In part, I picked this up due to liking the way that the Soulsborne games tell their stories. Subtle, highly reliant on lore, and open to interpretation. I remember seeing the PSX King’s Field games around the launch for that system, at least in magazines, but I’d never tried playing ‘em. Between Hardcoregaming101’s writeup, and the praise here, this seemed like a good one to try. Both to see where some of the newer design came from, and maybe to be able to experience that kind of storytelling without the high bar placed on combat prowess of the more recent From Software hits.
Plus, I found a reasonably priced copy on Amazon.
First impressions were…not good. The control scheme seems pretty much held over from pre-Dual Shock days. D-Pad and Left Analog do the same thing, and according to the manual, Right Analog “isn’t used”. This is a lie. While R2/L2 are your “look up/down”, their function is duplicated by Right Analog, albeit in reverse up/down (flight sim style) by default. Happily, reversing R2/L2 functionality served to reverse the up/down of Right Analog too. First puzzle solved!
Having a “Classic Layout’ option for masochists, and a “Use the whole controller” option for everyone else would have been nice…but it did come out 15 years ago, and the whole dual analog thing was kind of new. Still, I have to wonder why they’d just opt to make such poor use of the hardware.
Fixing that didn’t fix the actual movement, which isn’t awesome. As mentioned in “currently playing” update, the rotation speed is what really stays annoying. Standard movement could still be a holdover from the PSX games and/or as mentioned in that thread, done to allow for background loading, but there’s little excuse for the rotation.
On a technical level, the seamlessness and perpetuation of the world is a noteworthy thing about this game. Albeit one that only become apparent over time. The only “please wait” times are when saving/loading. I suspect more than a couple hallways are there to intentionally give some time to load the next area, but still. On top of that, KFIV seems to keep fairly precise track of the state of the entire game world. Many enemies don’t respawn, or have fewer spawns when they do, which seem to have individual timers. What really made me notice the saved world state is seeing gold drops I’d neglected to pick up, in areas that I hadn’t been to in hours.
While those things aren’t necessarily novel today, making a point to do stuff like that back when it was new (and on a HDD-less console) would have stood out.
The flip side is that, relative to other, similar games on the shelf at the time of the U.S. release, such as
Morrowind or
Metroid Prime, KFIV looks and feels dated. That said, per reputation, the game does utilize the dark, generally sparse environments to decent atmospheric effect.
Personally though, I felt like the majority of the game world was just not that interesting. Quite a lot of it is very same-y, stone rooms and corridors (admittedly, "dungeon crawler" is not exactly a genre I play much). The final third or so of the game opens up a bit more, and is a lot more memorable. Had From Software managed to implement things at that level from the get-go, I suspect the game would have gotten a lot more attention.
Like the controller layout, combat is possibly something that coulda-shoulda have been updated better. Not sure, as I haven’t played the previous games, but it just felt half-baked at best. Even per the manual, the point is to run in, attack, and run outside the range of attacks. Exactly how to time that can vary on the enemy, and the weapon, but it tends to fall apart once multiple enemies are there, or they get too fast, or they start with status effects… it ends up serviceable, but not a reason to play the game, and almost never fun.
Arguably, it’s designed that way to manufacture an experience – which I’m inclined to give games credit for doing, when they do it. Largely, I wouldn’t here, despite that it was likely the intent.
On a basic level, it does create a struggle that favors a careful approach and shifting strategy. At least on occasion. Very early on, I started swapping to the pickaxe to kill poison slimes, for example, because the extra range helped in not getting hit by them. At the time, swapping weapons was also needed to break obstacles as well.
Over time, however, it doesn’t pan out. Swapping gear/spells is cumbersome (in an
Ocarina of Time Water Temple way), and the way things level up favors your most used items rather than niche ones. Weapon wear is a moot point for a while, with the frequency you find new ones…and even then only goes to 50/100. By the time I realized that, I had nearly beaten the game - and ultimately
did - without repairing or upgrading (via the blacksmith) a single item. Weapons do get significantly weaker, but not to the point that you have to repair them. Makes the presence of the system seem unnecessary.
The handful of fights that forced me to rethink strategy beyond running back and forth or circle strafing, basically came down to shoot/cast from outside the boss’s room, or from around a corner. A minor change in range wouldn’t have helped.
Maybe the point was to allow for different builds, but little seemed to change playstyle all that much. At least for weapons and magic. Accessories were a lot better, with only a relative handful in the game, each with a real use (though, it certainly didn’t do the spell library much good to tie a worthwhile MP pool to wearing a specific bracelet).
As for the reason I checked the game out in the first place…it was okay? Story was mostly generic, and the environments largely failed to reinforce it until later in the game. The in-game Journal gets updated from time to time to make sure pieces are put together, or NPCs get a few more lines to say. Mostly, it’s just a matter of trying all the doors and going through the ones that open. That also serves to make it a fairly linear experience, since so much progression is tied to finding the next key or key-like object. Again, the last third or so of the game does start to shine more, but it just takes a while to get there, and then it ends.
I suspect I simply had my expectations set too high. It’s not a bad game, and one that certainly does do some interesting things - especially for the time. However, I got the feeling that a little too much was held over from the PSX games instead of going back to the drawing board.