King?s Field: The Ancient City
- March 13, 2002 17:16 PM PST
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Love it or loathe it, Agetec?s action/RPG series is making its way to the PS2. Will it be a worthy successor to the throne?
Heir to the ThroneAfter several incarnations, sequels, and ?spinoffs? like Shadow Tower, the King?s Field series has earned itself a loyal base of rabid fans?and an equally loyal legion of staunch detractors. Lovers call it a unique, quiet, and surreal?almost abstract?first-person action/RPG capable of inducing a Zen-like trance after several hours of play. Haters call it a slow, generic, and utterly dull dungeon crawl?with emphasis on the crawl?capable of inducing an overproduction of the Terminal Human Boredom Hormone after mere minutes of exposure. Whatever you call it, o player of games, it?s once again time to take up your banner: King?s Field for the PS2 is on its way.
In King?s Field: The Ancient City, you?ll play as a warrior who has recently arrived at a long-forgotten outpost overrun by mad jungle undergrowth, lost souls, and a legion of bizarre monsters. Your mission: find out what happened to this Ancient City and push back the evil that has spread from within and corrupted nearby kingdoms. Along the way, you?ll gather a host of weapons, armor, equipment, and magic to dispatch your foes.
Playing the Field
While this will be the first next-generation King?s Field game, don?t expect the fundamental game mechanics to have changed too much. The preview build felt like a polished version of Eternal Ring (Agetec?s first PS2 game to use the King?s Field ?engine?), only with sharper textures and more thought-out area designs. Otherwise, it featured the same slow style of hack-slash-circle-strafe?while-your-attack-bar-recharges gameplay. The outdated control scheme was also pretty much intact, too; hopefully, the final version will better harness the PS2?s dual analog controls.
After a few hours of play, it was evident that Agetec went out of its way to make the game feel even more open and nonlinear. Completing the game?s first major quest?locating a disease-curing ?Rock of Life??led to multiple choices and character growth opportunities: You could sell the Rock to a local merchant and make a nice pile of cash to upgrade your arsenal; give it to a treasure-hunting thief, and receive a mystical vial with some mystic connection to a long-extinct race; hand it instead to a dying woman (like a good boy should), and learn the ways of fire magic?and the different paths such magic reveals; or just hang on to it, if that?s your thing?you never know who may find such a Rock handy somewhere down the line.
While it?s clear that fans of the series are in for another grand old time in The Ancient City, it?s also clear that Agetec won?t be swaying any differing opinions any time soon. In the King?s Field, ancient rivalries run sound and deep.
