Cute, pink, cuddly, but yet so freaking badass with her sci-fi flying sword, I almost forgot the girly looking theme in intense situations – too bad that they were few and far between.
I love platformers. Even more so with 2D gameplay, as the enemies can’t attack me unexpectedly from behind – yeah, you’re free to call me coward or sissy. What I loved the most in this game wasn’t the pink kitty cute look. It wasn’t the story, nor the fact that the game is made over a cartoon. I didn’t even know the cartoon before reading about this game! The cartoon is pretty cool, and not at all girly by the way – head over to the official Blade Kitten website to read it by yourself.
Your playable character is Kit Ballard, who is a very talented bounty hunter, also known as a breaker. Her birth planet is Midsun which sadly were destroyed by the Darques. It’s the batman story all over again; family killed, must obtain revenge, ending up getting an undercover vigilante with great skills. Running, slashing and crawling through the levels, with Skiffy as your sidekick, you’ll make heroic battles – and a few epic battles. Using Skiffy to open doors, collect unreachable currency, which is different colored crystals, Kit aka. Blade Kitten can reach everything in the world.
Kittens nest
The game places you on Hollow Wish, where you are tracking down Terra-Li, a local troublemaker. Slowly, but surely, you find out that there is much more trouble going on at the planet, and suddenly you realise you have to save the entire planet and it’s residents from a strong dictatorship.
The gameplay is simply genius, and can’t really be compared to other games I’ve played. You are able to crawl almost everywhere in the levels, whereof most of these are huge, and it works great – 95% of the time. I experienced a few bugs, like Kit is unable to grab something that is just within your reach – a little tip is to use the left trigger button to use the blade as grabbling hook.
In battles with lots of opponents, you can get in a bit of a pickle, as Kit gets stunned for half a second too long, when you get hit. If enough opponents hits you alternating, you can’t even jump out of their reach, and you are destined to die – luckily enough, this only happens a few places in the game. Many reviewers complain about the floaty feeling in the game – I myself was a bit annoyed for some time, but I actually ended up liking and exploit the feel – it makes a good sense of ongoing movement.
The overall style is a bit too mange/anime style for my taste, but the health icon is WAY too much manga. Please, Krome Studios, I beg you to keep more of the style from the comics in the game. The comics is simply beautiful and I nearly can’t contain the coolness – the fact that the main character is pretty in pink, guys shouldn’t feel awkward reading it. The only girlish about the series is Kit’s pink hair and tail! The background music is great, and gives a good atmosphere – but in the menu it’s just annoying to listen to – not to mention the repetitiveness.
Soft Kitty, Warm Kitty
To sum up, this is a great game, I have played for around seven hours, and gotten through the story. I did take my time looking for collectibles, but I am pretty sure I missed out on much, especially in a few levels, where I did choose to run a little faster through – the demo alone let me play for around and hour. If you still are in doubt of purchase, don’t hesitate, hurry up and download the demo, there’s stuff and playtime enough for you to judge if you want more of it.
The game would have been perfect if the fighting did vary some more, if Kit didn’t freeze when hit, and the response time was a little bit better. If you only enjoy shooters and racers, don’t buy the game. If you like platformers, especially 2D ones, I don’t think you will be disappointed at all. I know I didn’t.
