KAKU: Ancient Seal

Take one look at KAKU: Ancient Seal and you'll probably be stunned by the magnificent, scenic, open-world visuals. But is that enough to justify a venture into this relatively unknown action RPG? The game has crawled into early release with little knowledge of what makes up the title's narrative, lore, and mechanics, leaving prospective players hesitant about putting their valuable hours into it.

However, from the initial screens, KAKU: Ancient Seals looks like a game you'd want to give a chance. There is exhilarating combat, diverse gameplay, interesting characters, and a beautiful world to explore. It's time to see what this game offers and settle whether this is an RPG to herald.

Bark Like a Seal

KAKU: Ancient Seal sets the scene in a typical Eastern RPG style. Chaos has descended up the world based on regions of the four elements, and it's up to you, Kaku, to use your powers to bring balance to the continent. The narrative doesn't do much justice to selling players on world immersion. Still, it does just enough to pique interest in how you'll accomplish that colossal task.

Kaku has a lot of abilities at her disposal, including wielding various weapons, pulling aerial stunts, and calling upon magic to smite whatever gets in her path. Those will come in handy as you traverse the world, battling through regions of wind, water, earth, and fire and facing off with the respective region overlord. Exploring these lands is a delight, with players enjoying the world's bright color palette and gorgeous flora and fauna.

The main issue with KAKU: Ancient Seal in its early access is that the game feels like a lot is going for it, but not a lot to tie everything together. There could be a stronger, more sensical narrative to shape rhyme and reason for combat, puzzle-solving, and exploration. At the moment, players can't help but feel the game lacks purpose, despite most of the world's activities bringing a thrill factor.

Let's not remove that KAKU: Ancient Seal looks like a AAA game and is already turning heads from a relatively unknown developer. However, there's a sense of growing pains that follow the title, where there's a lot of promise from what you can do but difficulty bringing consistency into the game.

Reigning in the Elements

At its present state, KAKU: Ancient Seal has the visual prowess of Kena: Bridge of Spirits yet the ambitious gameplay style of The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask. Players will do everything possible to unite the four regions through incredible scenic displays. However, there isn't any direction to achieve those victories without going through endless trial and error.

Round-Up - Pros & Cons

Pros:

• A gorgeous, huge game world that will impress
• Encourages gameplay creativity with a broad ability set
• Visuals are consistently incredible

Cons:

• Initially difficult to navigate
• Too many gameplay elements that aren't well tied together
• The narrative needs to improve