Xeogred wrote:To which just makes me want to seriously ask, is there anyone on this forum or even elsewhere that has actually played and beaten the PSX games for the first time within the last decade or so? I'm not denying it could probably resonate with new fans in this day. I'd like to hear their experience. I know someone beat the PS2 one recently, but not the PSX ones.
Also just to be clear I think Silent Hill 1's combat is pretty bad too hehe, it's fresh in my mind because of your experience with it, yeah that's something that's chunky around the edges, but you don't play Silent Hill 1 for the combat. And you're basically saying that about King's Field as well. I'm sure there's plenty of others out there that hate Silent Hill 1 and love King's Field or have other crazy thoughts. But the gameplay bringing down the experience in King's Field seems unavoidable to me.
I actually first played a King's Field game just last year (largely on the basis of Exhuminator's enthusiasm). It was King's Field (JP). I had to dig around quite a bit, but I wanted to revisit my first post on the experience (and sorry in advance for quoting myself here)
nullPointer wrote:So I started playing Kings Field (Japan) last night. Holy bejeezus I need to git gud! Thus far I've not engaged with a single enemy that hasn't wiped the floor with me. And to be clear I don't mean that "I was able to eke out victory through means of attrition and a heavy damage toll". No I mean every enemy that I've engaged with has killed me dead; like in two hits. This one gets the nod from the Electric Wizard approval committee:
I'm not even entirely sure if my hits are landing when I swing my strangely wooden disembodied arm.
I'm really am enjoying it though in spite of, or perhaps because of it's inscrutability. I'm not sure whether I should be avoiding confrontation whilst powering up somehow, or whether I just suck at this game. Probably both! I'll likely be turning to a walkthrough, at least until I can get my feet under me here.
I stuck with the game, and before I knew it I found myself enjoying it immensely, eventually going on to beat it. I would definitely place it among the very best of the first-person dungeon crawlers I've played (though admittedly my experience with this particular genre doesn't run
particularly deep). I found the difficulty for this King's Field to be very much front-loaded at the beginning of the game. Once you start improving your gear, the combat becomes more enjoyable. Once you've seen a few of the game's 'tricks' you know what to watch out for a bit more. So it's a bit of a stretch to call my self a 'fan of the series' on the basis of having only played this one game, but I would definitely consider myself a fan of this
entry in the series. I plan to continue playing through the rest of the series at some point, although the approach I take to my backlog generally means that I don't take on entire series back-to-back (and sometimes I go for months/years between entries in a single series). But for the most part, yeah I thought King's Field was pretty great!
Which brings me to Silent Hill (though not literally thank god)! That's what I'm playing right now. All the recent discussion around Silent Hill put me in the mindset to get back into it again, and before I knew it I was hearing that eerie air raid siren ringing in my ears. (I really had my mind set on Silent Hill 2, but it had been so long since I played the first, that I decided I wanted to take it back to the beginning). I have to say, for my money and time at any rate, this is a good game. It certainly holds up against anything remotely similar being released at the time on Playstation. Tank controls will forever be a love-em-or-hate-em affair, but I would contend their implementation in SH is certainly no worse than other games using them at the time, and a damn sight better than several by my estimation. Same goes for combat really. I may be called on the carpet for saying so, but I don't see
that much difference between combat in Silent Hill and Resident Evil, which isn't to say that
either of those games has great combat, but I'm not sure it's possible to defend one while attacking the other on the basis of combat alone. All told though the tone, setting, and atmosphere in Silent Hill is the hook. I think I can honestly say that when it's firing on all cylinders, it's one of my favorite horror settings regardless of medium. Big talk, I know, lol.
So I dunno, I know a lot of people these days approach the Playstation as a system only to be revisited for RPGs and a few of its quality 2D outings, but I feel like there's still a lot to love about these early 3D affairs, if you're open to a different play style.
