izigame.me

I've sunk a lot of time into Fights in Tight Spaces, and mostly enjoyed that time, so I was disappointed that this game anything but a worthy sequel. If you like FITS, then I would consider KITS only if heavily discounted. And if you've never placed FITS, you should get that game and not this one. Allow me to explain why KITS falls short, whether considered as a sequel or in its own right:
- The unique minimalist art style of FITS has been replaced by a much more detailed art style, one that makes the battlefield harder to read. For example, orange tile floors on some of the early maps make it difficult to see the red targeting indicators for enemy attacks. And more detailed environments make it less intuitive which surfaces can be used to knock opponents out of the play area.
- Some classes are extremely boring and limited, with starter decks missing all of the fun and useful cards you need. I abandoned a cleric run after two fights because of how boring the playstyle was.
- Information is not well-presented on the battlefield, since you have to constantly press buttons or hover over enemies to get information about their stats or special powers. You have to do this often, since visual design of enemies frequently fails to convey information about their powers. For example, counter-intuitively, the early game enemy with long-range melee attacks is *not* the one wielding a staff (which intuitively would be a reach weapon). Instead, the enemies with reach weapons are the dudes wielding clubs for some reason... clubs that are much shorter than the staff that lacks reach attacks...
- Menus and UI items often overlap and cut each other off, so that you have to rotate the game's terrible camera in the hope that it will eventually show you the information you want to see.
- The UI in general is poor. The end turn button is small and a constant annoyance, when it could have been large and easy to click. The game does a poor job of reminding the player which hero is active, inducing errors on the player's part. I could go on. There's lots of small, annoying, issues that simply shouldn't exist after good play testing.
- KITS has the same problem that FITS does with card selection - even if you unlock many new cards, you will rarely see them, since the game's RNG is biased towards showing you the same basic attacks over and over again. The RNG for card rewards needs serious tweaking, since it can show you the same card as two out of the three card rewards you choose from, which does not make sense and should have been fixed long before release.
- The game's RNG is also quite unforgiving for some missions. In a hostage rescue mission, one hostage spawned in range of a melee enemy who was too far away for my character to affect, and who instantly did enough damage to the hostage that I missed one of the objectives. It's not fun when the game gives you an objective, then sets up the battlefield such that you are guaranteed to fail that objective. Similarly, there are maps where enemies spawn such that they can surround you on turn one, and if you didn't draw the rights cards to escape, well, you're screwed.
- The party format is okay but not super compelling. Since you get only a small number of additional cards and action points with a larger party, and since the game is built around never taking damage, you'll often spend the extra cards and action points keeping your followers out of harm's way, which means they rarely play a decisive role in battles.
- The itemization is largely a missed opportunity, since you get few chances to buy or earn equipment, many classes are very restricted in what they can use, and many items aren't that interesting anyways. Item descriptions are often very poorly-written. One item reads "duplicate first attack played each fight" - does that mean the card is played twice? Does it mean that a copy of the card is added to my deck? If the latter, is this duplicate a single-use card,. a card that exists for the length of the fight, a permanent copy, etc? It's not hard to clearly answer these questions, but the QA on the writing was clearly asleep at the switch.
- Speaking of poor writing... this game's writing ranges from cringe to passable, but the main issue is the fact that the game makes you click through huge amounts of filler dialogue every time you play. This gets annoying fast, especially since the writing in FITS was both more concise and less intrusive. Roguelikes anticipate the player going through the same sequence dozens of times.. so why on earth would the devs think that this means the player wants to read the same filler text dozens of times? It's mind boggling that the same studio which handled this so well in FITS fumbled it so badly in KITS. More boggilingly still is that clicking the "skip" button will sometimes mean that you miss information like what item reward you have received.
- The game retains FITS very high difficulty curve. Early game if you aren't completing all of the optional objectives, you won't have the gold to buy equipment, heal, or hire followers. And many of those tasks are quite hard (see the hostage example above), or they involve knocking enemies out of the play area or tricking them into killing each other, which may be extremely difficult for some decks. The mid game was actually pretty easy for me, but then the same late-game difficulty spike occurred as in FITS, meaning that certain decks just aren't viable anymore. For example, in the final act, you're introduced to high-HP, high-damage enemies who can both dodge and counter-attack, and who move when you do. That means that stun and throw decks are at a disadvantage, since they can dodge your stun/throw and counter you. It also means that using movement to avoid damage is no longer viable, despite being a perfectly good strategy for the rest of the game. This is extremely frustrating, since the deck you spent time creating is now unplayable through no fault of your own. If this happened in FITS, you could at least start the campaign at any chapter, while KITS makes you restart from the beginning.
All this to say, I've played several hours of KITS and I'm thoroughly unimpressed. The game does not reach the heights of the original, lacking many of its strengths, but inheriting several of its weaknesses.