From Software 'n such

[Sumez]

Got to play a ton of BacktracKing's Field 3 yesterday.
Just escaped the Passage of Death, almost in one piece. So much bullshit in that entire place, and the only interesting thing I made it out with was an Orladin's Pic, looted from some random skeleton. Hopefully the royal key is useful later on, too, or that place is just one big troll.
I loved it though, really cool area with an intense sense of danger, even if most of it is grossly unfair. Too bad I can't say the same thing for most of the rest of the game.

It's like they took whoever designed the world map of King's Field II, the best part of the entire game, and decided to fire them (only to be rehired in time for Dark Souls 1). Another approach might be that this game was already in development when KF2 was released, because several other aspects feel like such a big step back that it can't really be excused, and overall this game feels less like a precursor to the Souls games than its immediate prequel did.

Or maybe they just really wanted that feeling of travelling a much more vast area, and therefore made an intentional effort of only connecting the areas serially. But if that was their intent, maybe they shouldn't have made so many constant incentives to backtrack the entire game almost constantly. Especially going through those long, winding loading zones every singly time gets really tiring. I really loved in KF2 how loading between areas was almost transparent, but in this one the zones are much longer, traversed much more often, and judging by the relatively short loading time when using a teleport item, they are mostly redundant, too.

It turns out the key drop I mentioned in a post earlier wasn't random. In fact, it seems the game decided to let certain specifically picked casual enemies (basically zakos) occasionally drop extremely important items here and there, from keys to dragon crystals. I found four crystal flasks in the game so far, and two of them were from seemingly non-assuming enemies just roaming the lands.
I'm not sure I like this mechanic. On one hand I love possibility of finding great stuff anywhere, but on the other hand I'm not a fan of the pressure to murder absolutely everything, hoping I didn't miss something important somewhere. Meanwhile, super well hidden treasures and locked chests are usually completely useless. So far I found two really well hidden pairs of boots which are both plainly inferior to another pair that you get earlier in the game, which are actually mandatory to even progress past that point.
Of course, it's not like I don't keep looking for every treasure anyway. There are sooo many locked chests that I can't open yet, that I've started taking pictures of all of their locations, in preparation for the next big backtrack. I don't know if From thought that kind of methodical backtracking is good game design, but if the Palace of Wind is any indication, they apparently do. Dear lord.

At one point I was finding so many locked chests that I had to look up a guide and see if I missed the silver key. Turned out I did, and it was hidden in some really obscure place I don't know how I would have found. In the game's defense though, I did find another silver key shortly after, so apparently there are multiple ways to get it. Besides, it also turned out the key opens pretty much none of the chests I had come across anyway.

The biggest offense of the overall design though, is the linear way you are guided throughout the game, rarely rewarding any kind of exploration. It's the direct opposite of the completely open ended and mostly optional exploration of the previous game. Even worse, it has the audacity to make use of invisible event triggers.
I was completely stuck thrice in the same area because I had no idea what to do to progress through the next obscure bottleneck.
First was getting the blood herb to heal the kid, which was apparently required to move forward. It's in no way obvious that you can move around that cliff to a hidden area back there. Especially considering that even after having to find a video to show me where it was, I still managed to fall down twice, feeling like it was an area I wasn't even supposed to be able to walk.
Second, getting to the cave of Shudom you apparently have to talk to some guy who will build a bridge for you. First time I met him he was being very hostile and mentioned the kid needing help. So after helping the kid I visited him again, and he was now more friendly. However, for him to lend his help (something the game does nothing to hint that you need) you have to first clear the Palace of Wind and talk to him again. A completely unrelated area!
None of the guides I could find even made any mention of having to do this, so I was really stuck here for a while, even after watching videos of people getting ahead, across a bridge that I had no idea where came from.
And then after beating the cave of Shudom, what do you do? Oh you need to go to the guy who apparently claims to be prince Lyle (ie. supposedly the player character). So how does that plot point resolve? Oh, it's never mentioned again, he just "randomly" moved out of the way while you were doing other stuff, and now you can move to the area he was blocking. Again, the game does nothing to hint at this. Can you kill the guy to sequence break this part? Of course not, he just happens to be immortal. Come on From, show a bit of spunk here.

Following that though, I've fortunately had no more bullshit of that kind, and after reaching Path of Thieves/Robbers (they can't make up their mind), the game even opens up a bit, offering three different regions to progress to. Of course, only one region really matters in order to progress, but it's still a big improvement. Most of the areas from that point on aren't as horrible either, and at this point I'm almost enjoying the game a bit.
They try to make up for the lack of interconnected world design with a larger amount of variation in the areas that you visit, and it almost works. There is definitely a huge difference between large open fields and winding corridors full of traps. Overall I like some areas a lot more than others, and even though the game is a huge drop in quality over its predecessor, I'm intrigued enough to see it to its end.
It truly is Dark Souls 2. In fact, I'm kind of wondering if From Software intentionally designed DS2 to feel like a King's Field 3 to DkS1's King's Field 2.

[Immryr]

today i tried to play the copy of kuri kuri mix i bought a while ago and it didn't load :[

[Sumez]

Got some more play time today... spent around half of it on even more backtracking as I found out how to get the magician's key. Not my idea of a fun time.
Made some more progress after that though. The game is really ramping up here near the end, and pulls off the atmosphere extremely well.
One positive thing I'll say the game does, is one of my favourite video game tropes - we basically start out saying you need to go to this sealed off castle and defeat the corrupted king. So you spend the entire game thinking about that goal, and when you finally get there, you really feel the rush of aproaching your destiny, like standing at the foot of the stairs leading up to Dracula's gravity-defying annex.

That said, it feels like I'm missing something really important... but this is something I'm trying not to get spoiled.

[Necronopticous]

Sword magic? Do elaborate, I don't think i've heard of this. Is it in the sequel, too?

Yeah, sword magic is in both King's Field 2 and 3. I'm not sure on the others yet. It is only possible with certain weapons (usually magical/artifact style weapons) and there are actually two different forms:

1) The weaker variation is achieved by pressing triangle at the exact right timing during your attack animation. The timing is pretty tight, and seems to only be a couple of frames. Due to that, I never found this type to be too useful in an actual combat scenario. Uses less MP.

2) The stronger variation is achieved by quickly pressing X -> Square -> Triangle. I found this type of sword magic to be a lot more useful. The input is a lot easier to consistently execute, and it generally adds homing capability or some other similar aspect that makes it more worthwhile. Uses more MP.

In King's Field 2 I believe the ability to use sword magic is based entirely on your magic stat. I think you unlock the first variation at one threshold, and then the second variation at a higher threshold. By the time I learned of it near the end of the game I was already able to use both. As far as I know there is no indication in the game whatsoever that you've unlocked these abilities, or how to use them, so I guess you're just meant to possibly figure it out accidentally, or buy the strategy guide?

In King's Field 3 they decided to tie the ability to use sword magic to optional quest triggers, which is cool, but they still don't tell you what sword magic is or how to use it, so it's possibly even more confusing. I think the screen flashed maybe? I naturally looked in my inventory to see if I'd gained an item and just shrugged it off until I learned what had happened on the Internet later.

Got to play a ton of BacktracKing's Field 3 yesterday.

I'm really enjoying reading all of your updates. It seems like you & I had a really similar experience with this game. There's still so much I want to say about it but it's hard to find the time to put my thoughts down in any kind of coherent way, and I also sort of want to see the series all the way through before I make up my mind about certain aspects.

That said, I started King's Field IV this weekend.

Now, you may be wondering what happened with Forever Kingdom, and I will tell you: it defeated me. My first hour with it left me really sour. I simply could not fathom how they departed from Evergrace in April 2000, where the bar was so unfathomably low there was seemingly nowhere to go but up, and somehow arrived at a worse video game in June 2001. I was so turned off and offended by that first hour that I decided to take a break from this whole damn thing for the rest of last week. I had some more laughs over Cookie & Cream with a friend over the weekend (we cleared it) and thought my head was in a better place to get back into Forever Kingdom & see it through, so I poured myself a scotch and gave it one more go.

I managed to put in another 2 hours or so before I found myself unable to continue. This thing is godawful. Unlike Evergrace, which at least understood that it couldn't reasonably expect much from the player given the disastrous mechanics, Forever Kingdom hits a painful difficulty spike in the Mist Shrine. They had the gall to give your three characters a single shared life bar even though two of them are (poorly) AI controlled at all times. What this means is that you're basically forced to grind out upgraded equipment for all three members so that the random damage you might occasionally take when an AI-controlled character gets hit is manageable. The gameplay is a laggy chaotic incomprehensible mess, and I could not convince myself to put up with it for the time it would take to do that. I tried to go without, which led to death 10-15 minutes after a couple of saves and that was that. Avoid at all fucking costs.

[Sumez]

Speaking of artifact weapons, I'm finding so many cool weapons along the way, and rarely get to use any of them, because my Excellector keeps being upgraded to the point where it's the superior all-round weapon, while still being very fast with a decent reach. I've been using it non-stop since it reached level 2.
Hell, even Seath's Sword which I found yesterday didn't hold up to a level 3 Excellector, except maybe having a slight edge over enemies weak to slashing damage (and who knows who those are)

[Marc]

God, I'd forgotten what assholes those two archers on Anor Londo are.

[Necronopticous]

How can I make King's Field IV last forever?

[Sumez]

How can I make King's Field IV last forever?

Man I'm looking forwards to that one. So many people has it as their favourite, and I need something to heal the wounds after King's Field 3. Now that game does last forever.

In fact, I was actually on what I expect to be the last floor of the castle (providing it doesn't pull some 11th hour cyberspace funk like the previous game did, which would actually be cool), but feeling that I was approaching the corrupted king, and still didn't have the third of Ichrius' items yet, I was starting to get the idea that it probably wasn't to be found around here, so between sessions I suddenly remembered that closed off gate in the snow fields.

So I warped out and went there, and yeah, of course you can just open it now, due to yet another invisible event trigger, I'm guessing probably related to your big tiddy elf gf leaving the inn in the area. I guess that makes it less obscure, but on the other hand this door was actually created with something that looks like a key slot which obviously threw me off. Turns out you don't need a key, great job Fromsoft.
This new area also gave me a fifth point in wisdom, which let me know what the Fu-Jin boots actually do... damn, I could have used that knowledge a lot earlier! Makes the game a lot less of a bother to play.

Following a sad scene, I now had all three mcguffins and swiftly returned to Leon (the only way to warp back to the beginning - suicide), only to be forced to faff around in the starting area for what felt like eternity. Of course sleeping at the inn there doesn't hurry up the process. With my new key and at last the ability to warp anywhere (no more backtracking through the passage of death, finally), I went back to the elf temple cliffs whatevers, and got stuck again. I'd already explored the area thoroughly, and couldn't find any place to use the key. So once again I had to use a guide - turns out you need to jump out from a cliff to land on another across a gap. But here's the thing - I had already tried this previously and died from it!

Eventually this lead to several new huge areas to explore indepth, which leads me to the core of the issue with KF3...
One of the things I keep repeating about KF2 that made me like it so much, is how ridiculously rewarding exploration is! Almost every treasure or new area you find really makes it feel like you've made a ton of overall progress. In KF3 you usually just get a magic crystal or an orladin's pic at best (an item I've now amassed a bunch of, and have no idea what to use for aside from the original two places required to progress), and exploring an area fully feels like something I do just because "I have to do it", rather than because I'm excited about what I will find. This is a really essential difference between the two games.

Hell, at the end of the day this huge detour which I spent the entirety of yesterday's play session on, only netted me a new full armor set, which I felt bad for taking considering I'm already ridiculously overpowered at this point, and have been for a while.

[Sumez]

[BIL]

Unbelievable, the amount of amusement even hovering around the edges of this dev. That's prose worthy of Mark Johnson.

[Sumez]

Speaking of which...

[BIL]

[Necronopticous]

Fun fact: Speaking of Mark Johnson, I bought my copy of Evergrace and the King's Field 2 Official Map Book from the man, himself!

This is his eBay store: https://www.ebay.com/sch/kiddogames/m.h ... pg=&_from=

[BIL]

Nice, I'd just looked up that he was at Agetec back in the day. Clearly a refined chap.

[Sumez]

This is his eBay store: https://www.ebay.com/sch/kiddogames/m.h ... pg=&_from=

Now that's some insane shipping costs.
How did you know that was him?

I didn't realise he was a real person until I saw the credits. Makes me wonder who Michael Hansen is, I was really amused to stumble upon that name.

[Necronopticous]

How did you know that was him?

I noticed the PayPal recipient email address for the copy of Evergrace I bought was Mark@Agetec.com. Seems like he has lots of random Agetec published games/merch laying around these days.

[Sumez]

I have no idea what Agetec is, as it seems to be an entirely American thing - I never saw their logo before importing Shadow Tower. But as far as I can tell it was a subsidiary of ASCII - I bet there's a good chance Mark Johnson was a/the driving force behind it. Would be kind of interesting to scoop up the guy for an interview. He seems to be pretty central in bringing From Software to the west.

EDIT: Found one here. Not too interesting though.

[BIL]

They brought lots of good stuff to NTSCU. R-Type Delta, Metal Slug X, Strikers 1945 II (not the greatest ports, those two, but very welcome at the time), the apotheosis of topdown detonation that is Silent Bomber, a whole raft of SNK fighters... plus the From stuff, of course. Probably more I'm forgetting too. One of those smaller labels I was always fond of seeing.

edit: actually fuck my own face, SB was Bandai. Been ages since I looked at my old US copy. Gone full NTSCJ these days, outside of really desperate measures. Like NTSCJ Silent Hill and its censored demon children, what the fuck!

edit: Seems PAL Metal Slug X was theirs too, at least. No idea otherwise though, I was in Burgerville when this all went down.

[Sumez]

Seath and King's Field 3 are now down. Not a lot more to say about the game that I haven't already gone through. Overall, there's a lot of nice stuff to it, but the flaws are simply very glaring, despite the overall nicer presentation. The game suffers a lot less from the PlayStation's texture warping, and it never slows down -that- much.

That said, despite the larger variation in environments, the game has a much more two dimensional feeling to it. Aside from the lack of rooms over rooms, elevation is pretty much exclusively used to provide one-way passages, which feels like a really weird departure from the prequel's creative use of 3D space in the way both levels and puzzles were constructed (very reminiscent of the Souls series!). This is definitely another thing that makes it feel like it was developed alongside KF2 rather than following it. Or maybe it's simply a caveat of the better performing 3D engine?

NOW I need you guys' help with what game to play next! Should I move straight to King's Field IV, or go through Shadow Tower (and possibly Eternal Ring) first to follow the chronological evolution of From Software?

On one hand I bought Shadow Tower nine years ago immediately after trying Demon's Souls, hungry for anything that was even remotely like it. I've been itching to play it ever since, but never found the patience to delve into it, so now feels like the time. I'm also a little scared of burning out on the "formula" before reaching KF4 though.
Because on the other hand, it would be really cool to wrap up the King's Field series before moving on to the other off-shoots. And a lot of people drop KF4 as their clear favourite in the series, so saying that I'm really looking forward to getting started with it would be an understatement.

Such a difficult choice

[Necronopticous]

Shadow Tower is probably my favorite overall experience yet, so I urge you not to skip it. That said, it seems a very divisive game for fans of King's Field and it's not hard to see why. I would definitely love to hear your take on it.

[Sumez]

That's definitely a point it its favor then!

After getting more insight into the series (all of them) it definitely started coming off as more divisive to me than I'd previously thought. For some reason I used to think it was generally the most well liked one, but a lot of people actually seem to hate it. Then again, King's Field suffers from the same treatment.
It's probably a very different game, but if it's even slightly like its sequel, Abyss, there's a chance I will like it a lot. That game is simply brimming with incredible atmosphere!

Time to get a new squared notebood and bring back the cartography skills!

[Sumez]

Apparently the reason Shadow Tower Abyss was never released in English was entirely due to Sony/SCEA rejecting the game:

https://archive.is/20070812211718/http: ... 04/2/18-70

Man that hurts so much to read. According to our pal Mark Johnson, a localization was actually completed. I wonder if the currently available fantranslation is based on that text in any way?

I already have the translation loaded up on a harddrive, ready to run via FreeMcBoot - that game was the reason I made one originally back in the days. Really looking forward to revisiting that game - but I'm taking the long road, of course

[Udderdude]

I just got Dork Souls III "you should have bought this ages ago" edition w/ DLC included. What am I in for?

[Ed Oscuro]

Apparently the reason Shadow Tower Abyss was never released in English was entirely due to Sony/SCEA rejecting the game:

Good thing for competition. I don't know the exact timing but wasn't Metal Wolf Chaos developed close in hand with Microsoft Japan partly in response to this? STA surely would have been a niche product but that decision to take the risk is properly up to From and Agetec, not fuckin' SCEA.

[Square_Air]

I just got Dork Souls III "you should have bought this ages ago" edition w/ DLC included. What am I in for?

Fast souls. Much faster than 1&2, but not as fast as Bloodborne. There's less forgettable areas than 2, the world design isn't as good as DS1, but the level design is (mostly) very good. Tons of references to DS1 as well. Since poise no longer really exist, R1 spam is better than ever. I found it a bit easier than DS1 & SOTFS, but some of that's because it was the last souls game I played. L2 while 2 handing your weapon lets you use weapon arts, you can allot flasks to either heal HP or Mana, and crafting is more convenient than ever. It's a pretty good game. Stab grandma in the castle if you're feeling brave and want a late game boss to appear at the beginning of the game.

[Sumez]

Good thing for competition. I don't know the exact timing but wasn't Metal Wolf Chaos developed close in hand with Microsoft Japan partly in response to this? STA surely would have been a niche product but that decision to take the risk is properly up to From and Agetec, not fuckin' SCEA.

Considering all the other stuff the PS2 got from FromSoft, it's insane that STA of all things god canned though. It's way, way more approachable than their standard at the time.

I just got Dork Souls III "you should have bought this ages ago" edition w/ DLC included. What am I in for?

A lot of doors that only open from the other side.

Aside from that, Square_Air is on point. It's a solid, well done Souls game without major issues like DS2, but still lacking some of the biggest qualities (world design) from DS1. It feels more comparable to Bloodborne in its structure, but with more varied locales.

[Sumez]

Really liking Shadow Tower so far.
It's definitely more of an acquired taste than King's Field, with its cramped, confusing navigation and repetitive gameplay. The main event here is obviously the huge, varied bestiary, constantly throwing new monsters at you, and I'm enjoying that aspect.

The overall feel and presentation, compared to the KF games, got a lot more smooth over the two years that went between them. The last two games I played had me reminded how shitty PS1 3D is, but this one almost looks good. Enemies have more weight to their movements, rock walls look like rock walls, and a lot of little details litter the scenery. Performance is good as long as you aren't fighting three or more enemies at the same time.
Draw distance is terribly short, but it's obviously by design as you can get several inventory items to remedy that, making it much easier to orient yourself. I haven't been using any of them (without reloading) though, as they are surprisingly rare, and I bet From got one of those obligatory super-dark areas up in their sleeve.

So far almost every individual area seems more or less optional, but a few events along the way makes them feel relevant. I'm kind of worried that I may easily end up completely missing some areas along the way, but I'm trying to approach it methodically, mapping out everything as I go.
Quickly finished the suspiciously short Human World, and moved on to the comparably huge Earth World where I finished a (easily missable) boss fight of sorts yesterday. Next up I seem to be able to go straight to the Water World, but it would definitely be more apt to stop by Fire World on the way.

[Necronopticous]

Have you figured out how SP works yet?

[Sumez]

Not at all. All I know is that every time I defeat an enemy, my stats increase slightly. I find the occasional SP item and so far I've put most of it into strength, with a bit into speed and purity, as well.

The manual is pretty much required. I just skimmed through it originally to find out how to switch weapon set, but i had to read it again to realise that I'd had the ability to cast magic for a while (which almost makes the game too easy)

[Necronopticous]

Check the bestiary. Every enemy gives you points in at least one stat, and it tells you exactly which they are. Every encounter is worthwhile, and there is a finite amount of enemies (and thus SP) in the game. You are correct to dump soul pods into strength. HP is very, very valuable as I’m sure you are already aware, and boosting your max HP high early on can give you access to great pieces of gear that you find broken to begin with.