Last week, I spent about 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 from developer FromSoftware. Today, FromSoftware is best known, of course, for Dark Souls and Elden Ring, but King’s Field 4 is a fascinating look at the lead-up to the Souls games and a really cool way to see where some of its ideas originated. Unfortunately, King’s Field 4 is also brutal, as you can imagine from the sadistic individuals who make Dark Souls. Also, being a PS2 game, it’s very dumb, especially nowadays when we have many, many games that include features like functional camera controls and responsive hitboxes. 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 and absurd list of thoughts that ran through my head while playing the game last week that were too unusual or unhelpful to include in the review. If you’ve never played King’s Field 4, that’s okay. Just read this and imagine it’s Dark Souls or any Souls game you’ve played. It will have approximately the same impact. First of all, this intro is amazing. I miss the days when games opened with cutscenes like this. The guitar that plays around 0:23 is fantastic. Of course, “great misfortune will befall those who behold the idol that stares into the darkness!” I simply wouldn’t contemplate The Idol that Stares into Darkness, but perhaps I simply have a different constitution. Anyway, here we go. © FromSoftware I’m pretty sure FromSoftware is still using the exact same font, more than two decades later. Oh shit, how do I move? How do I look around me? How do I move and look around at the same time? Well, I’m dead. I’m not sure how I died. It seems that I have died after taking a few steps. I think the ground killed me. That somehow tracks. © FromSoftware Before embarking on my journey I must visit the shop of the acclaimed merchant…David…Bunch??? This is the saddest Dark Souls man I’ve ever seen. Every Dark Souls game has this man. Is this David Bunch? What terrible fate has befallen him?! Sad Dark Souls Man is sad because he pretended to be sick so he wouldn’t have to go to the Cursed Land and honestly, who of us? © FromSoftware Sad Dark Souls Man gave me a wooden club, thanks Sad Dark Souls Man. Shit, how do I equip a weapon? [15 minutes and some Googling later] Shit, how can I hit something with this weapon? You know, I could go look for those boots from that rock in the magma river, or I could try to enjoy my time playing this game. © Software [The castle wall I am walking atop crumbles, sending me into a pile of enemies and causing me to take damage] This is like in Dark Souls. How do I save? How do I cure myself? [15 minutes and some Googling later] Of course, how silly of me, why would I think that visiting a save point would cure me of anything? I’ve been playing for an hour, I’ve killed about eight plant monsters, I’ve died once, and I still haven’t met David Bunch © FromSoftware Oh hey, this must be David Bunch. I wonder if I can sell him the cursed idol. How messy 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 can’t 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]
© Software [silence for roughly two hours as I kill about 30 bugs very, very, very slowly] Madam, do you want an item called Rock of Life? I guarantee that if there was something resembling a Rock of Life around here, this place would be in better condition © FromSoftware Also, I have no way of knowing, but I guarantee that your father, who has not returned from the mines, is either dead or turned into a horrible creature of malice. Also, your dog looks like a medieval monk who was drawn by “Beware: Poison”, surely it’s too early in this FromSoft game for this. Surely. © FromSoftware In fact, it’s never too early in a FromSoft game to be careful with poison. Oh sick man, a magic spring that cures poison. This will be very simple. [ten minutes later] Okay, so I drank all the water from the magic spring that cures poison.
[for the next few hours, intermittently dying of poison damage] Oh. Phew. Oh. Oh. Oh. Phew. Oh. Oh. etc Please stop vomiting poison on the floor so I can walk there very slowly and punch you very slowly about four more times and move on with my life. © FromSoftware Awesome, a poisonous lake with thin wooden planks that slowly sink as you cross them and are awkwardly spaced at odd angles. I’m sure it will be very easy to navigate in a PS2 game with horrible camera controls and slow, clunky movements.
[hours later, still in the poison lake, DMing my editor] Hi, yes I won’t be finishing King’s Field 4 for this piece, thanks. For the sake of video game credibility, I reached beyond the poisonous swamp. But escaping the poisonous swamp was when I stopped being angry at the game and started having a more normal time, which had the side effect of making my thoughts more normal and publishable in a print format. Again, you can read that here.
