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Played it for about 5 minutes

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: June 05, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I played this game for about 5 minutes before deciding never to touch it again.

It starts out with the usual cheesy voice-over cutscene. Ok, no problem, most RPG games have that same element. Then you're thrust into the game itself. The first thing you notice is the lack of quality "finishing touches", the menus are awkward, the highlighting hard to discern. Movement is kind of clunky; it's maybe at the level it was at 5 years ago with games like the original DOOM.

From there it gets ridiculous. To pick something up or talk to someone sitting on the ground, you can't just walk up to it/them and hit the action button. You have to actually use keys to look down at it/them and then hit the action button. That gets old really fast.

To cap it all off, when you attack something, an extremely unrealistic arm swings half-heartedly down the right-hand side of the screen. It's straight out of the days of Apple II and Commodore 64 games. I couldn't believe it, thinking I'd never see that on a powerful machine like the PS2.

Bottom-line, there are numerous infinitely-better *PS1* RPG games (let alone PS2) that you could get (for a lot less money) than this one.

DO NOT PLAY

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 15
Date: April 09, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This is the most tedious game I have ever played, and I am an ardent RPG fan. Only for serious dungeon crawlers.

what were they thinking!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 7
Date: July 09, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I too played this game for all of ten minutes. The game play is FAR TOO SLOW AND AWKWARD. The game style is similar to doom but worse. Since I couldn't force myself to play it any longer, I cannot offer much advice beyond the opening scenes.

Trust me, don't waste your time. If by chance you ignore my comments and do play the game, please do other gammers a favor and offer your honest eval. I'll bet it isn't very kind either.

Quite possibly the worst game in the world!!!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 21
Date: April 16, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This game is terrible! you move way to slow, your attacks don't even kill beginning monsters, and the graphics look like a playstation one game.
Don't even rent it it is terrible, but then again so were the other king's field games.

i'm glad it isnt just me!

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 4
Date: July 24, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I'm glad that i am not the only one that thought this game .... I got board after 15 minutes. What a waste of [money]! Oh well, that will teach me not to buy games before I rent them. I suggest that everyone should learn from my mistake, and rent first!

Pleasantly surprised---but it's not for everyone.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 17 / 20
Date: April 29, 2002
Author: Amazon User

This game appeals to a rather limited audience. King's Field is focused on atmosphere, setting, and a sense of deep exploration. You navigate spooky, abandoned environments, combat skeletons and slimes, find secret passages with treasure chests inside, and solve puzzles. The settings show a lot of variety, ranging from mines to graveyards to Gothic castles to water-filled passages.

Now I grew up on some very old games: a roguelike called "DND" on an old DEC microcomputer, and later on, the licensed Dungeons and Dragons games on Intellivision. That style of game---slow, methodical, collecting weapons and power-ups as you proceed through ancient crypts and so on---is not as popular as it once was, but if it appeals to you, you'd do well to try out this old-fashioned dungeon crawl.

Oh, and I do mean crawl. One problem is that your movement speed is rather slow, and fights can proceed at a snail's pace until you're used to the stiff controls. But these are minor flaws in a game with zillions of secrets to find, tons of items and enemies, and evocative, atmospheric locales.
Serious (old-school!) role-playing fans only---NO cutscenes here.

Kings Field: The Ancient City - A second look

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: March 02, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I have submitted reviews for the first two Kings Field titles. And as a fan of the series, I now tend to look over the fine points of the games and consider them more fairly. This third game in the series (fourth, technically) is the most graphically impressive of the three thus far. The developers took more time in creating enemies that seem almost flawless as they move. I notice VERY LITTLE block-structure when the creatures move about (a.k.a. seeing the joints where arms, lets, torsos, ect. move and connect to each other) if at all. The menue system has undergone just a few more fine-tunes to make it eaiser and still keeping the same controller interface. Picking up this title after playing KF and KF2 will feel like wearing a pair of old shoes with a brilliant new shine. It's comfortable and reliable, but works better. I esspecially like the finer detail in the NPC's you meet. Yes they still have somewhat featurless faces, though you can eaisly see, comparing it to KF and KF2, that there is MUCH more detail. They almost look real! I like this flavor a lot, as it give you more of an impression that you're dealing with real people.
There are some aspects that do take away from the overall preformance of the game and I'll try and mention them, as I have encountered.
First, when looking back at KF and KF2, all the enimies had limmits to how far they "strayed" from their generated positions. This gives the game a nice feel of localization, and how creatures seem to have a "territory". Yet in KF IV, they added a feature which seems nicer to look at but makes the game much eaiser, and that is: When a creature reaches the limmit of its distance, in KF IV, it turns around and walks back some. If you're standing out of its traveling distance, it seems to keep walking in circles. KF, and KF 2 had the creatures simple walk in place but not move, yet they still continued to face you. Having them walk around and way form you makes it very easy to get a few "sucker punches" in before backing away and waiting to repeat it. It would have been better if the creatures would simply stop walking, and perhaps make jestures to "goad" you to come back and fight. It does look nice when they keep walking, but it's just too cheesy in my eyes and too cheap in the player's favor.
I do enjoy the wepon system, having levels from 1 - 3 in proficency, but this could have been better for a few reasons too:
If you get one longsword upto level 3, you would think that all longswords of the same name would be at 3rd level.. but they aren't.. only the one you used is that that state. This isn't very realistic as I see it. They also added a "durability" feature, which slowly deteriorates your armor/weapon values. I do not think this should have been added, as it's very annoying to suddenly realize your weapon is down to 50 durability and is taking three times as many hits to slaughter the enemies as it had only an hour ago. Yes you can repair them at no cost ^_^ but still, it's frustrating.
Magic hasn't changed much, but instead of each field going up in levels, as in KF2, thus giving you more spells to choose from as you learn more, KF IV lets you learn new spells only if you find the crystals that house them... which I like better, actually, as it makes sense that you receive enlightenment only after you're taught, rather then suddenly become "aware". To compensate for this, each spell can evolve two times (level 3), making it cost more to cast *merf* but also have more and longer lasting effects, becomming more powerful. I like this a lot, as the first fireball spell you find can still be usfull later in gameplay, rather then having the player give up certian weaker spells for more powerful ones, as in KF and KF 2.
Leveling up, getting physical and magical power all work the same as I see it. Use magic a lot, and magic power increases, and the same with using weapons to increase physical strength. There are some places in the game where you can continually fight, especially in places that have high creature regeneration rate. This can be very helpful in building up strenght and magic if you need to, but too, can be highly exploitable. A place that has lots of creatures that regenerate eaisly can be used even at very high levels to increast magic and wepons, as well as phisical/magical power. It would have been so much nicer if, as the stronger you became, the less expeirence certian monsters of lower calibur gave you (towards weapon/spell & physical/magical power, not actual experience). Say... 1/10 of an expierence point for wepon or spell epxerience if you dwarf the enemie by "x" amount. That may sound a bit harsh but it would make you fight enemies more your size rather then exploiting the game to build up.
So in general, this game rates for me at 5/5, but because of certian features, I find it to rank just below that.. say 4.4 - 4.65. I STILL give my highest recomendation for this game, even though it still moves at its familiar if creepingly slow pace. You DO get used to it, though I do feel using the PS2 it could have been increased to at least x1.5 the speed of KF and KF2 and it still wouldn't have deferred from the experience of the world you step into. If you're new to the KF world, rent before buying. You won't be able to beat it on a 3-day rental but you will get a feel for it. Give it more then 30minutes, and you may find yourself the newest Kings Field fan. It's still a masterpiece, as I see it.

A new age for King's Field

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: October 23, 2002
Author: Amazon User

This game is amazing on some levels, and subpar on others. Fortunately for me, the pros outweigh the cons by a longshot.

One thing that's often overlooked about this game is that it has NO LOADING TIMES. This allows you to fully immerse yourself into its world without being woken up by a "now loading" screen. And what a world it is! The graphics are amazing. This game takes you everywhere, from villages to graveyards to castles to underwater caverns. It's simply astounding how well they manage to use many different colours even though you'd expect these kinds of environments to consist of mainly browns and greys. The world is gigantic and there's lots of items to find and creatures to fight.

Now, some downfalls: The game is slow; slower than the previous KF games, and that takes some time to get used to. Most impatient players will get turned off and go right back to Halo or GTA. Within five minutes of playing, you'll know which kind of player you are. Also, the storyline is not up to KF standards, as anyone who's played KF2 knows. Finally, the learning curve is steep, and you will most likely die alot in the beginning.

In conclusion, it's an awesome game that's all about mood and atmosphere. However, it's not for everyone. Rent it and see which category you fall into.

Not fast paced, but very well done.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: April 08, 2003
Author: Amazon User

If you are looking for a fast paced hack and slash game, this game is not for you. If you are looking for a game with beautiful, large non linear environments, you'll love it. I have been playing this game off and on for several weeks now, and it has been very fun.

In short, the pros:

*Huge environment to roam.
*Nice graphics.
*Good variety of weapons and armor.

The cons:

*You move slow. I mean real slow, compared to other games.
*Combat can get a bit tedious. You just wait for the enemy to turn around.

Hope this helps.

Hey, it's King's Field, ...

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 4
Date: June 18, 2002
Author: Amazon User

... this is the THIRD game in the series to come over to the states, and as it plays just like the other 2, ... ...
Yeah, the graphics are uninspired: sparsely animated dungeons flicker repetitive images, and the outside field scenes don't exactly conjure images of the middle age peasantry. However, there is a great deal to uncover in the game, and personally, the ability to look down on the ground with your character (or up in the air) is appealing to me, as it allows for more varied battles.
As for the battles, they are standard King's Field fare: hack and slash. However, finally the AI for the monsters has improved, as you are not allowed merely to circle the enemy and constantly stay out of his weapon range (now, enemies can attack behind them). My one problem here is that many enemies do not continue pursuit of you; they will circle back after a time, allowing for some ridiculous moments.
A big plus to the game is the immensity of the world. Also, secrets abound, and if you wish to find good weaponry or armor, you must try to seek out these hidden treasures (you can buy weapons, but they are very poor).
I gave this game 4 stars because I like King's Field games. It's not for everyone, ..., but if you like this sort of game, hours of enjoyment await!

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