Developer: RSU Horizon, Good Job Multimedia, Pixel Perfex
Publisher: Blowfish Studios
Platforms: Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PC, Mac
Tested on: Switch
Krut: The Mythic Wings – Review
One shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but what if the cover is somewhat decent and you want to dive right into it? When looking at an old-school side-scrolling adventure game, there is always something that ends up intriguing you. It can be the nostalgia factor or the fact that these games are mostly the easy and fun kind. Sadly, while the initial impression of Krut: The Mythic Wings was exciting, it goes cold as soon as you spend a while with its rather junky engine. This experience does open the door for a unique way of playing the game, as in abusing its shortcomings as much as possible if you want to make progress.
Story
The story starts hundreds of years ago when a great war broke out between two factions of the main continent: the Krut who are a noble red-feathered Garuda, and the invading armies of the Rakshasa rock ogre. The Krut’s capital city, Ayodhya, was destroyed in the attack. This battle caused the deaths of countless Garuda, women, children, and soldiers at the hands of monstrous hordes. In the wake of the destruction, there was one Krut general who survived while escorting a group of soldiers to safety and he vowed to return one day and reclaim his homeland. When the group regained their strength, they flew to the Himmaphan island to perform a range of trials to become worthy of the most legendary artifact, the Mythic Wings. Now returning to their homeland, they started pushing back the invading forces and were successful in defeating the rock ogre’s army.
After defeating the invaders, the inhabitants of Ayodhya started rebuilding and could finally enjoy some peace and freedom, though sadly this would soon come to an end. After living in peace for the last hundreds of years, the armies of the Krut became weak as there were no conflicts to hone their fighting spirit. The rock ogres saw this weakness and came back, but this time with an even bigger and more powerful army. Veera, a Krut general who was stationed far away, heard the commotion and immediately came to action. With only one more city standing, she decided to sneak behind enemy lines and try to assassinate the ogre’s warlord. However, as this warlord was prepared with magical armor, her attacks did nothing. The warlord decided to dispatch Veera and blew her away with a destructive blow. This causes her to fall into the water and break most of her bones.
Luckily she is saved by the elder who entrusts her with saving the capital before it is all too late. Veera is gifted the last pair of Mythic wings in existence and is now tasked to gather the six artifacts to power the wings and become an unstoppable warrior. Collecting the six elements will be tough, as they grant such immense power that the keepers of these elements don’t just hand them out for free. Once recovered, you set out on your journey to collect all the elements and learn more about what happened a few hundred years ago. These segments always happen when you face the boss of the level so this is the only time you get to learn new things about the story.
Graphics
The game looks pretty decent for a side-scrolling action game. There are more than a handful of different stages, all with different enemies. There is a clear differentiation between the well-made foreground where the action takes place and the background filled with all sorts of different structures like waterfalls, houses, rocks, etc. While everything looks smooth and polished, it is very strange that a game with normal graphics has some issues running decently on the Switch. The version we tested had occasional frame rate issues that, in the worst case, can lead to an unfortunate death. These hiccups occurred both in docked and handheld mode and tended to happen in parts that had some more intensive backgrounds. Compared with PC footage where there are no issues, it could just be some optimization that needs to be done on the Switch.
Sound
Fortunately, where the graphics are a bit of a lesser quality item, the sound effects and music are somewhat better. Each stage plays different music to represent the biome, i.e. the beach sounds like a tropical vacation, the jungle gives off Donkey Kong vibes and the sand village took a hint from Arabic influences. During each mini-boss and boss stage the music will also change to something more intimidating, letting the player know that something serious is happening. Lastly, the sound effects are simple but convey the message over just fine, you’ll hear when your attack has ricocheted off the armor of an enemy or when your opponent is charging up their strong attack.
Gameplay
Krut: The Mythic Wings is a side-scrolling, adventure, platforming game in which you must collect the six different elements to be able to defeat the rock ogre’s warlord. Before starting your adventure, you may select one of three difficulties, yet the only difference this makes is how much damage you and the enemies deal. This can be really frustrating as even the easy difficulty won’t be a walk in the park for most gamers. The game then starts with a very short tutorial on how the simple controls work and promptly lets go of your hand and makes you fend for yourself. Immediately it feels like the engine is something very old, as the controls don’t feel that responsive, and with how difficult the game is, you almost feel forced to cheese every enemy you come across.
Normally, enemy encounters should either feel fun by having a small edge on your opponent or rewarding when talking about a brutal game like Dark Souls. Sadly, it is none of the aforementioned, as enemies here dish out a brutal amount of damage and Veera uses some of the dullest swords in history as they basically don’t deal any substantial amount of damage. There is the chance you could say “screw this” and try to dodge most enemies, yet if you want to upgrade your character or get a checkpoint then you must pay upgrade points to unlock sacrificial stones. These stones are always in place before a boss fight, so either cough up 1000 points (which is a lot!) or risk doing the whole stage over again when you die. The number of lives depends on the difficulty (four on easy, three on medium, and two on hard) and when they are depleted you are forced to retry the whole stage. This doesn’t sound game-breaking but it can be a bit of an annoyance that you either have to buy extra lives or risk spending some more time in the later stages of the game as lives don’t get replenished after each level.
Each stage pretty much follows the same setup: you start and when you get to the first sacrificial stone there is a mini-boss. After you defeat it you can move on to the next sacrificial stone for the end boss. The first level is pretty simple but starting from stage two there will be jumping segments with increasing difficulty and annoying enemies that will try to get you to fail.
Conclusion
At first, it looked like Krut: The Mythic Wings was a title to recommend to anyone who enjoys old-school 2D platformer games. Sadly, while the game has decent graphics, good music, and a very elaborate story, it is the gameplay that really drags the whole package down. The combat is neither fun nor rewarding and gathering enough points just to unlock the checkpoint(s) can feel like a chore. As the combat has its shortcomings you will find yourself cheesing your way through each encounter if you want to make it through the campaign. It feels like if only the difficulty levels had been adjusted more correctly, then the game would at least be enjoyable.
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