I love me a good ole farming time sink, having spent 100’s of hours on things like Stardew Valley, Harvest Moon and my latest farming obsession, Rune Factory! So when the opportunity popped up to preview a feline-charged game in the genre, I jumped on it! Kitaria Fables is a little closer to Rune Factory between the 3 aforementioned titans of the genre, in that it’s not entirely based around just farming, while the additional things don’t feel almost half baked.
Kitaria Fables has you, a soldier of the empire coming to Paw Village in order to protect the village from the increasingly aggressive monsters. Luckily, this is where your uncle lived and you will NEVER guess what he left you. That’s right, another farming game, another family member who hands you a farm!
The game didn’t even dunk me right into farming, instead giving me some story, teaching me the basic combat and navigation. Your feline avatar can move around, dodge, slash, shoot a bow as well as use your various skills! You can regenerate mana with normal attacks, which combined with skill cooldowns is your in combat resource management, and thankfully there is a BIG variety of skills to equip and experiment with whole you figure out what gameplay style works for you.
I like that the enemies give a little MMO style attack range before they attack, giving you ample time to dodge away and restart your assault on them. In addition to skills, there is also a magic system that even lets you craft new spells that do big damage, or are otherwise extremely useful in combat. Magic is a touchy subject in the world of Kitaria Fables, with the empire actively discouraging the use of it, and hunting down people who use it. Thankfully, you will figure out that the Empire may not have the common man’s interests in mind, so magic will soon enough be on your plate to use.
Your farming mechanics don’t seem quite as in depth as say, Rune Factories soil stats and seed levels, but because it isn’t the only gameplay in the spotlight its simplicity is appreciated by me. It felt a whole lot more like your farming is supplementing your progress in the combat and story, as you fund equipment and make tons of different things required for crafting or spells via farming as well.
I found myself a little bored as I ran through areas to get to my goal, so I think that maybe adding more warps or movement options would help to fix that problem personally, as those were the few moments when I found myself just feeling very middle of the road on it. The combat can use just a little bit more polish, but I think that the team at Twin Hearts is onto something really fun here! If you enjoy these kinds of games, or you are looking for something a little different to add to your library, Kitaria Fables may very well be the kind of game you are looking for.
Kitaria Fables has an available demo on Steam, and a planned release date of September 2nd, 2021.
