KAKU: Ancient Seal is a Game With a Fantastic Story and a Beautiful Environmental Design.
BINGOBELL is a group of developers and gamers that came together out of their love for gaming. The very same people who brought us the VR game Tales of Glacier, which came out on 31 August 2017, have brought us another game – KAKU: Ancient Seal, an interesting game with challengingly fun puzzles and a great story.
An Open-world, Action-adventure game with a non-linear gameplay aspect, KAKU: Ancient Seal is a great game to play if you want to play as a primal young man from what seems to be some sort of fantasy Stone Age world. Entering the game, you are asked to select your preferred language settings, and you can see the changes to the languages with the title of the game displayed on the side of the screen. Once you have selected your preferred language, you set up your brightness settings.
After that, you’ll be all set and ready to jump in. You’ll start a new game and will be introduced to Kaku in an amazingly animated cinematic. Kaku, the main character, is introduced to you in the cinematic, chasing an adorable fantasy piglet while at the same time being chased by the first boss encounter, King Boar. The cute and somewhat stressful cinematic shows Kaku not so gracefully running an old man down. Angry and hurt, the old man turns to berate Kaku for not noticing the King Boar hot on our protagonist’s tail.
Still, during the cutscene, Kaku making an effort to get the piglet decides to throw his weapon in hopes of stunning the piglet. Kaku dives and grabs onto his prize, though the excitement is interrupted by King Boar bearing down on Kaku. With Kaku frantically avoiding obstacles that litter his path, he lands on a geyser which sends him flying, losing his prize and landing on the old man.
Getting up and shaking off the flying experience, Kaku notices the old man who you learn is named Geiser. Although he may seem like a grumpy old man, he’s also your guide, but before he can guide you, you’ll have to get back into his good graces again.
After a reasonable lecture from Geiser, who seems to be Kaku’s elder of sorts, you are tasked with making Geiser a peace offering. This is where you gain control of Kaku, the main objective of the first quest is a brief tutorial where you learn basic combat, gathering, dodging, cooking and crafting. Although you are shown a brief tutorial, the game goes deeper, and the more you explore, the more you will find. After you have made peace with Gieser, you will be guided through small quests; during these quests, you will be led to the Ruins of Saga.
Once a powerful Pon-Pon who fell ages ago. You’ll be tasked with completing his trial to unlock the path to the Floating Isle, and it is also the site of the first boss encounter, King Boar.
The encounter with King Boar causes damage to containers that once housed the elemental souls, but they’ve been freed from their prisons. You’ll need to travel to each continent, locate their respective temples, face off against the once-trapped spirits, and return them to their containers to restore the balance to the lands.
The combat in Kaku: Ancient Seal is tons of fun as you’ll unlock new combat mechanics and abilities through the skill tree that can affect your club, shield, and slingshot. Each weapon also serves its own purpose, though. The club is your melee weapon for clobbering enemies, the shield does poise damage that can stun enemies if you can bring down their poise bar all the way, and your slingshot is a nice long-range weapon with several crafted ammo types.
An upside of combat is that your fighting style depends on what you have bought from the skill tree. A slight downside is that during basic attack sequences, you can’t just turn on a whim. Dodging is usable, but when slashing at an enemy, Kaku is stuck slashing in one direction instead of being able to turn and slash in the desired direction at the right time.
With all the enemies, both big and small, all forms of damage are helpful to survive. Getting into more detail regarding combat, cooking, upgrades, and crafting, these mechanics, although much-needed, can’t simply just be done as you’ll have to seek out Steles, which are far and few between in your first area, the Snow Forest. You’ll eventually find Star Altars that have all four Steles where cooking, upgrades, abilities, and battle mechanics can be accessed. This becomes quite relevant once you’ve unlocked fast travel to get around or at least closer to a Star Altar.
When it comes to upgrades, cooking, and new abilities, you’ll need to find materials, as making food out of thin air is a little unrealistic. The same can be said about upgrades and gaining new abilities. Harvesting plants or minerals is a good start, but taking on the various enemy creatures will also yield the materials you need. You can also use the Slingshot for Minerals that are out of reach or on the side of walls.
The music of the game is light-hearted with hints of wonder which adds to the adventurous feeling in KAKU: Ancient Seal, the music makes every step in the world fun, setting a great ambiance as Kaku is a child full of wonder and curiosity. The dialogue in KAKU: Ancient Seal, although not a real language, still adds another layer of depth.
The game is voiced over with sounds and responses that are perceived as the dialect of the Stone Age. Admiring the cinematics does make it feel like you are watching an animated movie during cutscenes. The details of the movement, emotions of characters, environments, puzzles, and story are what make the game really enjoyable, like others of its genre, such as Strayed Lights.
The Dialogue is overall funny and can sometimes take on serious tones during oncoming battle encounters, though the voice sequences are up to interpretation. The written dialogue, in combination with the responses of characters, make reading the subtitles more fun and brings more life to the game. A prime example of an interaction would be your first one when you try to make peace with Gieser. Kaku and Gieser’s interaction with each other shows you that Kaku is remorseful for hurting the old man and the old man being all but done with him.
The responses, reactions, and facial expressions really work quite well to bring more depth to the gameplay and character-building. The developers of KAKU: Ancient Seal have really shown their love for the game as they do send updates to address problems found in the game pointed out by players, and there are some bugs in the game that BINGOBELL can hopefully fix in time. KAKU: Ancient Seal is a brilliantly fun game to play, and with love from the developers, the game has so much opportunity to explode.
