KAKU: Ancient Seal

Kaku Ancient Seal feels nostalgic for PS2 area adventure games featuring fantastic world-building and strong action-adventure mechanics. The game will take you in, invest you in its diverse and interesting world, and provide satisfying ways to grow your strength as you balance the elements and save the world from destruction.

KAKU: Ancient Seal is a decent representative of the third-person action genre that doesn’t find ways to innovate in interesting ways. The core mechanics are decent, and the world is at times impressive. There’s plenty of depth to combat. But the narrative stalls after a few hours and fighting will become repetitive despite the wealth of new moves players can learn. Fans of the open-world action structure will enjoy the four continents and the unique content associated with each. But the entire experience would have benefited from being more focused, with a smaller number of mechanics and more innovation. KAKU: Ancient Seal is a solid game that fails to find a unique hook.

Kaku: Ancient Seal is a lot of fun with plenty of skills to learn and some well-executed ideas, along with a gorgeous world to explore.

Colour me impressed. When I think indie, I rarely think “open-world”, but BINGOBELL showed me that’s it’s possible to craft a great and ambitious adventure game without a large body count. KAKU: Ancient Seals is one of the best open-world indie games I’ve ever played and I highly recommend it to anyone looking for their fill of lush environments and challenging dungeoneering.

This is a game that is crying out for either a more sparsely populated map with more deliberate encounters al la Breath of the Wild, or a more fast-paced hack-and-slash combat system.

KAKU: Ancient Seal offers a great experience in a fantastic world, but certain design choices leave something to be desired.

Kaku: Ancient Seal is sub-par in every aspect of the action-adventure genre. Stay clear.

When Kaku: Ancient Seal is at its best, it shows the potential of a great sandbox adventure. Many of the design choices are spot on. Great examples are the choices to focus more on horizontal progression than vertical, and to fill the world with rewarding respawning items. However, at its worst, it is filled with some of the genre's worst design choices. The main offenders are cruel invisible walls and non-existent enemy progression. In between, Kaku: Ancient Seal is depressingly textbook good. Sure, the game works, but nothing stands out, and the polish to make it memorable is lacking. However, it does leave curiosity about what future titles Bingobell will deliver with more experience under its belt.