The smell of a fresh journey underway. I quickly wanted to get out of the starting area even if it was fun. I wanted to get to the open-world aspect of the game and just go out exploring the different elemental islands.

While most of the game is open world you do first need to make it to the floating island. The first part of the game acts as a tutorial that lacks feeling like one. Which is how I judge if a game tutorial is any good or not. You want it to feel like it’s blended into the game and not give you information too fast.

The fact they start you off in an ice cave and already interact with a character that ends up giving you the main quest once you are done with the starting area just feels perfect. I always enjoy exploring caves.

I even found myself at one point low on health wondering if I was just one more hit away from getting killed. The game had yet to go over the basics of cooking and using food. This made me home to avoid taking any more damage and thinking about my next steps. Thankfully it was not long before I was able to heal up to full. That sense of danger faded along with the yellow effect around the outer edge of the game.

While I do somewhat wish the left screen panel would fade away at some point telling you the basic attack, ability, and some other buttons. I never bothered to check menu options to see if it could. It was just something I ended up getting used to seeing and not thinking anymore of till I was writing this up.

For the most part, when explaining things the game did it in quite simple ways. Sometimes just shows you a basic graphic. Other times there was more info in the text as the storyline progressed to you leaving the starting area. Many times, something this basic is all that is needed.

I even ended up taking screenshots as a visual reminder in case I forgot about anything that was being shown to me early on. As a little refresher on the information needed. I also liked the fact that when it comes to things like food even if I did not cook it up healing mushrooms, I could still use the raw version.

The game did cap you on how many cooked versions of each type of food you can carry at once. That limit increases as you upgrade that food from collecting sticks and some other basic resources.

There were also some rather interesting encounters along the way. For instance, this purple plant that is currently burning in the screenshot from me shooting it with my slingshot with a fire pellet.

I would end up encountering a lot more of these types of things while I explored the game. They required you to get close enough for a weak point to open up showing you what kind of pellet you needed to hit that weak spot with.

When you are close enough to learn its weakness, you are also close enough to take ranged damage from it. I quickly learned I could shoot out the orbs that circle it and end up getting fired at you. They do however regrow rather quickly. Leaving you just a small window of opportunity to take it out without taking damage.

This game would also have a few traps along the way I'd need to keep an eye out for. Far beyond just getting ambushed when getting close to a shielded chest. Sometimes it would be beehives in trees I'd have to take out.

Other times it was a bit more complex like above. Where the object on the ground explodes if you get too close and release a poison gas. That poison gas while usually disappoints will not always. That is where the flower above it comes in handy. So, if I shoot the trap and then the flower the gas gets released and then the flower removes it.

As I started to get closer to getting out of the starting area. The game started to show me some rather basic puzzles. Some of them were just finding statues that had matching symbols to where to place them on the ground. Others were a bit more advanced.

Then I found myself dealing with my first boss. This guy was not holding back either. I tried to first melee him and with how much dodging and rolling it had to do to avoid taking damage. I Was barely doing any damage to him.

Like all bosses in this game, he had more than one heal bar I'd have to take down. With him getting a bit harder each health bar was a different phase. It took a couple of tries before I became better accustomed to the combat system in this game. Once things started to click, I took the boss down. It just took longer than I'd have liked.

Once the boss was defeated, I arrived at the floating island. It was in the middle of the map. There were some final things to be explained to me before the game opened up. Along with getting the main quest to enter into a bunch of elemental temples and get stones. I also got some side quests of things to collect along my way as well.

Such as the game introduces you to the star alert and ruins. Where you can increase your different levels from combat to food. Along with unlocking new and more powerful attacks. Along with how to increase your health and stamina from running ruins. I’ll be going more into depth in this in a later post.

Final Thoughts

This game was just released in July. I’m glad I did not run into any bugs in the starting area. That to me is a good sign if they nailed the first area, I can have some decent expectations for the remainder of the game.

I rather enjoyed the starting area as well. While I don’t see myself wanting to repeat it a bunch of times over and over again. At least the first time though it was entertaining enough between the storyline which I mostly left out. The game shows you the basics you would need while going to each of the four different elemental islands.

Information

Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Kaku Ancient Seal.

Disclosure. A review copy of the game was received for free.