‘Kid Mystic: Enchanted Edition’ Review: Charming But Brutal

When I first came across Kid Mystic: Enchanted Edition, I instantly brushed it off, with new games dropping almost every day, I was hesitant to play a retro title, despite it being an RPG. After much contemplation, I eventually gave in and started playing through the game and I was surprised by the amount of fun I had. For this review, I played through the Modern mode. 

Kid Mystic: Enchanted Edition is a top-down RPG that follows Kid Mystic, a boy who never paid attention in magic school except when they were discussing fireballs and is now tasked with saving the world of Tulipton from the evil Bobby Khan. The Enchanted Edition is an upgraded version of the 1999 version which features numerous quality of life updates.

While I didn’t have anything to say about the art style at first, as I progressed through the game, I spotted many similarities to Baldi’s Basics (this likely taking inspiration from this sort of art style) and I proudly went on to headcanon this game as a prequel to it. The enemy designs are pretty tame at the start, such as mushrooms and spiders but get immediately crazy and weird such as floating eyeballs as you progress through the chapters, which I enjoyed. The NPCs however, are rather basic and I rarely gave them much attention unless they were required to progress through a level.

On the topic of levels, I enjoyed progressing through each one for the most part. It’s the moment when I died for the first time that I got a glimpse at how difficult the game may become when my progress was reset with every death. I’d suffer through that experience many times during my playthrough and I’d often find myself exiting a level and doing something else for a while before attempting it again. I really enjoyed solving the puzzles in each level, some were pretty easy but others gave me a hard time. For example, I was dumbfounded to witness the solution to a pressure plate puzzle in chapter 4 that I spent a good 10-15 minutes trying to solve on my own.

The combat of Kid Mystic: Enchanted Edition is perhaps one of my favorite aspects of the game, once you fully upgrade your fireball, it feels therapeutic destroying numerous enemies at a time. The spells also come in handy, I found myself enjoying the summon and inferno spells the most and I’d argue that they were the most worthwhile spells in the entire game, whereas the others felt very meaningless. I had a great time with the skills and runes system, both working to boost my favorite spells as well as survivability because the enemies often shredded my health on multiple occasions.

The game isn’t without its flaws, my main complaint was the camera movement in larger levels. During my entire playthrough, I often got motion sickness while playing and had to take a number of breaks. Additionally, I had a really hard time discovering levels, when I didn’t have to restart the level, most of my playtime was running around trying to locate the various levels to progress the story. This also became a chore when trying to collect all the items in each chapter. Finally, I didn’t like the way the achievements system is handled, the descriptions are vague making it quite difficult to know what’s required, on my first playthrough, I only managed to complete two achievements.

Overall, Kid Mystic: Enchanted Edition is a decent RPG that I had a blast playing through. I’m grateful that I eventually gave in to the idea of the game and started playing because while the game brought me great pain at numerous points, I kept coming back because I enjoyed it. Of course, there are some flaws but I managed to overcome them for the most part.

Kid Mystic: Enchanted Edition is developed by Hamumu Games Inc, the game is available on Steam for $14.99 USD.

Disclosure: I received a free review copy of this game from https://www.game.press.

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