One of my biggest frustrations with the emerging eastern games industry is its lack of variety. Don’t get me wrong, I’m extremely happy that creatives from countries like China and Korea are able to share their art with the rest of the world, but it feels like their output has consisted mainly of samey soulslike action games that reuse assets and cultural aesthetics.
Kaku: Ancient Seal provides a breath of fresh air in this respect. While it also seeks to emulate a popular design formula (that of the Breath of the Wild-style open world), Bingobell Games is able to inject enough charm into the project to make it stand on its own.
You play as the titular Kaku, thrust into a grand adventure where you’ll have to travel to different areas, fight enemies, and conquer bosses. Much like its Zelda inspirations, the story won’t be shoved down your throat. Cutscenes are few and far between, which is unfortunate given that they’re a great opportunity to showcase the Pixar-style visuals. Most dialogue and plot beats are handled with still images and text, which can sometimes read a bit stilted, though this is likely due to challenges with localizing the script.
Narrative shortcomings are easy to wave off when you have a game world as lush as Ancient Seal. The map is made up of multiple biomes, each representing a different element, and you’ll have plenty of collectibles to find and resources to gather. Exploring will reveal your standard towers that, once activated, can act as fast travel points. You’ll need to solve a sliding block puzzle in order to add the tower to your map, which serves as a fun change of pace.
Much of your moment-to-moment gameplay will be dominated by combat, with enemies littering most locations. Although it starts out as very button-mashy, your attack options expand significantly after the tutorial. You’ll be able to spend resources earned during traversal on new techniques, ensuring that skirmishes always stay fresh.
Your offensive abilities aren’t the only parts of Kaku’s kit you can upgrade; almost every single gameplay system can be improved in some way. Cooking can be made more potent, item capacity increased, and your health pool expanded. In order to make any changes to Kaku, you’ll need to teleport to the Ruins Realm, which you can do anytime you like without penalty.
After arriving, you can exchange materials gathered in the overworld for enhancements, and there are a lot to unlock. The opening of the game doesn’t do an amazing job of explaining everything you’re able to do in the Ruins Realm, instead introducing a bunch of powers you can use at a rapid pace. It’s a lot to wrap your head around, but once you understand what’s on offer, you’ll return often to buff Kaku, facilitating a sense of progression regardless of where you are in the story.
Ancient Seal is an Unreal Engine title, and that presents the usual set of challenges. Environments are packed with detail and the lighting is excellent, helping the animated art style pop, but there are performance drawbacks. Enclosed areas feel locked at 60 frames per second, but the moment you step into the open world, there is a notable hit. It seems to be operating above 30, but with inconsistent frame pacing, leading to regular stuttering. It’s not like the visuals are particularly taxing either; image quality is quite fuzzy, which only exacerbates the other technical issues.
Kaku: Ancient Seal is clearly aimed at kid gamers, perhaps those looking for a Zelda-like experience on their console of choice. I imagine that younger audiences will be very satisfied with Bingobell’s work, and older players may also find themselves hooked on the game’s various modes of progression or inviting visual design. Be prepared for some nagging performance problems, though if those don’t bother you, this is a great adventure to jump into.
