Kitsune Tails Reviews

:)

lesbiabs

great game would recommend to people who love 2D platformers

This is a really good game! If you're someone like me who always feels the need to 100% games to the point of stressing yourself out, Kitsune Tails is a nice change of pace because there aren't really any collectibles to worry about missing. Act 2 was especially fun as well.

Swing your arms, from side to side come on it's time to go do the Kitsune Tails is an 8 bit-style classical run and jump platformer, leaning heavily on III, Alex Kidd, The Great Giana Sisters, and more. It's cute, colorful, has good music, and is just a fun old time. Unlike many of the classics, there's a story even! Cut scenes follow many levels and presage boss fights, with voice acting for the protagonist and supporting cast. You also have a JRPG-esque town to purchase items from, with a host of powerups each having unique abilities to choose from. Difficulty does ramp up quickly, it's old school, with the first world being more of a tutorial/intro while the game truly begins in earnest in world 2. It never feels unfair though, at least as far as I've gotten. If you like old style platform games, you'll probably like this one.

Fun, simple platformer, with an enjoyable story too. The gameplay does have some weird quirks, but everything feels fun and fluid, especially during act 2.

Charming and interesting in how it takes the powerups of SMB3 to not only change them up but also make some lovely levels around those powerups. The second half of the game especially shines

First up, the game is visually gorgeous. The pixel art is executed flawlessly, especially with regards to animation. The characters all look lively! The writing is also great. The game's not a visual novel or anything - it's definitely mostly gameplay rather than than cutscene. But what writing there is ends up being very enjoyable. Fully voice-acted, too, which was great. My one gripe is that you have to play the game two entire times through in order to get any sort of closure on the story. Act 2 really should have "ended" after that second time playing World 1, with the rest of the levels being a bonus. Maybe require the world bosses to be beaten. Frankly, that's a minor gripe. Where this game genuinely stumbles, unfortunately, is the gameplay. For context, the game is clearly going for a sort of Mario 3 / Super Mario World style. P-Speed and everything. Neither of those games ever had controls as tight as a Ninja Gaiden or Mega Man, of course, but this winds up way off in the other direction. Simply put, the controls are slippery. Extremely slippery. Worse than many platformers' ice physics on the normal levels, slippery. And then there are ice levels. Some of that goes away if you don't hold the run button, but after the first world or two an increasing number of jumps simply won't be possible to make without running. And then the P-Speed implementation. It's... well, 'janky' doesn't really quite fit, since it didn't ever seem to present any bugs. But the way it works is that you get a significant and instantaneous boost of speed once you fill the meter. And when I say 'significant' I mean it - hard to put numbers on the difference, but it feels much larger than I remember from playing the Mario games this is drawing from. At a minimum, the transition is much more jarring. Many a fall during my playthrough was down to P-Speed kicking in at an inopportune moment, which never feels great. And then the water levels. Oh boy, the water levels. They're genuinely some of the worst-controlling water levels I've encountered in a long time. You've got all the maneuverability of a cruise ship. The only mercy is that they tend to ease up on the obstacles a bit, which saves them from comparisons to the DKC levels. DK did have more precision than these characters, though, which is a bit funny given he's a giant ape... Either way, another mitigating factor is that there really just aren't a whole lot of them. After saying all this, my recommendation here might be a bit surprising. But the early levels were decent enough, and the writing/visuals really do pull their weight and then some. And, at the end of the day, there's a cheat menu that one can easily access in order to just cheat their way through to the next cutscene. All told, I really did enjoy my time with this game, hence the recommendation. Just... know what you're getting in to, and when your patience with the gameplay runs out don't feel bad about cheating through the levels.