I have had a lot of fun with Kitaria Fables! I will admit I went into it hoping for it to scratch my farm-sim junkie itch and was intrigued by the idea of it mixing ARPG elements. It turned out to be an ARPG with casual amounts of farming incorporated and I am surprisingly cool with that. Don’t get me wrong, the farming elements are well polished and a great new element to an old school genre but they are definitely a side by to the main event which Super Nintendo Action RPG nostalgia.
I don’t think it was an accident that Kitaria Fables comes off feeling like a love letter to the many amazing SNES ARPGs of the 90s. It borrows from all of them while cloning none. You have a sword or bow for your main attacks and though you can switch easily between them, my feeling is pick one and go hard on it as the magic spells you learn tend to supplement one of the other well (I went all-in on bows so I can’t speak to you melee fiends’ late game capabilities). You will upgrade your armor, weapons and spells as you progress, but mostly through crafting and resource obtainment.
Spells become very powerful as the game progresses and would probably be a complete walkthrough if you could become a full-blown mage but the devs did a good job of balancing your need for physical attacks with magical attacks by having your physical hits be your source to regenerate the mana for your spells. Late-game spells can deplete your entire mana gauge in a spell or two but can be built back up quickly with a rapid succession of blows to your enemy.
Kitaria will throw weenie mons at you at first as you learn the ropes and veteran ARPG fans will mow through these like a Vampire Survivor in a kitty patch, but your adversaries will soon become more complex as they mix different mobs in different areas, each with unique attack patterns and methods. Eventually you will encounter mini-bosses and bosses that can be long-form battles but very pattern oriented once learned. Each creature drops a specific possibility of resources which you will need to unluck various weapons, tools, armor and spells as the game progresses.
One of the major aspects of Kitara Fables that helps it stand out from a plethora of 90s ARPG throwbacks is its marriage to another 90s SNES classic: Harvest Moon! Your character is given a plot of land in the village you’ve been tasked to protect and a handful of farm tools and you can toil away as many or as few hours growing taters and other forms of produce to supplement your war on the ever-intensifying monster incursions.
Though the game never feels overly challenging in either its farming or action elements, I tip my hat to the way they have balanced Kitaria Fables to not pigeonhole you into either. I played a fairly balanced kitty-farmer/kitty-warrior game myself but I feel that you could probably take an 80/20 approach either way so that if ARPG is your thing, you could spend the majority of your time fighting to gather your materials and farm for the bare quest minimums, or vice-versa for the farming fans and buy your way through a lot of content with your greedy corporate farm profits.
Kitaria Fables is an excellent blend of hack-and-slash Zelda-esque entertainment with your favorite farm-sim casual fun, but IT IS very casual. If you speed run Secret of Mana now or have obtained billion-dollar profits from both Pierre AND Jojo Corp and are looking for new challenges, keep looking. If, however, you loved Secret of Mana for its casual exploration and continuous upgrades and/or Stardew Valley for its relatively unpunishing but uber-rewarding development, Kitaria is the place for you my friend!
