Kristala Review- A cat with no fleas to scratch

Everyone that knows me, knows I love animals.  Anything with four feet or less is considered adorable and anything that pads, paws and purrs is most welcome in chez Angel. As a result, I’ve tried really hard to love Kristala. A souls-like which swaps the normal human hero for a race of cats with magic abilities.  I’ve had the catnip and now I officially interested.

You start the game with a small choice of fur patterns, which is largely irrelevant to gameplay.  However, you have to choose a class which will affect your opening stats for your character and the types of weapons, armour and magic spells you will have access to.Kristala has been written in Unreal Engine 5 but looking at the level of graphics on show here, to be honest with you, it is hard to see exactly where its capabilities have been exploited.

Another weapon in all the protagonists arsenal is stealth.  You don’t have full autotomy to climb wherever you please, but you can see pieces of fabric dangling from mounting points.  From there, you may climb to the roof of any settlements, cross roads using convenient ropes strung across same as well as getting rooftop access to certain buildings, which will contain certain quest items, armour, weapons and rings or tail charms, as well as consumables to top up both your health and your mana.

To take advantage of your stealthier tendencies, you can drop to all fours so you can approach an enemy from behind and quickly dispatch them.  When taking advantage of a rooftop vantage point, you can use the lock on facility (by pressing in the right stick and using left and right to change targets), jump from the roof and hit them with one of your attack buttons (normal attack is on RB, Heavy attack is on RT).

Stealth is HIGHLY advised as the combat difficulty is brutal.  It’s a souls-like so it is expected, but if you like a challenge this will suit you just fine. The eponymous bonfires from Dark Souls (which you will be seeing a LOT of) are present in the form of Ellarial Fonts.

It is worth noting that at the time of writing this review, the Magic system was horribly broken in Kristala.  You could not select any skills and if you found one somewhere on a random point on the screen, you could not buy it even if you had Kris pearls to spare.  However, this has since been patched so we can be fair in our review.

You upgrade your character and abilities at the Font, and it is split into several sections.

The Spell Tree is your magic‑focused progression path.  It unlocks and upgrades your clan’s elemental spells — each clan has its own spell set. This tree improves Damage spells, Buffs (heals, shields, elemental boosts), Mana efficiency as well as Cast speed and posture‑breaking spell effects.  You “buy” these skills with Kris Pearls which you find hidden throughout the environment.  The Spell Tree is the most traditional “magic” progression system in Kristala.

The Feline Tree is Kristala’s signature hybrid tree — it mixes combat upgrades with parkour/movement abilities.

This is the tree that gives you access to Wall‑runs, Extended jumps, Aerial traversal as well as Combat boosts (damage, stamina, posture effects). It’s also the tree that unlocks hidden Ellarial Fonts which unlock new traversal abilities, which in turn open new routes.  The skills here are bought with Tiger eyes (again a found currency item).

Meanwhile the Alchemy Tree focuses on crafting, consumables, and utility.

It improves Potion effectiveness, Throwables, Buff items as well as resource efficiency (essential for mana). The spells and skills work together to help you to reduce the amount of time you spend respawn at the last Font you touched.

The Good Stuff

This game has great depth.  I am 11 hours into this game, and I have barely scratched the surface.  So I feel that you will get decent mileage from Kristala, as long as you are willing to put the hours into it.   There are areas of the game I have barely touched: The Canine Steed mounts, the weapons and armour upgrades at the blacksmith back in your home settlement are systems I have barely touched but the game has kept me playing for all this time.

Once the magic system is properly exploited, you can tailor your character to do almost anything.

Kristala has a bag full of delights: multiple skill trees, spell crafting, alchemy, traversal abilities, mounts, semi‑open zones, clan‑specific magic. Even when imperfect, the ambition is refreshing and gives the game a depth most indie Soulslikes never reach.

The Not So Good

The animation system was originally written with Unreal Engine 4 then migrated to Unreal engine 5.  Yet somehow, the animation system feels incredibly jerky and jarring.  You jump at a ladder and try to grab it, but you fall to the ground and have to mount the ladder.  Its tedious and really breaks the immersion.

The game is in need of optimisation desperately.  I get problems with far pop in, frame rates stuttering on Xbox Series S, my current platform.

Menus, inventory management, and some tutorial prompts lack polish. Tooltips can be vague, icons sometimes repeat, and the onboarding doesn’t always explain deeper systems clearly. For a game with this much mechanical depth, the UI doesn’t always support the player as well as it should.

Final Thoughts

Kristala is a wildly ambitious indie Soulslike with deep systems and a unique identity, but it’s held back by technical roughness and uneven polish. When it works, it shines — when it doesn’t, you can feel the strain of the UE4‑to‑UE5 transition and the small‑team constraints.