Games Beaten 2016

[prfsnl_gmr]

1. Ultimate NES Remix (3DS)
2. Space Invaders Infinity Gene (iOS)
3. World of Goo (iOS)
4. A Dark Room (iOS)
5. Shovel Knight (WII U)
6. The Room (iOS)
7. Mega Man 10 (PS3)
8. The Room Two (iOS)
9. Braid (PS3)
10. Kung Fu Fight! (WII U)
11. Kung Fu Rabbit (WII U)
12. Escape Goat (360)
13. Canabalt (iOS)
14. Leo's Fortune (iOS)
15. King's Field: The Ancient City (PS2)

King's Field: The Ancient City (a/k/a King's Field IV) is a sublime gaming experience for experienced, patient players. It is consistently challenging; it respects the player's intelligence; and it is impeccably designed. Moreover - and although the game is ostensibly a first-person RPG - it actually has much more in common with classic action/adventure games like The Legend of Zelda and Metroid. Like those games, King's Field: The Ancient City provides you a basic goal - return the cursed idol - and drops you off in a dark, exceptionally dangerous, high-fantasy world with no armor, no weapons, and no direction. From the starting point, you chart your own path to the goal, and the game provides you with the freedom to do exactly that. Only a few of the game's myriad armor, items, and weapons are actually required to beat the game, and it is possible to skip some sections (and even boss encounters) entirely. The game encourages exploration, however, and dedicated players (i.e., anyone who plays the game for more than a few hours) will want to explore every inch of the game's world to unlock its mysteries and piece together the game's appropriately cryptic story. Moreover - and like the best "metroidvania" games - backtracking through the game's world is never tedious, and the fact that opening even the most mundane doorways and treasure chests has the potential unlock vast new areas makes the game immensely addictive.

That said, the game is not entirely without its faults. (Sorry, Exhuminator!) The controls are consistently unintuitive; the rate at which the character turns is inexcusably slow; and the enemy AI is often atrocious. The game's frame rate is abysmal, and large portions of the game's world consist exclusively of dimly-lit brown-and-gray passages. The game's element-based magic and upgrade system is unnecessarily complex, and despite beating the game, I feel like I never fully understood it. Worse, the game, at points, doles out new armor, spells, and weapons at a fantastic rate, and there is no incentive to learn their nuances or to upgrade most of them. Finally, the game starts very slowly, and like Okami - another one of my very favorite games - it does not really pick up until the player is at least five or six hours into the game.

Those who can tolerate the game's slow opening and cryptic nature, however, are in for an immensely rewarding and singular gaming experience, and despite the game's flaws, I unhesitatingly rank it among the best games of its generation. Like Exhuminator, I cannot recommend King's Field: The Ancient City highly enough, and I consider it an essential gaming experience for those of us who grew up with (and appreciate) challenging, mysterious, and "unguided" gaming experiences.

[BoneSnapDeez]

Sounds like a boss game.

[Exhuminator]

15. King's Field: The Ancient City (PS2)

Prfsnl_gmr, I am impressed and happy, that you not only gave this gem a chance, but beat it as well. I salute you sir!

>King's Field: The Ancient City (a/k/a King's Field IV) is a sublime gaming experience >for experienced, patient players. It is consistently challenging; it respects the player's >intelligence; and it is impeccably designed.

I agree with all of this, especially the "respects the player's intelligence" part.

>drops you off in a dark, exceptionally dangerous, high-fantasy world with no armor, no >weapons, and no direction.

This description fits all other KF games too, is exactly why I love King's Field.

>The controls are consistently unintuitive

If KF4 is your first KF, then yes, that's true. If you'd been playing KF since the very first KF, then the controls would feel familiar and natural. However, I think From Software should have given the player a choice to choose between "classic" and "modern" control schemes. Modern utilizing the analog sticks for movement and view controls of course.

>the rate at which the character turns is inexcusably slow

Well, I have to disagree with this. I think the reason that KF moves slowly is because it's existing in a medium between turn-based and real time. The game moves slowly enough to give you a tactical planning window, but quickly enough that aiming and reflexes still matter. It is this magical midpoint that I love so much about KF's combat. You have time to think but still have to be quick enough to act.

>The game's element-based magic and upgrade system is unnecessarily complex

In my opinion, it's fine. But this is a subjective thing, so I can't make any objective argument there. Damn it.

>the game, at points, doles out new armor, spells, and weapons at a fantastic rate, and >there is no incentive to learn their nuances or to upgrade most of them

On the other hand, it's nice to have so many options!

>>Like Exhuminator, I cannot recommend King's Field: The Ancient City highly enough

See folks! I'm not totally crazy! (Just mostly crazy.)

Prfsnl_gmr, if you ever have a hankering for more KF, give KF3 a shot next. It's nearly as good as KF4, its only true fault being it gets too easy towards the end. Also KF1 is absolutely fantastic, but is a much simpler affair than KF4 or KF3. I can't really recommend KF2 before any of those. But, KF2 is still very good, and is actually the most metroidvania of the entire series.

[prfsnl_gmr]

I really appreciate you getting me into this series, Exhuminator. I really, really enjoyed King's Field: The Ancient City, and I will probably try some of the other games in the series.

With regard to the controls, I agree that the game should have provided a "modern" control option (or, at least, the ability to customize the controls a bit more). I also do not think that the game needed to increase the turning speed dramatically, but turning in the game was so much slower than all of the other movement speeds in the game (and radically slower than an actual person can turn 360 degrees). It took me out of the experience a bit, and IMO, it made some parts unnecessarily frustrating. (If I had been able to turn around faster, the game would have been five hours shorter! ) Finally, with regard to the game's element system, I appreciate what the game was trying to accomplish, but I liked the simplified system in Demon's Souls a bit more. (In that game, you can enchant your weapon or imbue it with fire. Those two, relatively straightforward options - when coupled with the different "types" of damage inflicted by the various weapons (e.g., hit, slash, stab, etc.) - add just the right amount of complexity.)

In sum, though, my complaints are relatively minor, and I really cannot recommend the game highly enough. It is one of the best that I have played in a long time.

[Exhuminator]

I should mention that each KF has its own game speed. KF4 is probably the slowest, with KF1 a close second. KF2 is a bit faster than those two. KF3 has the fastest pace of all of them, with a relatively minor turning speed, and a run button that really makes you haul ass.

Also, don't forget about Shadow Tower on PS1, and Shadow Tower Abyss on PS2. If you need help getting Shadow Tower Abyss to run in English on your PS2, just PM me.

[Key-Glyph]

Exhuminator already had me really curious about this series (I love exploration gameplay), and now that everyone else is reporting in, I keep thinking about it. And thinking about it. And THINKING about it...

If I were to start somewhere in the King's Field franchise, where would you recommend, Ex?

[Xeogred]

Have you played the Souls games prfsnl_gmr? I forget. bruno was probably the only one here who's played basically all of it. I think KF3 was his favorite, and he agrees with me that Demon's is the best for Souls.

[Exhuminator]

If I were to start somewhere in the King's Field franchise, where would you recommend, Ex?

For most gamers, KF3 (AKA King's Field 2 USA) is probably the best place to start. It's more polished than KF1 or KF2. And then you can move on to KF4 and enjoy the massive graphical upgrade.

For truly hardcore gamers, start with KF1 and work your way on up. I wish I'd done that. For me it was - KF4, KF1, KF2, KF3:PS, KF3. If I'd known better, I would have done them in order. I started with KF4, because I didn't think I'd ever play more than one game in the series, so I picked the one with the best graphics. Little did I know I'd deeply fall in love with the whole shebang.

Also, aside from myself and prfnsl_gmr, MrEco also played through KF4 and loved it. So the game's got 3 fans here at least!

[prfsnl_gmr]

Have you played the Souls games prfsnl_gmr? I forget. bruno was probably the only one here who's played basically all of it. I think KF3 was his favorite, and he agrees with me that Demon's is the best for Souls.

I've only played Demon's Souls. I loved it.

I will probably get to Dark Souls before the end of the year (and after I beat it and Dark Souls II, I will probably head back to one of the earlier King's Field games).

[Stark]

1/22 Emily Is Away (PC)
1/29 Dishonored Definitive Edition (XB1)
1/31 Rise of the Tomb Raider - Baba Yaga: The Temple of the Witch (XB1)
2/2 Dishonored - The Knife of Dunwall (XB1)
2/8 Dishonored - The Brigmore Witches (XB1)
2/16 MURDERED: SOUL SUSPECT (PC)

Games Beaten = 4
DLC = 3

3/7 Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc (PSV)
Visual novel + Phoenix Wright (as far as I know, I've not played them), makes for an intriguing combination. The thing this game has a lot of is style and it doesn't give an f if you like it or not. It took some getting used to, but I really got into the characters and drama of it. I appreciated the breaks from just "hit x to continue story" with the courtroom scenes. During the courtroom battles, there are essentially 4 types of games that take place. Debate, where you use "truth bullets" to counter a contradiction in someone's statement, Hangman, where you shoot the correct letters out of the sky to unravel a clue, Bullet Time Battle, where you do a rythym game to counter one person's argument, and finally a Closing Argument portion, where you reassemble the timeline of the crime scene.

All in all very fun, but it suffered from a few things. When you're just moving about the school, before a murder takes place, you often have "Free Time" to spend with another student, but as the game progresses, the person you want to talk to could be anywhere in this giant school. Just tell me where they are in a menu. I don't want to look through every door just to find them. That adds nothing. Secondly, I feel like at times this had a problem during translation. These were few and far between, but occasionally I would know exactly what they were wanting to do with a contradiction during a Debate section, but through wording it was very unclear which statement was the contradictory one. Anyway, if you're interested in visual novels, but are worried that they might just be "click through the story" this one might be a good one to start with, because it definitely has some gameplay to it!