Review: fault StP Lightkravte (Nintendo Switch)
Visual novels have a bit of a hit-or-miss track record with me. When they hit, they offer a visually wonderful experience wrapped together in a special, well-written story. When they miss, it’s a difficult experience to really get behind. Fault StP Lightkravte falls somewhere in the middle. While it’s a visually impressive visual novel with some nice, well-written elements, it also wasn’t a story that connected to me and thus made the experience feel a bit dragged out. It’s a good visual novel but one that might be for a very specific audience. Fault StP Lightkravte isn’t going to be the game that brings you into the genre.
Fault StP Lightkravte takes place in the Kingdom of Rughzenhaide. In Rughzenhaide, thanks to the development of a special technology known as Manakravte, the life of its people has changed forever. You play from the point of view of a boy named Khaji Oberg, who has two loves in his life: history and girls. He loves girls so much that he wants to be a painter, that way he can make a physical representation of their beauty. Yeah…interesting premise to say the least.
Something you’ll notice right away is the well-done animation. Visual novels live or die by their ability to literally paint the world and characters around you. In Fault StP Lightkravte, the characters feel quite alive for the genre. They are far more animated than your typical entry, moving as they talk to showcase a fuller range of emotions. This might seem like a small thing, but most visual novels give you static images; Fault StP Lightkravte gives you a much more animated experience that makes the story feel alive. Something else that I enjoyed was the interesting use of the camera controls. The camera on the screen will move around a bit, which sometimes reveals additional elements and details in the area. This small detail is a nice touch that helps the whole novel feel a bit more dynamic.
There’s also quite a bit to experience in Fault StP Lightkravte. While it won’t rival the large AAA game play-times you might expect, Fault StP Lightkravte came in at the 6 hour mark for me (although I apparently am on the faster play time than others). Of course, your time will vary greatly based on your own reading ability. Fault features no voice acting (like quite a few visual novels) and thus you have to read all the text on screen. This is how you connect with the characters, story and world. Just so you know, the game has well over 200,000 words so…you’re in for quite the read.
My main issue with Fault StP Lightkravte is that it’s clearly meant for a very specific audience: fans of the previous entries in the series. Don’t get me wrong, you can play this game and understand the current narrative. Yet, there are so many moments in the story that clearly call back to something or someone and completely go over my head. To be fair, I’ve never played a game in this series, making Fault StP Lightkravte my entry point. However, it’s obvious you’re meant to have played the prior entries in the series to get the full enjoyment because many aspects of the story come across as random at best.
Yes, there is an in-game encyclopedia section, which has an absolutely insane amount of information you can read. Yet that’s not how I want to enjoy an experience like this. It makes the whole story feel like I jumped right into the middle of something (which I did), which may be a putoff for anyone new to the series or genre. Thus your enjoyment of this game will completely depend on your familiarity with the series. Because I never played the series before, I enjoyed many aspects, but didn’t connect to the story at all. This meant that by the 6 hour mark, I had been completely worn out on the game.
Fault StP Lightkravte is a visually impressive visual novel with some nice, well-written story elements. Your enjoyment is going to completely depend on your familiarity with the Fault series. While it tries to be welcoming to newcomers, it’s obvious that various story and character elements are calling back to a previous entry in the series, which goes over the head of newcomers. Fault StP Lightkravte isn’t a bad game by any means, but it definitely isn’t going to be the visual novel that gets you into the genre.
