Farming is a simple system whereby you buy seeds from the village, plough the soil, plant and then water them everyday until they’re ready to harvest.

There’s no stamina system in place so you can do as much farming as you like without worrying about running out of energy. You’re also able to upgrade farming tools which will make your daily chores much quicker and more efficient, leaving you with more daylight hours to go out and adventure.

While out exploring the world of Kitaria you’ll come across lots of different creatures to fight and thankfully Nyanza is more than capable of protecting himself. You’ll be able to switch between using a sword or a bow and can also fire off some magic spells. Combat is fairly straightforward and will usually involve you attacking and then dodging out of the way of an impending attack. When an enemy is about to strike the area in front of it flashes orange and red, this makes it fairly easy to know when to move out of the way.

Kitaria Fables Review – Let the Grinding Begin

You don’t get experience points from defeating monsters. Instead the only way to get stronger is to craft better equipment which means beating up monsters to scrounge together enough materials. This is where the game starts to fall down a little as you’ll also need to gather loads of materials to complete many of the quests. Unfortunately it does start to get a bit too repetitive.

Much of this may have been alleviated if you’d been able to forge deeper relationships with the villagers. Being able to get to form friendships or get to know more about them might have helped disguise the fact that most of the quests have the same structure—go kill X monster until you have 20-30 of this material.

It also isn’t helped by the way the game gives out quests. For example there was one quest line where I was asked for some tomatoes, which took five in-game days to harvest. As soon as I handed in the tomatoes I was then asked, by the same quest giver, for some grapes. If I had known that they needed these in advance I could have started growing them at the same time. Instead I had to wait another five days before I could complete the quest.

There’s actually only a few hours worth of story content throughout the game. What turns this into a 20-25 hour adventure is that you’ll constantly have to grind in order to have enough materials to upgrade your weapons or to continue the story.

It might sound like I’m being quite critical of Kitaria Fables but I did actually have a lot of fun playing it. It never quite reaches its full potential, but as long as you don’t mind that it’s quite grindy in places, then it is a worthwhile adventure. There’s also a couch co-op mode which is perfect if you have been looking for a simple RPG to introduce to a younger gamer or if you just want something low key to play with a friend.

Kitaria Fables review code provided by publisher. Version 1.000.002 reviewed on a PlayStation 5. For more information on scoring, please read our Review Policy.