Game:

King's Field (1994)

Duration: 1:09:57

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I wanted to start doing this series for a while, and now it's finally happening. This time we will be taking a look around retro releases made by popular companies, both from Japan and the West. For a starter, I'm beginning with From Software, due to it's massive popularity in today's gaming world.

So this game here is King's Field, which is the first title they have ever developed. It's also one of their best series, possessing some really fun and unique style for a PS1 game. To those who don't know, Japan had a small dungeon crawl phase with the PS1 which was never popular in the West, mostly because our gaming media shoved onto us the idea of cinematic gameplay and the technology behind these early 3D worlds we would be all playing PS1 games in at the time. But in Japan, just like in the Famicom days and the Super Famicom days, games they received for their middle market were vastly different from our own. We got more dialed in action experiences, and they received a whole lot more of these simulation styled games. And that's where From Software started... they made these often exclusive titles that would sell for a niche audience in Japan, and got lucky by making this game at a time when nothing similar was coming in, so fans of these genres would play their titles.

So anyway how about the game? It's essentially a mix of Tenchu, Quake 2 and Dark Souls. It isn't as advanced as Dark Souls for obvious reasons, for starters there are no parry mechanics, which would be introduced in future RPG experiences by From Software. Neither there are any bosses as far as I've played the title into, just giant monsters that deal a lot of damage. Damage here is done by percentages, and your best bet is also onto attacking with a charged stamina in one single attack, then going back. So it's got that Quake 2 movement written all over the experience, which I really like, since with the Souls series I've always felt they messed the perfect movement they made for King's Field, even at it's slowest, and also the more contained but high frame movement of games such as the Otogi series they also made. So you will see in this retrospective just what exactly hits the mold with what From Software had in stock, and what is so novel about Dark Souls as a game from their company.

As far as RPG elements, this game has very simple Diablo styled mechanics, without even a stat system for role-playing. But anyway, what's in here will probably catch your attention since you can expect a lot of gear and items, alongside using certain attacks over and over being upgraded to make your experience so much easier and better. So the game is really good for fans of old school dungeon crawlers from the PS2 to the MS-DOS, like Baldur's Gate, Diablo or Ultima Underworld. It gets quite fun as well.

So if you've never played this one, I recommend it wholeheartedly. It's unique for the PS1 era, and it gets a lot of things right... just a shame I couldn't play this game with a memory card since I have no PS1 memory card at the moment, because if I did I'd have played it longer. Very fun, but also maybe for a acquired taste of gamers as it requires lots of patience.

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