King's Field Review | PS1 — The Retro Perspective

Developer/Publisher: From Software
Platform: PS1

From Software’s first-ever game, King’s Field has been called a spiritual predecessor to Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls. With that kind of pedigree, you might be surprised to learn that the first King’s Field was a Japan-only game and that King’s Field II was the first to see a western release with the II dropped. That's not gonna stop me from reviewing this historically significant game though, as this was a launch title on the PlayStation 1 back in 1994, the first RPG on the system. Let's see how it holds up.

Story

First, for those expecting a lot of "oh so that's where Dark Souls got x from" sorry to disappoint but this is an old school RPG more akin to something like the original Elder Scrolls or Wizardry, except far more simplistic. I'll detail that in a bit but for now, I'll say that at least in the tone and delivery of the story Kings Field seems to hold similarities to everyone's favourite reference fodder. You play as a Prince called John, returning to his homeland after news of his father’s disappearance whilst investigating the return of an evil force to the land of Verdite. This evil force has let monsters loose in the graveyard underneath the monastery built to commemorate a hero of a past age who saved everyone’s arses last time around and later became known as The Dragon.

The entirety of the game takes place in this graveyard and that’s where you start out, having warped underground using one of the magic warp zones found throughout. The graveyard has five levels with the lower levels being where more important people are buried but....could you really consider this a graveyard when it’s completely underground? I think catacombs might have been a better description but the characters of the game will always refer to it as the graveyard and there are even representations of outdoor buildings like churches and possibly even trees.

The scattered characters are your main source of information as to what to do next and also deliver the scarce and vague story through small snippets of cryptic dialogue….Like Dark Souls! They gradually allude to the grisly fate of John’s father who discovered the King was feeding off long-forgotten dark magic in the depths of the….graveyard. This dark magic was the source of the invading monsters and the rise of the undead. John’s father had died trying to stop the king and was subsequently buried himself by a wounded soldier you can speak to on the 4th floor. You can recover his sword, a family heirloom and wonder how a wounded soldier managed to build a full-fledged sarcophagus down here, did he bring his stone-cutting tools on this expedition? On the second floor, you meet Miria, a fairy who first explains that you must be the one to defeat the king and abruptly disappears, only to turn up again near the very end alongside the Dragon. Hey, turns out he’s an actual dragon. They unlock the hidden power within John’s family sword, turning it into the fabled moonlight sword, thus allowing you to defeat the king who has transformed into a tree-like monstrosity, seemingly sucking the life from the earth itself. John strikes the demon down and emerges as a hero and the new king of Verdite.

I’m using a fan translation which may differ from the original but I feel that the characters do a fairly decent job of drip-feeding you the plot just enough to keep you interested and moving forward. The first floor has soldiers which give you the lowdown on the immediate task at hand, as well as a priest who can tell you more about the graveyard. There’s also a grave robber posing as a grave keeper who delivers a bit of humour, saying his “lost son has the map which will tell him where to rob... I mean dig new graves” This gives way to a bit of tragedy as you find the son dead further along but nonetheless, you need that map if you’re going to continue on for the greater good. I was surprised that this remained an open plot thread as there is no more dialogue with the grave robber after discovering his son, yet other characters such as the priest can be returned to throughout the game for more snippets of lore. As you get to deeper levels you find more soldiers telling of your father’s attempts to reach the bottom, giving you the feeling of being hot on his heels and again, pushing you onwards. Ultimately, King’s Field delivers its story how many early RPGs do, with a very limited yet heavy-handed block of text for a prologue and epilogue with very scant details in between, it’s down to the player whether this sufficient to pique their interest to further allow themselves to fill in the gaps.

Gameplay

The core gameplay of King’s Field consist’s equal parts of first-person exploration and combat, therefore the first thing you’ll want to do is get the map. This can be tough in itself though because, well, you don’t have a map to begin with. You can get a general sense of where you are on the first floor by using the compass at the top right of the screen but even after having spoken to the grave robber who tells you his son is nearby with the map, you have a choice of around 8 different forks in the road from that position and could just as easily end up at the other end of the stage than actually find the kid. Once you do, the map is only an approximation of the surrounding area. There are far more forks in often completely different shapes than what’s shown, but with the help of the compass, it’s now much easier to find your way around.

Another thing that is not shown to the player is a large number of hidden passageways which look just like regular walls but can be passed through as if they weren’t there. These almost always lead to a treasure chest which may or may not be guarded by monsters. Not many other games contain this sheer amount of hidden passages and there are also invisible bridges that cross certain chasms. Only one of these secret pathways is essential for completing the main story, the rest serve as an incentive to explore every nook and cranny of the game thoroughly. Some of the game’s best equipment can be found in these areas and almost every item in the game can either be found as loot somewhere or at the two shops on the first floor. On one hand, this is great, rewarding the player for exploring and giving them options on how they want to get equipment, on the other hand, you might find the shop and the acquisition of gold from killing enemies to be made rather pointless by the fact you can just find what you need. You can find a staff which will reveal these hidden pathways which is a nice addition, However, when all you need to do is walk towards a wall to see if one is there, it’s not really a necessity.

The second main task you’re going to want to complete in King’s Field is activating the dragon fountain, you find a golden chalice in the Southeast which can be placed on an altar in the Northeast and this activates the fountain in the south. One of the shops is also in the East where you can buy the priests stolen cross. When returned he gives you a key, unlocking shortcuts around the stage as well as the way forward to the lower level. Only slight hints as to the utility of items and player abilities are given. For instance, when you touch the Dragon Fountain, it’s obvious that it restores you to full health, but what the player is not told is that the fountain now acts as a respawn point for the rest of the game. This made the game far easier than I first thought as there is now no punishment whatsoever for dying besides a bit of backtracking. The game makes use of save points in the form of crosses on the walls which at first were a welcome sight, but once I learned I could simply respawn at the fountain, I became far less vigilant with regular saves.

This gameplay loop continues on the rest of the floors, collecting key items to give access to another area of the map with another key item hidden within. On the fourth floor, you find yourself once again without a map and this is the most maze-like floor with more dead ends than Donald Trump's toupee. It feels like a cheap way to inject a difficulty spike and not a very engaging one at that, to wander around trying random pathways until you eventually find the right one that gets you a new map. This magicians map works on all floors and is more accurate to the game world, yet still only an approximation. People have hand-drawn more accurate maps on the Internet, so I don't know why they felt the need to have a map upgrade in the game that is still not accurate.

You could, of course, end up doing any of the tasks on most floors in any particular order. This says something for those who enjoy replaying games or even speed-runners, as you can learn the layout of the game and where everything is to play an optimal run-through. The only thing holding you back in this sense is the variety of monsters around almost every corner, they’ll block off tight corridors and occasionally hold on to key items. Most of these monsters will respawn periodically after you’ve left the area, to block your path once more.

This leads me to the combat, a system fairly similar to the original Elder Scrolls, only simpler in that there are no random dice rolls determining whether you hit or miss. You have two ways of damaging the enemy, using your melee attack after equipping one of a variety of swords, axes and maces or through casting offensive long-range spells. These are tied to the two main stats, strength and magic, which increase as you use the respective attacks. You also earn experience and level up as you defeat enemies which increases your health and magic points. Depending on the weapon you’re using, your attacks will deal damage under several categories: slash, chop and stab. Each enemy has weaknesses pertaining to these categories, with the possible addition of magical elements like fire and holy.

Herein lies the first real problem with the combat, that the player is not given any indication on which enemies are weak to which attacks beyond how quickly they go down but then, enemies take a similar number of hits depending on just your strength and magic alone so the additional stats don’t serve much purpose beyond adding a perceived sense of depth to character building.

There’s also not much choice in how you build your character, they just get more powerful in all aspects the more you kill things or find new equipment. This leads to a difficulty curve that peaks extremely early. At the beginning of the game, enemies can kill you in a couple of hits but that’s not to say it’s unfair. If you advance cautiously and choose when to strike you can run rings around most of the monsters and feel satisfaction at overcoming such a dangerous threat. Your MP pool also starts insanely low, so long-range spells cannot be spammed. You have to get close to the enemy, but the game also evokes tension and fear each time a new type of monster appears because you have no idea if you’re walking to your death in taking it on.

As you level up, your health and magic pool expands and mid way through the third-floor enemies will become trivial if you’ve explored most of the secret areas, not able to do noteworthy amounts of damage and going down in a couple of hits, in turn being easily farmable allowing you to level up even quicker and breeze through most of the later parts of the game. It is only in the very last areas that a hefty difficulty spike rears its head and pretty much the only way to deal with such a spike in an RPG like this is to grind levels. So you go to one of the spots where enemies respawn endlessly and pick them off with your now super-powerful magic spells over and over, wait for your MP to regenerate and pick off some more. By this time you’ll have stocked up on a tonne of gold to spend at the shop yet at the same time enough healing items that you would never need to buy any, rendering the shop doubly pointless.

This is not an ideal way to have to overcome adversity in an RPG. More time should have been spent developing the weaknesses and strategies for beating stronger enemies rather than simply to have them deal more damage than a player would have built up in health by the time they reached that part of the game.

Let’s get more into detail about how the early game was a blast to play with its methodical combat. You have a stamina gauge and unless that gauge is full when you hit the attack button you will do minimal damage to the enemy. Each weapon has a different recharge time on the stamina gauge so there’s a bit more to think about than just brute strength. Players also need to pay attention to the very slow wind-up time for a strike. The weapon comes down and connects near the bottom of the swing (around here) This means that it’s best to keep your distance from enemies waiting for just the right time to lunge in for a single strike, This staggers most monsters, giving you ample time to back off and plan your next strike. Enemy attack animations, unfortunately, cannot be dissected so thoroughly and monsters such as the zombie can attack quickly at a range that seems impossible for its stumpy little arms. This leads to instances of the player feeling cheated. While you’re combating the enemy, spike and poison pits can catch you off guard, as well as some later traps that fire projectiles, but it’s the case here again that once you reach a certain level, these traps may as well be a fly gently landing on the player.

Magic works on a separate stamina system, only this time you can’t cast until the gauge is full. It’s extremely generous though, so you’ll mainly be keeping an eye on MP. Once you figure out that magic staggers most enemies it becomes clear that timing melee strikes after a quick blast of magic can be a great strategy. As your MP pool grows, you can freely switch back and forth between magic and melee, constantly staggering almost every enemy in the game, so once again devolving this methodical combat system into a spammy hack and slash. Magic might remain fun to use just for the power trip, but the game simply becomes less challenging and engaging over time.

The final challenge comes in the form of the only boss in the game, King Reinhardt III who can only be fought at range due to the chasm between you and him. Magic could work just fine, but upon getting the moonlight sword there’s a rather hidden power that the game doesn’t seem to tell you about which is both effective in this fight and also incredibly satisfying to pull off. Remember the point at the end of swing? Well, now you can press the magic button here to send a cutting wave of powerful magic charging forwards. Whatever it hits will be engulfed in fiery explosions, now that’s cool! So the gameplay has major flaws, yes, but I’d say it’s less frustrating and more fun than some of its contemporaries at the time. The early game is satisfying in a challenging way and the late game can be the same if you’re looking for a power trip. There’s also always that feeling that secrets are waiting to be discovered around every corner because in King’s Field, they actually are!

Audio

Audio in King’s Field is very simplistic for the most part, many enemies use the same few clips for attacking or when they die. The levelling up sound, as well as the menu button presses, are rudimentary bleeps and bloops. The stand out is the moody, plodding soundtrack which seems inspired by medieval Europe and conjures images of castles, courts and of course the seedy underbelly of betrayal and dark magic that this story tells. This is probably though the use of harpsichord, pipe organs and honking horns and trumpets.

It does get more bombastic and more modern towards the end of the game, with floor 4 and 5’s tracks having an almost slapped style thumping bassline and crazy harpsichord and synth runs giving off an almost ‘mad scientists' laboratory’ kind of vibe.

I was surprised (and creeped out) to discover that as you progress through the game, the music on some early floors changes to be a bit more intense. It would have been interesting to see that the enemies were changed to more powerful ones too, highlighting that this dark magic was gradually tainting the kingdom and adding more pacing to the game but unfortunately there is only the welcome addition of more varied music.

Visuals

Let’s cut to the chase, King’s Field is extremely dated in its very flat level design and this is not helped in the least by repetitive, low-resolution textures that sometimes have aliasing issues to boot. The decision to have a low ceiling almost everywhere limits the visuals even more, as the team could not create a tree for example that even looks remotely like a tree. Just big blocks, that don’t even have tree-like textures, but if the player is extremely lenient and tries to harness the imagination of a 90s kid, they just might be like “hey, yeah, that’s a tree.” There are a couple of areas that make use of either wide open ravines or winding staircases, a welcome dash of variety, but as soon as these short-lived areas are passed it’s back to low ceilings and winding corridors with the same repeated textures.

Some of the best looking areas are the eerie ones that make use of bold colours, the areas that have an almost otherworldly quality to them. That’s where these monster designs seem to look quite at home too. Though angular, monsters like the scorpion look incredibly fierce and the design of the final boss especially is very creepy like a lot of later From Software designs manage to achieve.

Comparable games at the time would be, of course, Elder Scrolls: Arena which was far more sprawling with large outdoor areas. System Shock with far more detailed and intricate level design and Doom II, a 3D game with 2D sprites that nevertheless has far nicer textures. It has to be said though that these are PC games and at the time King’s Field could not be compared to anything on the Playstation until perhaps Kileak in January 1995, a sci-fi FPS that has clear cut superiority over King’s Field in terms of lighting, colour and texture. It would only be a year however until King’s Field 2 would be released, featuring some much-needed improvements over the original.

King's Field Review | PS1

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