"The Daddy of Dark Souls" — the final King's Field... 20 years later

the daddy of dark souls and no i'm not talking about miyazaki even though obviously yes him too instead i'm talking about from software's kingsfield series specifically the last one to ever release kingsfield the ancient city from 2001 on the ps2 a first person dungeon crawler the soul series is sometimes called the spiritual successor of kingsfield and nowhere is that more apparent than in this final game so this video will not only look at those connections but it will also explore kingsfield the ancient city in its own right this is a very weird game that most people have not even heard of but it deserves to be talked about and looked at especially if you're a fan of modern fromsoft however the final kingsfield came out 20 years ago if only had some way of going back in time [Music] [Music] so [Music] now i want to give you the full kingsfield experience and part of that is the confusion you'll feel when someone says to you oh kingsfield 1 is actually king's field 2. so let me educate you real quick here's how the game's released in japan kingsfield 1 kingsfield 2 kingsville 3 kingsfield 4. easy perfect love it however this one never released outside of japan so instead we got kingsfield 1 kingsfield 2 and kingsfield 3 i mean kingsfield the ancient city for the rest of the video for the sake of consistency i'll be using these names not the japanese ones are we good cool the story for this game is pretty straightforward so let's just cover it at the start so basically there's this idol the idol of sorrow and it was stolen from the city the ancient city turns out shocker the idol was cursed and as a result the once prosperous kingdom of helladin has fallen into a state of decay and disease and corruption generally bad stuff so a sword master leads an expedition to return the idol of sorrow but it fails and the idol is presumed lost forever as the kingdom continues to decay but then miraculously a hooded figure brings the idol to you prince devian a prince of a neighboring kingdom to return the idol once and for all and that's the game you more or less struggling to single-handedly return a cursed idol that entire expedition already failed to do and with that out of the way we are finally in the game screen one here we go but first let's look at comparatively how fromsoft usually starts off their games in the souls series something that i think fromsoft typically does a good job at is having great welcome to the game moments these are memorable encounters right at the beginning of their games that not only hook you in but also set the tone for the rest of the experience demon souls you're killing some fairly easy enemies getting lulled into thinking hey this game isn't as hard people said and then boom you get sat on by the boss and die welcome to demon souls prepare to die dark souls all you have is a broken sword as you stumble out of your prison cell you're still learning the controls and then boom the asylum demon drops down from the roof welcome the dark souls prepare to die now what does kingsfield the ancient city do you're on screen one you see something on the ground to your right you take two steps and then the ground collapses as you fall into lava and die welcome to kingsfield [ __ ] you kingsfield 1 had something similar but at least there it felt kind of fair here it feels like fromsoft is just messing with me and that's because they are but i actually kind of love this because this death isn't a big deal and it teaches you that death is around every corner you need to be observant and the devs like to prank people so get used to it alright with our first death out of the way let's start talking about the game so while a lot of the experience takes place underground in dungeons and caves i think this brief introduction area on the surface is a smart one it's one thing to tell us that the world is suffering through a cutscene but it's another for us as the player to feel it things are not looking good this little girl's mom is sick and dying in bed this man's wife has gone missing and then he himself ends up dying while you search this well of healing has dried up monsters have seemingly overrun the area and everything is in a state of ruin all this together creates a familiar feeling to the souls games the atmosphere is heavy the key word that comes to mind is bleak this is a bleak world and you feel that before you ever set foot into the catacombs the people are struggling you could even call some of them crestfallen yep i bet you didn't think it went back that far but it sure does this is how you know it's a fromsoft game also worth pointing out is the lava in the surrounding areas this stuck in my mind as an interesting choice because i couldn't think of other games that began like that fire or lava areas are almost always near the middle or end of games so this subversion almost seems to communicate that we should prepare for a weird one so as i took all this in my first 30 minutes or so was spent running around with a club i found and some scraps of armor eventually i made my way into the mines nearby it wouldn't be kingsfield without some good old-fashioned slime combat in the mines i found a rock that allowed me to cure the sick mother from before and as a reward i got my first magic spell fireball this is the only time the game forces you to find and learn a spell to progress since you needed to burn a spider web in your path for the rest of the game it's on you to find those secret areas and hidden rooms if you want more magic and weapons speaking of misspell items there's actually a huge one right next to the house with the mother and daughter right here you find the clarity bracelet and for the rest of the game you should never take it off because it's just too good it quintuples the amount of mp you have for casting magic however i never felt like i had loads of magic to spare no it actually felt like this was what the base amount of mp should have been magic is borderline unusable without this item because of how little mp you'll have i think when i first got it i could only cast fireball once maybe twice before needing to restore it so yeah kind of a wild choice on fromsoft's part to make such an essential item like this hidden immiscible right at the very start part of me hates it but part of me loves it it's moments like these where it really does feel like the developers had a [ __ ] you attitude this is our game yes it's unfair deal with it or move on and with that say goodbye to the surface we are going underground and into the ancient city more than anything this is a descent and we eventually get pretty deep as a rule of thumb if you're going down you're probably going the right way however it's time to talk about the combat and gameplay i've put it off long enough this is a first person dungeon crawler now i don't want to repeat myself too much from my other kingsfield video but essentially this game is very similar to king's field one and just like that game there are two words that perfectly describe the combat clunky and slow this gets to the heart of what the kingsfield experience is like and is part of why i think most people might find this game unbearable at times you move slow and you turn even slower this is what it looks like to fully turn around if the idea of doing this yourself is upsetting this game is definitely not for you clearly i was able to tolerate this and it even grew me over time but i wouldn't blame anyone wanting to pass on the game for this alone back to the combat most encounters will go one of two ways the first is you attack you back up wait for your power meter to fill up again attack back up attack back up and i think you get the idea the second is you tokyo drift around them because as slow as you turn they turn even slower and you can abuse this to stay behind them while you swing away now not every encounter is the spare bones rooms with multiple enemies will force you to change things up by being clever and ranged magic can also break up the monotony of melee combat also there's just overall better ai than the last game some enemies will even attempt to block and dodge your attacks ironically you can't do either of those things but hey i guess they were saving that for the souls games so yeah basically the same as king's field one just a bit refined across the board especially when it comes to the quality of the animations you might be thinking hey combat seems kinda rough why do people like these games and i totally get that sentiment but for me at least it comes down to the joy of exploration and discovery that this game offers you never know it's going to be around each corner there are so many enemies to fight items to find and secrets to uncover for kingsfield one i said it was a first person metroidvania and while i did get a little bit of pushback from some people i'm going to stand by that description for this game too yes it's a bit of a stretch since it doesn't share all the characteristics that you might expect from a proper metroidvania but there's enough here that i think it fits there are locked doors you'll have to come back to later once you have the right keys there's backtracking there's navigating with the struggle of where do i go next and the entire world is interconnected exploration is what the king's field series is really about and i think it's at its best in this game i mentioned in the last video how i was disappointed by how many areas were simply too similar visually to each other but i can happily say that that's been more or less completely addressed here we have a wide range of environments color palettes and environmental details that expand beyond blank wall with a single texture i still would get lost at times but it no longer felt like the game's fault for failing to distinguish between areas back to my playthrough i eventually made my way to this giant underground tower but i want to give you guys the kingsfield experience so here's a brief summary of how i got there first i walked through some spider webs that made me turn even more slowly than normal then i found this guy who wanted to die and i was like yo i feel that so i killed him and took his key i used that key on a door to a giant spider boss which i beat by running around in a circle for five minutes then i explored then i found some undead soldiers but a little bug ran off whenever i killed them so i think we may have a ratatouille situation on our hands then i explored some more found some treasure got punched in the face by a giant golem finally i found an npc who sold me a bow but he gave me some weird advice about barrels being trapped obviously i didn't listen to him though because i'd found a lot of treasure in barrels at that point and he was probably just lying and after that i finally made it to the central tower i didn't realize this at the time but what's cool about this tower is that it acts as a sort of central hub for the rest of the game as you unlock more paths and loot back around to it now and then in fact i distinctly remember having this oh [ __ ] moment where i reached a lower level of the tower looked up and recognized that upper area as where i was hours before then i looked down and realized it went even lower still honestly just great level design somewhat related one of the big things that i think separates kingsfield ancient city from its predecessors is how it plays with verticality no longer is it just endless hallways we finally have all these large environments that explore the third dimension in interesting ways on the micro room to room scale as well as the macro world design skill there's a real sense of depth kind of reminds me of this one game from 2009 that also had lots of verticality hmm so after taking the sights to the tower i pushed on deeper into the dungeon and i mentioned this earlier but this is a great opportunity to really stress how this game's charm for me lies in the fact that you never know what's coming it could be something bizarre just as easily as it could be something beautiful and melancholy for example as i went just a bit further i stumbled across straight up xenomorphs from alien like sure why not cool but once i got over that shock i was rewarded with something even better up until now i had mostly just been going down deeper and deeper but then i found a set of stairs going up and they kept going up and up and up until finally i reached the end which was a forest on the surface i took a minute just to look around and take in the colors and the environmental details it felt like i was suddenly playing a different game a happier game you need brief pockets of color and humanity in games like this the soul series nails this as well the world is never entirely lost and you'll always find at least a few npcs hanging on to hope along with the natural beauty of the world alongside them king's field is an extremely lonely experience but moments like this do a lot to help alleviate that feeling at least a little now let's talk about fake walls quick refresher since i talked about it in the other king's field video fake or illusory walls have been a staple of the soul series for a while but it comes from the old school tradition that began in kingsfield in the kingsfield games the way they work is by you pressing the x or interact button while facing a wall and sometimes you're rewarded with the wall sliding away to reveal a hidden room in king's field 1 i talked about how tedious this process was due to the fact there were simply so many blank walls and the fake ones were placed seemingly at random so the end result was a lot of play time pressing my face against walls and mashing axe i'm happy to say that kingsfield the ancient city does a much better job at handling the side of the game in short there are just far fewer walls that could even have secrets behind them and that's due to the level design this game has a lot more rooms where parts of the wall would stick out or you'd be in some sort of cave with uneven or angled walls any wall that wasn't just flat and vertical would never have a secret behind it and realizing that it saved me a lot of time on top of that i found that most of the secrets felt less random than last time sometimes i would just look at a wall feel that something was off due to its placement and walk up to it to be rewarded with a hidden room and if that's not enough there are even two items that can significantly help with your secret finding endeavors the first is a full 3d map of the entire game and the second is a necklace that highlights any fake walls in your site ironically though i believe both of these are behind fake walls themselves so there's a good chance you'll never find them if you're already struggling you might be thinking this sort of help goes too far in trivializing all the secrets but i actually think it's fine because you get them right near the end of the game anyway so it's more just a tool for the completionists out there alright that's enough about walls let's talk about the traps here remember when i said exploration was the focus of this game well all the traps you have to deal with are a close second there are just so many fun ideas here oh look there's a skeleton ringing a bell i wonder what that does oh my god no there's also this one where you open a chest it poisons you and then the treasure inside is just an antidote for that poison stuff like this is honestly just funny as hell my personal favorite is how this entire room drops out from under you and you fall into piranha infested water real classic stuff here side note this trap takes place in what is basically the alpha version of sense fortress right down to the snake nearby so many areas in this game are punctuated by these little memorable encounters where you feel the devs are just messing with you but in a fun way there were traps in kingsfield one but here i really feel like fromsoft made it a priority and part of the identity of the game itself it really is a shame we never got another kingsfield because i would have loved to see how they cranked up the nonsense even more moving on i can't believe it's taken me this long to mention but we gotta talk about the glue that holds everything together the vibes or more specifically the music it's hard to describe but king's field music has a very distinctive feel to it and it definitely enhances the mysterious mood of the game you'll be walking along in the dark it's silent except for your footsteps and then out of the darkness you hear it [Music] this is kingsfield this is what it's about exploring old dungeons juking skeletons and having music like this blast the whole time it really is a unique experience speaking of things i should have mentioned by now this game as well as kingsfield 1 has no loading screens you can play it start to finish without ever being taken out of the game not only is this worth mentioning for the technical achievement that it is especially the first one in 1995 but it's also notable because there aren't even cut scenes after the intro either that means that you're always in control and the only thing that really stops the action is talking to npcs or pausing the game think about how this affects the process of coming across visual spectacles or bosses there's something so odd and low-key about the feeling of wandering into a boss room and then you just fight them right away bosses aren't events like they might be in other games here it's just another guy to kill and this is probably giving fromsoft a bit too much credit but this does make the entire experience feel a bit more grounded than it might have been otherwise you really are just a dude wandering around the dungeon and both your deaths and victories aren't framed as big deals it's just another moment in the ancient city so this game is pretty cool and it's not just because it has nice area it's actually because this area contains big ice guys that run up and punch you and this is good as i explored this area i found a lot of frozen things including this dwarf blacksmith i pressed on until i reached a lava area nearby where i got to fight some fire pokemon and then i reached a giant demon boss i attacked him for a bit he died and then i went back to the ice zone to see that it was now all unfrozen including our blacksmith friend who returned back to his home so with that let's talk about item durability long story short it doesn't really matter it goes down over time but you find new gear so frequently that it's almost a complete non-issue in fact i didn't even notice it was a mechanic until about halfway through the game whenever you find a new weapon or piece of armor 9 times out of 10 it's just a straight upgrade so why bother repairing however if you do want to repair the game has an interesting idea for handling that our blacksmith here can repair any weapon or piece of armor this is free to do but you have to wait in real time anywhere from 4 to 10 minutes for your gear to get fixed so you drop it off and then your options are to wait in the room or come back later this is strange and seemingly pointless but honestly it's perfectly on brand for kingsfield i've just come to expect weird quirky things like this as normal however before we move on i do have to note that you can actually repair multiple pieces of gear at once in fact you could repair your entire inventory in one go if you wanted to now given this mechanic of waiting in real time i think it's fair to assume that this process could take hours after all if you have 20 swords and they each take five minutes to repair it seems like you'd be waiting 100 minutes right well actually they all repair at the same time so in that example i just gave it would only take five minutes for all of your items to be repaired thus i'm proposing the lore theory that the blacksmith is just a dick if i have to wait the same amount of time for one sword versus 20 swords being repaired that must mean that he has the ability to repair weapons instantly or near instantly but instead he chooses to hold on to them and make me wait i'm open to lore feedback but i think this is a pretty solid theory let me know in the same way that durability is interesting idea on paper that ultimately doesn't really affect the game let's talk about two more weapon level and magic level so every individual weapon and magic spell has a level associated with it everything starts at level one and as you use it it goes up to level three with weapons getting one to level 3 not only increases its damage but also gives you a special magic attack and yes this even includes your fists with magic it's the same basic idea leveling up attack spells increases their damage and leveling up utility spells increases their potency but it actually even goes a step further with spells sometimes getting bigger having a different animation or even gaining new abilities altogether for example at level 3 my healing spell gave me the ability to slow down enemies with melee attacks for a few seconds after using it now this all sounds awesome and it is but the problem is that you'll never see these unless you really go out of your way to grinds like i mentioned earlier i found new gear often so it was rare if i even made it to level 2 let alone level 3 with a weapon and the same was true for spells as they were also found fairly often and new spells were almost always better than old ones there's a pretty steady power increase for each new thing he finds these are great ideas and i really appreciate all the effort that went to making three different versions of each spell but it's a little confusing how much of a non-factor it is when playing the game normally the only spell i got to level 3 naturally was my healing spell to give some more perspective on how bad the numbers are i had this meteor spell that i really liked so i wanted to see how long it would take to max out i found a boss near the end of the game that endlessly summoned skeletons so it seemed like the perfect place to just grind it out i started at 90 000 experience and i ended with 123 000. each skeleton was worth only 100 exp so yeah you can do the math it took a pretty long time was it worth it probably not uh you know since the game was essentially over at that point but it does look pretty cool alright before we get to the final section i wanted to go over a few lingering observations and thoughts that i had first just like kingsfield 1 teleporting exists in this game but it's a little different you still place these colored guide stones into statues that act as teleport locations but this time you can only teleport when standing on these magic circles on the ground i like this change because it slightly increases the tension during moments where you might have otherwise just teleported away next thing check out this flooded city i was sort of blown away by this whole area and how closely it mirrors new londo it even has the backstory of people flooding it on purpose to try and contain some great evil and darkness pretty neat up next i really love how there are all these hidden treasures in the environment that reward attentiveness like maybe you look up notice something stuck to the ceiling and shoot it down or maybe you see a magic crystal stuck in a spider web so you have to burn it down and then figure out where it fell down to good stuff there are tons of little secrets like this and i just think they're so much fun and lastly yes this game does have a swamp area that poisons you so we finally get to see the fromsoft we know and love starting to take shape and with that it is finally time to talk about how to get to the end of the game step one as part of this big snake temple we find the corpse of the leader of the expedition from the beginning of the game and next to him is the lawful blade we'll take this for later step two we find all four keys to unlock the chests in the forest and then open them to receive four black eyes step three we take those eyes to a big door behind the king's throne and they open it up for us step four we enter go up a long flight of stairs and find a magic crystal surrounded by ancient stone golems and roots then the lawful blade floats out of our inventory plunges into the crystal and transforms into the famous moonlight sword yes that moonlight sword this sword also gets an absurd orbital strike magic attack which is very fun before we tackle the final boss though the last thing we need to do is backtrack and find all the pieces of mew's armor which were floating inside these energy orbs around the map this isn't necessary but it's the best armor in the game so why not with the moonlight sword we can finally break through and get them all and with that we can march on over to the final area in the deepest part of the dungeon i placed the idol of sorrow on the pedestal and then so yeah we go even deeper this entire area is gross and trippy it's like we're inside of some giant monster with the floor walls and ceiling all pulsating and fleshy with monsters coming out and walking around i got heavy reverse osmosis jones vibes which coincidentally came out the same year as this game just a few months before there are enemies everywhere it's a mess there's even dragons just flying around which i guess was the perfect time for me to pull out my bow with homing arrows but i finally made my way to this guy half melted into a throne of dark material at the heart of it all three hits from the moonlight greatsword he turns to stone crumbles away and that's it we beat the game so if you've been curious about kingsfield and you think you can put up with all the clunkiness and all the jank kingsfield the ancient city is probably the best place to start it really is an experience and a video like this can only go so far in conveying what that experience feels like it's more than the sum of its parts and fans are still talking about it to this day for a reason will fromsoft ever return to this series honestly not a chance it's just too niche for how big they are these days and the original people who worked on the game have moved on long ago i think there's something special here and while it's a shame we'll never see fromsoft's attempt at another entry that doesn't mean that they're the only ones who can make it work i'm very curious to see another developer's attempt at modernizing the series without straying too far from the idiosyncrasies that make it special yes this game is very interesting as a way of connecting the dots between fromsoft then and now but it's also just a wild game in its own right and i hope i've done an okay job at sharing why i think it's special and still worth looking at thanks for watching [Music] this video has an interesting sponsor it's wizards of the coast which if you didn't know is the company that owns dungeons and dragons they have a new game coming out today and it's an online co-op hack and slash looter minus the shooter at first i was wondering why they reached out to me but then i saw the game had a roll button and it all made sense so here was my experience playing with a few friends nice nice nice you can see that time for my super move [Music] time for my super move that always wins are you going to spam that it's my ultimate come on man come on jump up jump [Laughter] [Music] i think we need to increase the difficulty substantially [Music] keep flipping them i hope you like breakfast dude yeah you're making pancakes so yeah if you've got a couple friends and want to button-ash your way through some goblins click on the link in the description and check out dark alliance pine how do you get a dnd player to go out with you i don't know you roll a persuasion check okay is that right he was right wasn't it was that right no no wait really wrong do you roll initiative you asked them for a d8 oh

Channel: Iron Pineapple

Views: 2,302,097

Keywords: dark souls, iron pineapple, king's field, souls like, soulslike, review, guide, funny, gameplay, video essay, king's field 4, king's field the ancient city

Id: VuQGvY5VOeo

Length: 24min 17sec (1457 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 23 2021