RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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There’s a sign on a wall early on in King’s Field: The Ancient City that says, “Beware: Poison.”
When you encounter it, you haven’t really been in anything I’d describe as a dungeon just yet. It’s marking the entrance to a mine that you need to enter to obtain some items required for progression. Because it was so early in the game I, naively, thought this meant there would maybe be some poison floor to avoid, or one enemy with poison on it. You know, as a sort of introduction to the concept.
Immediately down the first corridor, there’s a stack of like 10 slimes that will poison you if you so much as breathe near them. Cure the poison with an antidote, and they immediately do it again. Beyond them are zombies that spit poison on the ground and do way too much damage if they hit you with their weapons. There’s a mushroom spewing poison in a radius around it, a poison lake you will fall into repeatedly because of how hard it is to navigate, and a little further on, a room that just poisons you. Randomly. Just for standing there!
“Beware: Poison”—how trite! King’s Field 4 is out to kill you. I don’t think everyone will enjoy this. Somehow, I did. For about ten hours so far. I thought I’d be able to get through more of the game during this time than I did, but I misunderstood how many times I’d have to attempt that damn poison mine.
King’s Field 4 opens with an absolutely sick introductory cutscene that lays out the story, which is very “And The Green Grass Grows All Around.” In a dense, colorless forest is the cursed land. In the cursed land is an ancient city. In the ancient city is a warning. The warning says, “Grave misfortune will befall those who behold the idol that stares into the darkness!” Neat!
That idol was apparently gifted to a king, his land got cursed as a result, he sent a bunch of soldiers to give the idol back, they all died, and now you—the prince—are stuck delivering it. Humorously, the idol sits innocently in your inventory the entire game, and you can sell it to some hapless merchant if you like, though you’ll have to go back and get it later if you want to finish King’s Field 4 .
King’s Field 4 is brutal. Some of that brutality is in service of great fun, and even comedy. One of the first things you’re likely to do in the game is walk into an invisible lava pit and perish instantly. You’ll (probably) never do it a second time, and very little progress is lost, but it’s a hilariously rude way for King’s Field 4 to educate you on its own sick cruelty. I scream-laughed in a dungeon when, while trying to escape a skeleton shooting arrows at me, I ran across a bridge toward a set of double doors. Just as I got close, the doors swung open, revealing another skeleton foe emerging from the darkness beyond with a goofy grin and a silly gait. A spring of water in the poison dungeon will cure your poison and heal your HP if you drink, but not written on any sign is the fact that if you get too greedy (which you will), eventually the spring will run out and you’ll be left on your own. Hope you brought antidote!
Some of the game’s brutality, however, sucks. Especially when you’re at a low level. King’s Field 4 ’s character movement is agonizingly slow and imprecise. You move at a glacial pace. If you need to cross a slowly sinking wooden board across a poison lake, I’m so sorry, but you will almost certainly either not make it across fast enough to avoid sinking into the poison or you will accidentally veer just off-course enough to plop yourself in anyway. When you die of poison, it will take you forever to get from the last save point back to where you were, both because you walk so slow, but also because any combat between point A and B takes forever. You spend a lot of time moving forward slowly, lazily swinging your weapon, often missing enemy hitboxes entirely, slowly backing away so you don’t get hit, waiting for your stamina bar to refill so you don’t take a damage penalty, then slowly moving in for a second hit, and so forth. Better weapons, level-ups, and magic help alleviate this somewhat as the game progresses, but that’s also when the enemies get more aggressive and you probably die more often.
I’d be angrier about all that if King’s Field 4 didn’t bring such excellent vibes with it. It’s simultaneously hilarious and melancholy. Its protagonist is carrying around an “Idol of Sorrow” that curses anyone who beholds it: depressing, and so on-the-nose bad that I can’t help but laugh. Its first NPC is the most weepy man ever, sitting on a rock bemoaning his fate. Next to him is a shop owned by some guy named David Bunch, the least-appropriate grimdark medieval fantasy name I’ve ever heard. In a hamlet nearby is a woman dying of a disease; her husband, unbeknownst to her, is dead in a mine nearby, and her daughter is outside, bored and depressed next to the stupidest-looking medieval-drawing-ass dog I’ve ever seen. At times this whole game feels like a joke to me, but it’s a joke I’m in on and agreeable to even when I’m (almost always) the butt of it.
Music’s great too. Atmospheric, lots of minor keys. A little repetitive after a while (you spend a lot of time in the same areas because of how slow you move) but still good. Listen to this:
I love how weird King’s Field 4 is. While its veneer is that of an epic action-y adventure game, the actual process of playing it is a slow burn, an intriguing puzzle of figuring out where to go, what to do, and how to survive doing it. I think the tedium will probably grate with most folks, and I fully understand anyone who chucks the controller and gives up instantly the second they fall into that first, invisible lava pit. But the feeling of triumph when it finally clicks what King’s Field 4 is asking of me, and when I finally execute it, mostly makes the struggles worth it. By golly, I think I might keep playing it, just so I can keep dying to it.
The story you just read is part of the 2002 edition of Warp Week, a Kotaku ...
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