King's Field / Shadow Tower - The Father of Souls
Oct 28, 2022 14:24:50 GMT -5
Post by Xeogred on Oct 28, 2022 14:24:50 GMT -5
Individual final posts/short reviews in the order I finished all of these:
King's Field IV: The Ancient City
Disclaimer: I'm not going to hold your hand and tell you how to beat these or what works best, no real heavy spoilers, however I will mention some things about mechanics to items and such that may ruin the surprise for some people. If you have the interest, willpower, and fortitude to check these games out on your own, perhaps save this reading for later or just skim through it for now. So you can go in completely 100% blind as I did and freshly discover these dense and unique games all on your own.
Disclaimer: I'm not going to hold your hand and tell you how to beat these or what works best, no real heavy spoilers, however I will mention some things about mechanics to items and such that may ruin the surprise for some people. If you have the interest, willpower, and fortitude to check these games out on your own, perhaps save this reading for later or just skim through it for now. So you can go in completely 100% blind as I did and freshly discover these dense and unique games all on your own.
Beginning in November 2021, I sunk into Shadow Tower Abyss and quickly had to play the rest of FromSoftware's classic first person dungeon crawlers afterwards. While I thought Shadow Tower Abyss would be the one I liked most out of the gate, little did I know that the King's Field games would be even greater and Zelda/Metroid-like epic gaming experiences (ie, my two favorite franchises). Before all the Dark Souls games and FromSoftware's newfound rise to fame, in between the dozens of Armored Core and mecha games back in the 90's, they were already doing the hauntingly difficult dungeon crawlers and showing off their technical prowess in the form of the PlayStation franchises King's Field and Shadow Tower.
DUNGEON CRAWLING GREATNESS
King's Field / Shadow Tower, are hardcore action RPG/adventure dungeon crawlers. You have typical RPG stats and levels (recommended to look up what the heck they mean in the ST games), equipable armor, spells you'll discover to use, and items and key items that can do unique things themselves. How about a flute that generates floating bridges? Huge rosters of monsters ranging from the goofiest mutant plants or bugs, to the classic skeletons, to humanoid lizards, dragons, and trolls. Each game densely designed with methodically laid out dungeons, full of monsters, traps and puzzles (more than anything you ever see in Souls), branching paths, etc. Keen observation is required throughout to see some of the environmental storytelling or hints in some sections. These games will absolutely NEVER tell you directly what you need to do. And sometimes there's more than one solution. These games demand and earn your full attention when playing them. They're layered with instant death pits and traps, also much like Souls. You have to be attentive to your surroundings and learn the layout of the land to survive.
Need a break or breather from the despair? Then stop! You’re always in control. Spend some time leveling or beating up monsters to rack up some extra gold or drops. Backtrack throughout to see if you maybe missed some hidden passages or secrets that could reveal awesome new gear to make your journey easier. There’s always options. The more you play, the better you get at these games.
The greatest challenge can be the archaic controls and getting comfortable with the movement. At first it seems like circling around and strafing if the main focus to its combat. While usually ideal in many cases, that’s not how you’ll have to fight off every enemy across all of these. Think of each encounter like a real one on one duel. Run up on that monster and get your hit in, then backtrack. Learn and adapt to their intelligence, or lack of! You won’t have to dizzlingly spin around every encounter and after time, the bizarre controls can start to feel like second nature.
Death can come fast and hard, just like the 8bit days for the most part. But with each death should come knowledge of what not to do next time, what to prepare with, etc. It's not exactly purposeful that you have to die a lot, but most will throughout some of these. All part of the incremental progress and overcoming the challenge. It's typically the levels and mobs that are the most challenging, the bosses not quite as much, in some cases. Contrast to the modern From games where bosses alone tend to be the difficult walls that you strive repeatedly to overcome. Chances are I'm not the only one that got a chuckle out of some of these final boss fights. Yet, there's also a few that were brutally tough. You never know until you know...
TECHNICAL MARVEL
The first King's Field came out on December 16th, 1994 in Japan. Doom was barely 1 year old and the 16bit consoles were still in homes with people playing 2D games for some perspective. I won't boldly claim King's Field is the absolute very first of its kind, who knows for sure on that, but it is without a doubt one of the earliest fully 3D games on console ever developed. Now what were the old days of 3D games often known for compared to the cartridge era? Loading times/screens in between levels. But King's Field in 1994 and on, never had that. The only real loading you'll be seeing with these is loading up your save file. But once you jump back in, the whole world continually renders itself seamlessly from start to finish. Extremely impressive especially for its time and it does sink in pretty quickly, just how dang cool that is about them. You're never interrupted.
INVERTED DIFFICULTY - They're too scary, aren't they super hard?!
No.
Okay, they are and they are not in ways! Patience is asking a lot of most people these days in our hectic fast paced civilization. What you have to understand with these games is that they heavily operate on a reversed difficulty curve. Which is probably what holds some people back or makes some drop out swiftly. You're naked and thrown into the lion's den immediately. You hit "New Game" and the game tells you, figure it out buddy and have fun. With a little patience and intrigue, you will incrementally get better. Not just in-game wise, but mentally you the player will learn more about the adventure along the way and improve. If everything goes well after awhile you'll eventually notice that final thing the game initially asked of you... have fun. It is sublime serenity to adventure through a game that doesn't hold your hand and order you how to play. You're having fun and becoming the master of its design by your own accord. It’s not uncommon to feel victoriously powerful by the end of each of these games. You will have awesome weapons, spells, items to spare, and then some. Do you become the real demon?
KING'S FIELD vs SHADOW TOWER - Are they different?
A common comparison to the modern games, is that Shadow Tower sets the stage for Demon's Souls, and King's Field Dark Souls. But as always they're a bit of a mix of the same shared DNA. The key differences are that equipment is breakable in Shadow Tower (ugh I know, but wait...) and the level design presentation. The two Shadow Tower's are still complex in layout but they both tend to have hub sections that cleanly break off into singular dungeons. Shadow Tower having well, a main central tower you're descending that typically splits off into a level or two. And Abyss tends to be similar, with two dungeons usually branching out from the hub sections along the way. You'll still unlock some shortcuts and see how they interlink.
The original King's Field is kind of a blueprint for both series. A huge sprawling dungeon with levels/layers to it, each ramping up the difficulty between the monsters and traps. The sequel KF's would continually evolve and change up how they progress, each having their own unique flavor. You get maps in the KF's as well. In general, the KF games are simply bigger in scope with more ground to cover and things to do. Unlike ST's lonely pure dungeon crawling, the KF's have a few more NPC's around, villages, and the pacing in general feels a bit more open and RPG/adventurous. The KF games also have constant BGM, and awesome tunes at that. ST is piercing silence aside from a track or two, like modern Souls. I'm fine with this and modern games, since they do well to fill in that ear space with ambiance and details, but I think the ST's would have benefited from some more music. They surely could have gone for a different style than the KF's and experimented. As ST in general, seems like they wanted to experiment with the KF formula.
Equipment durability is something you have to monitor a ton more in Shadow Tower. There's even dungeons like "acid" sections that melts through your equipment, might not hurt to actually take those boots off sometime. Thankfully items breaking isn't completely permanent, you can use your scarce currency to repair them sometimes. But the cool thing is that these games tend to flood you with gear and weapons. So you -always- have options and variety, are typically always getting stronger, etc. It forces you to be on your toes and keep on this stuff, change up your weapons, etc. But that still requires some patience and maybe a certain kind of player, certainly.
If you really can't deal with that, the blacksmith's of King's Field seem to make vastly superior gear. You won't be having your equipment break here. In some of them they do have durability you'll maybe need to repair, to get that point or two of damage back. But it's never a critical worry or anything that needs serious monitoring.
You can view a monster bestiary in the ST's. I think it would have been nice to have this in KF too. Ultimately, they're different enough and the ST's more than likely require more patience, yet Abyss might be one of the easiest installments across all six.
WHO SHOULD PLAY THESE GEMS?
Obviously, anyone who loves the modern Souls games from Demon's Souls and on and appreciates old games, should see where their roots stem from. As mentioned throughout, I believe fans of Metroidvania's in general could get into these too. The likes of Thief, System Shock, Ultima Underworld, maybe even some Deus Ex, the immersive sim blend, comes to mind as well. Along with Zelda, certainly towards the King's Field games with how they progress and you get so much stronger as the journey goes, with equipment, spells, items, etc. Such a well paced incline of accomplishments and satisfaction. Now because of the initial difficulty spike, they do need time to really evaluate early on. Something even I failed to give them for YEARS! It's true, I attempted to play some of these games a few times before and thought they were terrible. But you get an honest hour or two into them and things start to slowly click, until the rest is history, if they dig their claws into your organs. Chances are if you finish one of these and roll credits, you'll be itching to play the rest of them. And you've got dozens of hours of gold ahead. Here's to hoping FromSoftware considers giving the first person perspective another look someday and crafts another true spiritual successor to the legacy of King's Field and Shadow Tower.
I usually recommend release date order for everything, but as you can see with how I went about these games, it was hardly in order. I'd say you can jump in anywhere, with the exception that it feels best to save KF3 for a bit later. So if you can string together the KF's in order, that's awesome. But if one jumps out to you more than the others, take the plunge!