Last week, I spent roughly ten hours of my limited time here on God’s green Earth playing King’s Field: The Ancient City, the fourth game in a series by developer FromSoftware. Today FromSoftware is better known, of course, for Dark Souls and Elden Ring, but King’s Field 4 is a fascinating look at the run-up to the Souls games, and a really cool way to see where some of their ideas originated.
Unfortunately, King’s Field 4 is also brutal, as you might imagine from the sadistic individuals who make Dark Souls. It’s also, being a PS2 game, clonky as heck, especially playing in the modern day when we’ve gotten many, many games that include features such as functional camera controls and sensible hit boxes. As a result, I had a…well, I had a time! playing King’s Field 4. I wrote about some of that time in my review for our Warp Week 2002 yesterday, but I thought I’d also share with you the disjointed, absurd list of thoughts that went through my head as I played the game last week that were too unusual or unhelpful enough to make it into the review.
If you’ve never played King’s Field 4, that’s okay. Just read this and imagine it’s Dark Souls, or whatever Souls game you’ve played. It’ll have roughly the same impact.
First off, this introduction is incredible. I miss the days of games opening with cutscenes like this. The guitar that kicks in around 0:23 is fantastic.
Of course “grave misfortune will befall those who behold The Idol That Stares Into the Darkness!” I would simply not behold The Idol That Stares Into the Darkness, but maybe I’m just built different.
Anyway, here we go.
© FromSoftware
I’m pretty sure FromSoftware is still using this exact same font, over two decades later.
Oh crap how do I move.
How do I look around.
How do I move and look around at the exact same time.
Well, I’m dead. I’m not sure how I died. I seem to have died from walking forward a few steps. I think the ground killed me. That somehow tracks.
© FromSoftware
Before I set off on my journey I must visit the shop of the acclaimed merchant…David…Bunch???
This right here is the most Sad Dark Souls Man I have seen in my life. Every Dark Souls game has this man in it. Is this David Bunch? What terrible fate has befallen him?!
Sad Dark Souls Man is sad because he faked getting sick so he didn’t have to go into the Cursed Land and honestly, whomst among us.
© FromSoftware
Sad Dark Souls Man has given me a wooden club, thank you Sad Dark Souls Man.
Crap, how do I equip a weapon.
[15 minutes and some Googling later] Crap, how do I hit something with this weapon
You know, I could go get those boots on that rock in the magma river, or I could attempt to enjoy my time playing this game.
© FromSoftware
[The castle wall I am walking atop crumbles, sending me into a pile of enemies and causing me to take damage] This is just like in Dark Souls
How do I save
How do I heal
[15 minutes and some Googling later] Of course, how silly of me, why would I ever think that visiting a save point would heal me of anything
I have been playing for an hour, I have killed about eight plant monsters, died once to nothing, and still have yet to meet David Bunch
© FromSoftware
Oh hey, this must be David Bunch
I wonder if I can sell him the cursed idol? How messed up would that be? What if he just went to the cursed city for me?
[I sell him the cursed idol]
[Nothing happens]
[I immediately buy it back from him for two more gold than I sold it for because I feel bad]
Hm, I wonder if I can swim in this game
I cannot swim in this game
[incoherent yelling as the ground kills me several more times before I realize it’s a hidden patch of lava or something]
© FromSoftware
[silence for roughly two hours as I kill about 30 bugs very, very, very slowly]
Lady, you want an item called a Rock of Life? I guarantee you that if there was anything resembling a Rock of Life around here, this place would be in waaaaay better shape
© FromSoftware
Also I have no way of knowing this but I guarantee you that your dad who has not returned from the mines is either dead or has become a Horrific Creature of Malice
Also, also, your dog looks like a medieval monk drew it
“Beware: Poison” surely it’s too early in this FromSoft game for this. Surely.
© FromSoftware
It is, in fact, never too early in a FromSoft game to beware of poison.
Oh sick, a magic spring that heals poison. This is going to be a breeze.
[ten minutes later] Okay, so I drank all the water in the magic spring that heals poison.
[for the next few hours, intermittently dying of poison damage] Ah. Oof. Oh. Agh. Ah. Oof. Oh. Agh. etc.
Please stop puking poison on the ground so I can walk over there very slowly and hit you very slowly about four more times and move on with my life.
© FromSoftware
Awesome, a poison lake with thin wooden planks that slowly sink as you cross them and which are awkwardly spaced out at weird angles. I am sure this will be very easy to traverse in a PS2 game with awful camera controls and slow, clonky movement.
[hours later, still in the poison lake, DMing my editor] Hi yes I will not be finishing King’s Field 4 for this piece, thanks.
For the sake of video game cred, I did actually make it farther than the poison swamp. But escaping the poison swamp was about when I stopped being mad at the game and started having a more normal time, which had the side effect of my thoughts being more normal and publishable in an impressions format. Again, you can read that here.
