Inti Creates games usually feel like they have at least one saving grace that makes even the middling experiences feel interesting. Dragon Marked for Death doesn’t feel tedious when you play with other people. Umbraclaw features some cool character designs. With Kingdom’s Return: Time-Eating Fruit and the Ancient Monster, I can’t point to an element that makes it feel worthwhile. It looks okay. I guess building up the kingdom to increase stats and our heroes’ capability helps. Combat can end up entertaining once you invest in someone enough. But the thing is, nothing stands out or feels special. Instead, I could think of other Inti Creates I’d rather be playing that are better in every other way.
First, there’s barely any story to Kingdom’s Return: Time-Eating Fruit and the Ancient Monster to lend a sense of personality or purpose to the affair. After selecting your first character from the Alchemist, Imperial, Wizard, or Zipangu and saving a time fairy Kairos from some monsters, you find yourself at Norlant’s Kingdom of Almacia. Minister Navi and Almacia’s King explain that, though they were allied with the fairies and filled with adventurers who made pacts with them, it disaster struck and all the fairies disappeared. The Great Fairy of Time Chronos explains the kingdom and surrounding areas were sent to the future, and she’ll assist since what happened reflects poorly on her kind and their powers.
And… that’s it. It’s a very barebones affair, with the King not even getting a proper name. Even once you do get toward the end and figure out what’s going on and why there are the time shenanigans, it doesn’t feel like it carries much weight. It’s all very bland and unexciting, which is odd since Inti Creates games do tend to have personality to them. Even the character, enemy, and stage designs seemed generic, Chronos and Kairos aside, compared to the developer’s other works. It almost made me wonder if the lack of exposition and character individuality is on purpose to make the idea of buying the Azure Striker Gunvolt and Gal Gun character skins more appealing.
There’s a certain routine we’re expected to follow in Kingdom’s Return: Time-Eating Fruit and the Ancient Monster. When in the village, we can check in, spend cash we earned, manage our base by building places that can affect our stats and improve the kingdom, switch characters and improve ones we’ve been using via the small Class Circle skill tree, and take missions. These send us out into the other areas displaced in time like the kingdom. Smaller encounters on the way for some missions let us take out all enemies in a brief 2D “stage” area for extra experience, cash, and materials, while the major targets of a mission in a dungeon involve multi-floor areas with X number of opponents to clear on each one and perhaps even a larger scale boss fight. Once you clear that, you head back to town to do more rebuilding.
The thing is, neither “side” of Kingdom’s Return: Time-Eating Fruit and the Ancient Monster feels fully fleshed out. The kingdom management part isn’t very intensive. Getting the necessary materials is monotonous, due to drop rates. Since there’s no real story or connection, I didn’t feel a major incentive or sense of fulfillment to keep building it up. The buffs are nice! But it didn’t feel like I accomplished as much as I did in other city management simulations. It feels like it exists only to make our characters better.
Likewise, the missions don’t feel fulfilling either. Part of this is because there’s no incentive to max out every character. The balance is so off that Zipangu is really all you need. His moveset and emphasizing of critical hits makes him the most efficient warrior in the bunch. (Also, I was shocked at how good the range of his swords is as well.) Wizard isn’t bad either, if you’d prefer to go with a ranged approach. But trust me when I say Zipangu is the one. And combat isn’t bad. It involves reading the room, so to speak, and responding to enemy attacks with blocks and dodges so you can then land your own hits. The problem is how tedious it is. While combat can be interesting, every assignment basically involves massacring every enemy in an area until you complete it. Maybe a big boss is tossed in at the end. But it’s always the same, and the grind-related elements made me want to just dash through everything as quickly as possible.
If missions felt more exciting and the character designs, enemies, and environments looked as good in Kingdom’s Return” Time-Eating Fruit and the Ancient Monster as other Inti Creates titles, I’d be more forgiving when it comes to the tedium. Sadly, they’re not. Compared to the company’s other games, it’s disappointing in many ways. On the plus side, the Switch and PC demo is a very good indicator of what to expect, so you could at least try that and know right away if you’re willing to overlook its shortcomings and give it a try. Still, Kingdom’s Return: Time-Eating Fruit and the Ancient Monster is one of the most bland and tedious Inti Creates games, and that’s a shame.
Kingdom’s Return: Time-Eating Fruit and the Ancient Monster is available for the Switch, PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC.
Kingdom’s Return: Time-Eating Fruit and the Ancient Monster
Kingdom’s Return: Time-Eating Fruit and the Ancient Monster is one of the most bland and tedious Inti Creates games, and that’s a shame. Switch version reviewed. Review copy provided by company for testing purposes.