There is always a minimap on the bottom of the screen that you can enlarge by clicking on it. In some maps you can walk up to the edge of the traversable area, and a mini world map will also appear on the bottom right of the screen. If you click on the pop-up world map on the lower-right edge of the screen, you will go to the world map screen. On that screen you are just a dot on a geographical map, but movement is the same as controlling your character. In addition to the main locations on the map that you can visit, as you move around you will be hit with random encounters. These take you into a random event map, of which there are several (they’re square just like the maps of the major locations). Random encounters have a number of different scenarios involving human NPCs, dogs, and more. You can loot the bodies of characters you’ve bested in battle, as well as containers in the environment to get better armor, weapons, and other items. However, the random encounters on the world map are excessively frequent, making them very annoying at times. Some of them cannot be skipped either, meaning you are forced into the random encounter map and have to walk out manually.
The gameplay in Krai Mira falls a bit flat. The dialog is poorly translated and sometimes just not written well. Sometimes an option in a dialog tree will jump you back to a previous point in the dialog tree in an unrealistic manner that seems a bit odd. There are also some other design flaws. The game does a very poor job of teaching the player, as for the most part it just drops you in with almost no help at all. In general, non quest-giver NPCs usually have nothing at all to say and go straight to a small interaction menu. Stuff like this makes it so the game world just does not come alive and breaks immersion in some cases. It feels like the developers focused on the story progression and didn’t add any other dialog or details alongside it.
Aside from the above issues, the story does not flow very well. A large part of that is because the game is often confusing. You will know your objective from the quest giver you talked to, but how you have to do it is less than obvious at times. This results in wasting the player’s time to solve a poorly designed level. Sometimes the dialog itself is even misleading. For example, a long while into the game you will complete one quest line, and your next quest is to run around talking to people to try to find out information about what happened to your dog.
When you find a guy in a place you probably haven’t been to yet, he will talk to you as he is a quest giver NPC. His dialog is not very well thought out, though. He starts talking about something completely unrelated to your dog. This makes the player think “Oh, this isn’t the right guy.”, and so you stop talking to him to continue searching in vain. He is in fact the guy you want to talk to, but the mention of your dog is a bit deeper in the dialog tree when it should have been mentioned right at the start since that is what the player is looking for! The quest he gives you sends you into an irradiated portion of the world map for the first time, but you will find that you are under-powered. So at this point the game gratuitously shifts to a more grindy experience (this is a handful of hours in by the way, depending on how fast you progress).
The sound effects in Krai Mira are not bad at all. The music gets the job done, too. For example, creating a thick sense of tension during battle situations. The GUI is very stylish, though maybe not designed as well as it could be in some areas, like the save/load screen. That screen gives you 10 save slots and each is labeled only with a cryptic time stamp. There is no auto saving, so the player should always save before entering dangerous areas or quitting the game. Death is permanent, meaning you start over at your last save as the game is a bit unforgiving by design. The game often feels like more of a chore than fun, especially in areas like the combat system, and the world map. Sneaking around is also a chore as getting caught is common, requiring the player to reload the most recent save to try again, especially when outnumbered or going against an over-powered enemy.
Krai Mira is a game with a lot of potential, but it just doesn’t live up to it. The many issues mentioned above with the story flow, dialog, and other design flaws keep the game world from coming alive. For example, the fact that non quest-givers have no dialog at all in general. It feels like the developers didn’t take the time to look at their game through the eyes of their players and consider how things affect the player. This is evidenced by the confusing flow of the story, with unclear objectives or confusion about how to achieve those objectives. In some cases, it arises from poorly written or thought out dialog, such as in the case of the dog info quest mentioned above. Krai Mira is already out of early access, but it feels like it probably shouldn’t be. The game is available on Steam for $9.99, and will bring you a little over 20 hours of gameplay at the least, and potentially much more depending on whether its your first playthrough. Random maps and encounters can add a lot to your final time as well, depending on how many you do. Krai Mira is the game that drops you on a post-apocalyptic island and asks if you can survive long enough to unravel the truth.
| Review Score | |
|---|---|
| Overall |    |
Review Copy Provided by Publisher
