Kingdom’s Return: Time-Eating Fruit and the Ancient Monster Review – All Looks, Little Depth

Kingdom’s Return: Time-Eating Fruit and the Ancient Monster Review

Genre fusions in games are always fascinating. Taking two disparate ideas and smashing them together can have some pretty exciting results. Or it can be a sloppy disaster. Kingdom’s Return: Time-Eating Fruit and the Ancient Monster blends side-scrolling action and a few city-building bones to make an unusual but familiar dish. It’s still a side-scrolling action game, but one with more substance. Slightly more meat on the bone, if you will. As it turns out, this combo is still a somewhat unsatisfying one. While the combat is fine enough, and the graphics are delightful, the city-building is kind of a drag.

To be honest, calling it a city-builder of any sort feels pretty disingenuous. What’s actually happening is, you slap some structures down, and they eventually affect your stats. The rest of the game is just a series of menus that pad out the non-combat gameplay. Really, the only substantive gameplay is found on the various battlefields.

Sort of a City-Builder

You explore a series of biomes, smashing through enemies and harvesting materials as you go. It’s tough to avoid trading hits, but you can take a lot of them before you perish. Combat is fluid at first. It’s only once you start Incorporating special moves that all your rhythms get thrown off. Which is annoying, sure, but I adapted quickly enough. What’s actually annoying is the blocking mechanic. It merely reduces the damage you take, instead of preventing it altogether. It really feels like you can’t avoid constantly losing health.

I’m a real sucker for some good pixel art. Kingdom’s Return is crammed with excellent sprite work. The four playable characters look rad, for starters. They’ve all got a decent roster of animations, a stack of unique moves, and properly distinct character designs. The monsters all look great as well. Again, the city-building bits fall short. The castle and the other structures all feel pretty standard. The level design is colorful but unremarkable. There’s just something uneven about the visual quality.

Excellent Pixel Art

I can’t really speak on the plot with any depth. Not to say there wasn’t one, it just didn’t make the impact one would hope for. I’m a more mechanically-focused player in general, so story beats have to shine pretty bright for me to pick them out of the background. You’re given a solid backstory about a kingdom in decline, but it doesn’t factor into the gameplay much. You’ve got a fairy ally early on, but her presence seems like a justification for how fast you build things more than anything else. The plot does eventually make more of an appearance, but it really takes its time doing so.

While the rhythm of battle feels somewhat stiff, you’ve got a lot to work with. All four characters have a robust stable of moves to figure out. The mage has great reach and awful defense, the paladin is a tank with a toothpick, etc etc. Switching characters is easy enough, and you’re free to experiment until you find your main fighter. This is also where that bare bones city-builder business comes in handy. You get different stat boosts depending on what’s clinging to your castle, you see.

Many Moves to Master

It’s easy enough to get sucked into a sort of loop with Kingdom’s Return. You smash your head against a stage until you succeed, slowly levelling up your chosen warrior. Meanwhile, your kingdom takes shape, and the story inches along. It’s comfortable, but I’m not sure how fun it actually is. The graphics are lovely, and the combat is reasonably deep, for sure. But the plot only pokes its head in once in a while, and the city-building is just a reimagined menu screen. If you’re looking for a pixel art side-scrolling action game, you’re in luck. But if you want anything more from the experience, you could be in trouble with Kingdom’s Return: Time-Eating Fruit and the Ancient Monster.

***An Xbox Series X code was provided by the publisher***