<\/p>\n
Last week, I spent roughly ten hours of my limited time here on God\u2019s green Earth playing King\u2019s Field: The Ancient City<\/em>, the fourth game in a series by developer FromSoftware. Today FromSoftware is better known, of course, for Dark Souls<\/em> and Elden Ring<\/em>, but King\u2019s Field 4<\/em> is a fascinating look at the run-up to the Souls<\/em> games, and a really cool way to see where some of their ideas originated.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, King\u2019s Field 4<\/em> is also brutal, as you might imagine from the sadistic individuals who make Dark Souls<\/em>. It\u2019s also, being a PS2 game, clonky as heck, especially playing in the modern day when we\u2019ve gotten many, many games that include features such as functional camera controls and sensible hit boxes. As a result, I had a\u2026well, I had a time! playing King\u2019s Field 4<\/em>. I wrote about some of that time in my review for our Warp Week 2002 yesterday, but I thought I\u2019d 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.<\/p>\n If you\u2019ve never played King\u2019s Field 4<\/em>, that\u2019s okay. Just read this and imagine it\u2019s Dark Souls<\/em>, or whatever Souls<\/em> game you\u2019ve played. It\u2019ll have roughly the same impact.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Of course \u201cgrave misfortune will befall those who behold The Idol That Stares Into the Darkness!\u201d I would simply not behold The Idol That Stares Into the Darkness, but maybe I\u2019m just built different.<\/p>\n Anyway, here we go.<\/p>\n \u00a9 FromSoftware <\/p>\n I\u2019m pretty sure FromSoftware is still using this exact same font, over two decades later.<\/p>\n Oh crap how do I move.<\/p>\n How do I look around.<\/p>\n How do I move and look around at the exact same time.<\/p>\n Well, I\u2019m dead. I\u2019m 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.<\/p>\n \u00a9 FromSoftware <\/p>\n Before I set off on my journey I must visit the shop of the acclaimed merchant\u2026David\u2026Bunch???<\/p>\n This right here is the most Sad Dark Souls<\/em> Man I have seen in my life. Every Dark Souls<\/em> game has this man in it. Is this David Bunch? What terrible fate has befallen him?!<\/p>\n Sad Dark Souls<\/em> Man is sad because he faked getting sick so he didn\u2019t have to go into the Cursed Land and honestly, whomst among us.<\/p>\n \u00a9 FromSoftware <\/p>\n Sad Dark Souls<\/em> Man has given me a wooden club, thank you Sad Dark Souls<\/em> Man.<\/p>\n Crap, how do I equip a weapon.<\/p>\n [15 minutes and some Googling later] Crap, how do I hit something with this weapon<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u00a9 FromSoftware <\/p>\n [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<\/em><\/p>\n How do I save<\/p>\n How do I heal<\/p>\n [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<\/p>\n 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<\/p>\n \u00a9 FromSoftware <\/p>\n Oh hey, this must be David Bunch<\/p>\n 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?<\/p>\n [I sell him the cursed idol]<\/p>\n [Nothing happens]<\/p>\n [I immediately buy it back from him for two more gold than I sold it for because I feel bad]<\/p>\n Hm, I wonder if I can swim in this game<\/p>\n I cannot swim in this game<\/p>\n [incoherent yelling as the ground kills me several more times before I realize it\u2019s a hidden patch of lava or something]<\/p>\n \u00a9 FromSoftware <\/p>\n [silence for roughly two hours as I kill about 30 bugs very, very, very slowly]<\/p>\n 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<\/p>\n \u00a9 FromSoftware <\/p>\n 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<\/p>\n Also, also, your dog looks like a medieval monk drew it<\/p>\n \u201cBeware: Poison\u201d surely it\u2019s too early in this FromSoft game for this. Surely.<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a9 FromSoftware <\/p>\n It is, in fact, never too early in a FromSoft game to beware of poison.<\/p>\n Oh sick, a magic spring that heals poison. This is going to be a breeze.<\/p>\n [ten minutes later] Okay, so I drank all the water in the magic spring that heals poison.<\/p>\n [for the next few hours, intermittently dying of poison damage] Ah. Oof. Oh. Agh. Ah. Oof. Oh. Agh. etc.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u00a9 FromSoftware <\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n [hours later, still in the poison lake, DMing my editor] Hi yes I will not be finishing King\u2019s Field 4<\/em> for this piece, thanks.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last week, I spent roughly ten hours of my limited time here on God\u2019s green Earth playing King\u2019s 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\u2019s Field 4 is a fascinating look at the run-up<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11185,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[9971,4798,9970,9589],"class_list":{"0":"post-11184","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-releases","8":"tag-field","9":"tag-kings","10":"tag-loud","11":"tag-suffering"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11184\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}