"The Daddy of Dark Souls" - the final King's Field... 20 years later
Vložit
- čas přidán 8. 06. 2024
- Thank you Wizards of the Coast for sponsoring! Check out Dark Alliance here: t.wizards.com/c/4d1dpx
King's Field: The Ancient City (also known as King's Field 4) was the last game FromSoftware made for the King's Field series. How does the predecessor of the Souls series compare? Does it still hold up?
twitter: / ironpineapple_
twitch: / iron_pineapple
TIMESTAMPS
0:00 intro
1:06 king's field naming scheme
1:37 story
2:15 "welcome to the game" moments
3:23 a bleak world
4:26 intro area/missable items
5:50 combat
7:10 exploration
8:14 journey to the tower
8:55 central tower and verticality
9:40 surprising discoveries
10:45 fake walls
12:15 traps
13:10 music
13:54 no loading screens?
14:47 ice zone/fire zone/durability
16:00 dwarf lore theory
16:48 weapon & magic levels
18:33 misc thoughts
19:32 ending section
21:36 final thoughts
22:33 outro/sponsor
thank you to kevin's computer for the very cool animated intro and knight renders throughout the video: / kevins_computer
thank you to Grapfic for help with the thumbnail: / grapfic
thank you to Onua for rendering the SFM poses for use in the thumbnail: / odynom - Hry
No no no, here's the real lore: The Blacksmith stacks all your equipment on the anvil and hammers all of them at once.
That's what I was thinking. xD
“Hammers all of them at once”
Visionary smithing technique
My headcanon was that the blacksmith is an interdimensional being capable of existing and interacting with infinite copies of himself. It still takes him 5 or so minutes to repair the gear but with such powers he's capable of stacking his work indefinitely
No cap, this made me laugh bro
The Blacksmith is probably lonely and want you to stick around a little.
He's just too shy to ask you to stay
mechanically it's probably some weird memory or software limitation that at the time caused them to just fix all of them the way the inventory was handled. Things like that happened a lot in games of that era and we don't even realize what they are unless somebody really looks at the code or dev's tell us.
@@Quandry1 nah, it's more likely that the dev team considered waiting for hours unacceptable and decided that the blacksmith should fix items in parallel, as an in game timer would not be able to be updated when the game's not running on PS2
Official lore.
"wait, player-kun, y-your sword won't be ready for... uh... 5 minutes"
King's Field: The Ancient City is famous here in Italy for its legendarily terrible translation - the initial cutscene was clearly made by someone who didn't speak a word of Italian, and every instance of text presents errors in either synthax or grammar.
Maybe ThePruld could make a proper Italian translation of the game, with plenty of memes no doubt.
The german translation is also incredibly bad. But i think the english translation in the PAL version takes the cake here. I'll just say this: "the sick babes"
I find it weird that the PAL version has its own (and much worse) english translation whereas the US NTSC version has a much better one. Why they refused to just use the US translation for the PAL version is beyond me.
@@thombias OH yes, I remember playing the game and reading a scripture on a wall that talked about the "Babes of darkness". That's one of the best mistranslations ever
Cazzo non lo sapevo
@TheFallenRuler Really I didn't know, that's interesting. But even in context saying the babies of darkness is weird. Cause it clearly refers to the dark folk, and in the ntsc they translated that weird sentence about babes of darkness into children of darkness. It's definitely a mistranslation, I mean the pal version even translated "healing water" by "healing H20"
I want Kings Field Remastered, but in the vein of Dark Souls Remastered, where pretty much nothing looks better but the fire particles are prettier
At first I thought it would be a Demon Souls level of remake but ut ended up looking barely different.
The biggest pro is that it doesn't run like ass.
@@antonioklaic4839 it actually runs worse than PTDE due to poorly used post processing filters, which also made the lighting look like shit. literally the only place it performs better, is before qualags fog door since now it dosent freeze the game to pass over the invisible line that loads her.
@@FingerinUrDaughter idk on my PC it runs better.
PTDE ran poorly without DSFix
@@antonioklaic4839 dsfix dosent help performance aside from a few specific areas. its main purpose is unlocking the games resolution.
I think it be fun to see remastered The Ancient City as a VR game.
"How long would it take to fix my sword?"
"Five minutes"
"What about ten swords?"
"Did I fucking stutter"
Edgy andrea
Where "stutter" joke comes from? I've heard it from one of DarkMatter2525's videos. 🤣
@@YavNe Just a common joke I think.
@@YavNe I think it’s a Reddit joke
@@angelo.strand It's been around WAY longer than Reddit
Alternate theory for the blacksmith: He actually has no idea how to work metal. He just has a magical aura that passively mends nearby metalwork.
He once noticed that the items were fixed after hammering for 5 minutes. Since then he only does that to help track the time
He's actually just dropshipping orders from Lordran.
He gets his little elves to fix them as he rests, hence the number of items doesnt matter ;)
My head cannon is that he secretly has like 1000 other dwarfs to share the load with, but youll never find them
😑...🤔...😔
I... LOVED this game as a child! I spent the last 15 years trying to remember the name, and just found this video by googling random shit I remembered for an hour. I am SO HAPPY to finally have a name so I can play it again! The thing that helped me find it was remembering that you die at the start from the lava...
there's a subreddit for this kinda thing, something about "tip of my tongue" if i'm not mistaken, and they actually helped me, within a day, find my first ever childhood game i was trying to remember for like 12 years LOL. i just wrote down anything i could remember (even though some of it turned out to be wrong lol) and unexpectedly it worked! the game is Knights of The Temple: Infernal Crusade btw, i still think it's pretty damn solid lol
@@_JoeVer Thanks or the heads up! There is actually a music video from around 1999 or 2000 that I've been trying to find for a few years.
@@faultyinterface ooh, goodluck! i recall they have a guide on how to format the posts, too, so check that out before you ask, and hope you find it!
I had a very similar experience with a different game. It was "Heroes of Might and Magic: Quest for the Dragon Bone Staff." A brutally hard grid-based strategy game. Now I can play both it and King's Field on an emulator.
Why did you stutter?
i would love to see Fromsoft make a modern Kings Field. and have it stick to the roots of what it is. a first person exploration focused dungeon crawl. itd be a niche spot to fill but the people who are into that niche would adore it. plus itd just be cool to see a style of game popular a few decades ago recreated in modern times where that style of game is either no longer made or not cared for much.
I feel like everyone would just call it "an elder scrolls clone"
@@brianfischer5609 Then that would be so stupid considering how a large percentage of fantasy games in the 90s PLAYED like Elder Scrolls.
@@brianfischer5609 what made the first Elder Scrolls unique was an open world beyond dungeons with side quests, this style of game on the other hand is a pure Dungeon Crawler which is alot different than what elder scrolls is today.
try lunacid
They made Deracine so why not?
He's a quantum blacksmith. For each thing you give him to repair, he splits an extra timeline where that's the one he works on. At the end of the process all the timelines recombine and all your things are fixed. He still needs to actually spend the time repairing it though, so it still take's one piece of gear's worth of time.
rather than expressly different timelines, he puts the gear in a super position where they are in all states at once and then extracts teh desired material?
He's actually A quantum assassin who kills the alternate timeline version of you who never used the weapon you gave him.
the second it has been handed to him he begins to move out of sync with our perceived reality and kills the parallel you who is always surprise by his movements due to the fact the version of you he erases was more pacifistic that you, otherwise how could they obtain a sword in pristine condition.
for every world that you have died to the trap in the start of the game there are infinite worlds branching off in which you still died or lived, but only one world where you obtain the fixed tool from the quantum blacksmith.
The blacksmith being weird is a given since he is a dwarf. Dwarves in norse myth are incredibly weird to the point where some can bend space and time in ways the major gods and goddesses can't comprehend.
Damn, we got some amazing fan lore put together here.
Now I want a game where that is actually official lore.
what
Crazy how the ancient city is comes back almost untouched in DS2 Crown of the sunken king. It just has that shulva vibe
Yeah definitely thought of that when he brought up that area. Same feeling of progression while looking around.
The whole returning to the central tower temple thing is super prevalent in both
Yeah...i kinda always considered shulva as what izalith should had been, just without lava.. they obviously had underground stone city ideas even before.
I remember reading somewhere that Tanimura (DS2 director) is a big King's Field fan so it makes sense. The illusory walls in DS2 also work like they do in King's Field where you have to mash A to find them
DS2 feels more inspired by King's Field than even Dark Souls does.
This is why I see Dark Souls 2 as its own spinoff. I want a Dark Souls II.2 tbh.
Wow this really makes the elden ring catacombs feel like a reimagining of the kingsfield formula. The platform walkways, the riddles, the enemy types, the bosses. It all fits!
11:00 I feel like this ought to be said: these fake/illusory walls have been a staple of the first person RPG genre for a LONG time. I remember it as far back as lands of lore and might and magic where you could find an out of place pebble on the walls that serve as a switch to open the doors, or the classic lever sconces. And there's probably predecessors beyond that.
They date back to tabletop RPGs
I remember them in Wolfenstein 3D so, yeah, they are old. I could probably still get the machine gun in the first level, that is hidden behind a fake wall.
how bout the very first zelda :P u blew up walls with a bomb and sometimes ud find a secret entrance
@@agenerichuman iirc in 1e D&D Elves actually had a chance to sense secret doors upon entering a room.
I was thinking the same thing, secret walls and hidden trap doors are nothing new to dungeon crawlers, or video games in general. There were games on the Atari, Amstrad, Amiga, Commodore 64 and Spectrum ZX2 that had secret walls.
Additionally, the game is a dungeon crawler, it is not a metroidvania. The two sub-genres share similarities, but so do many other sub-genres, but that doesn't change it from being anything but a dungeon crawler.
But that kind of goes for a lot of things he talks about in the video, talking as if King's Field had all these new and unique things others hadn't, when all King's Field is is another first person dungeon crawler, just like Wizardry, Dungeon Hack, Elminage... heck, they still make them now, with games like Mary Skelter, Barony, Shin Megami Tensei, Demon Gaze, New Tokyo Legacy, the list goes on. There are only two unique things about King's Field, one is that it's made by FromSoft, and the second is that the first King's Field had no loading screen on the PS1, which was a technical marvel at the time, until Legacy Of Kain: Soul Reaver came out a few years later and did it better by being an enormous 3D open-world metroidvania.
Now I enjoy the video, it's entertaining content and very informative and fun to watch, but the constant gushing over FromSoft as if they're the inventors of all these things that had already been done and copied multiple times before just comes off as serious fanboyism.
THE PLACE WHERE YOU GET THE MOONLIGHT GREATSWORD IS THE EXACT SAME ONE FROM NINJA BLADE. THEY LITERALLY COPY AND PASTED IT INTO NINJA BLADE
Yeeeeeeeep.
Wait seriously
Copy-pasting fits its identity tho: a Ninja Gaiden clone that serves as a fail safe for Demon's Souls
I was about to say. I even played that nonsense and got scarred with the whole "cutting everything around with this glowy sword" cutscene
Mega lore, it’s the same universe
No Geoff, you don’t get it. The dwarf is actually multiple mini dwarves disguising themselves as a big one. Simple.
Geoff?
@@depalodor That’s pines irl name
Jeff?
They’re called short people sir. So disrespectful smh
@@rampageblizzard
Midge.
One of my biggest gripes with the story was how the Idol of Sorrow had any association with "The Dark One" which was never established. The Dark One was pretty much responsible for manipulating the Dark Folk into obliterating the Forest Folk, but nothing was mentioned about the Idol of Sorrow into any of the area entries.
My guess is that the idol was some kind of "sponge" for darkness which kept the dark one from leaving the holy land.
Life is crazy. My dad and I love playing the first kingsfield when I was a kid. We never knew about this game.. he passed away 3 years ago and it will always trip me out to think about things you miss in life. You can't experience it all. I guess we played the games we were supposed to play together.
"If you're going down you're probably going the right way."
Glad to see romance is alive in King's Field
Ngl that's hot
unlike in gotham
"Hey boy give me some love down there"
"Of course baby you are so hot OMG what the fuck why is there a skeleton with a sword down here aaaAAHHRRGHHHHHHH
@@hjubris OH FUCK OH NO OH FUCK OH WHY!!!!
@@kroyakra6272 OH NO OH GOD
That's one thing I find truly remarkable about From and wouldn't have known about without this video series, just how much they take from and build on their old games. Entirely different teams will look over the long history of the company, appreciate the bits of old games they were never a part of, and build/refine those ideas. It's truly astounding and likely no small part of their increasing commercial and critical success over time.
So in a way, Kings Field the Ancient City has lived on...I can finally let it rest now. Ive returned to the Ancient City many times in m life, but I can move on. : )
Yes,heck even DeS in the first place was supposed to be a reboot for King's Field and Sekiro was supposed to be a new Tenchu game.Now we're still waiting for a new or at least a successor for Armored Core.
"just how much they take from and build on their old games"
They are called From Software.
Definitely agree man, seeing how many ideas from Kings Field were later refined for the Souls series really gives you a sense of continuity with From. Like, there modern games would never have been amazing as they are without these clunky Kings Field games laying down the blueprint.
It's interesting that there are still some people that worked for FromSoft all this time are still active, like Tsukasa Saitoh was a sound designer and music composer since the late 90's for the company, he basically experienced the dawn of From Software.
Seth,Kalameet, The Moonlight Sword (or Moonlight Greatsword in dark souls) and other things are originally from King's Field and Appear in the Souls series. Is even more things from King's Field and Well.... The feeling of the game and the music is pure Magic. I really recommend this game if you like the Souls games. ^^
Kalameet isn't. He's clearly visually inspired by Guyra, but Guyra and Seath are rivals which doesn't seem to be the case with Kalameet.
I think the demon boss at 15:05 is the inspiration for ceaseless discharge
kalasneed
Moonlight sword came from berserk
seeing this makes me want a modern 1st person from software game. Looks so immersive
I'll go ahead and make a prediction that after Elden Ring we'll see a 1st person FS game. Either that or Sekiro 2. Remember this tweet.
Like skyrim with guns, I mean skyrim with the dark souls formula, sounds nice actually, but i prefer 3rd person personally
thought about that but i kinda like seeing my characters armor and panning the camera
@@kiberme tweet? Someone's been spending to much time on Twitter.
@@kiberme THIS AINT TWITTER
There is something that shocked me during my playthrough of this game : there is "illusionary floors" too.
In engineer quarters, there is a place where your footsteps sound very weird. You click on it and the floor opens for a secret room. And that is really clever !
and 1 or 2 Ilusionary roof I think... other reason to love this game
Verticality!
It's funny how these returned all these years later for Elden Ring.
@@unbearable505 ikr
@@unbearable505 there's illusionary floors in elden ring?
it's amazing to think that something like dark souls went to several designs and re-designs to finally land in the franchise that it's today. crazy how art works. you are always building on what's already built.
These videos have just made me realize that really, the souls franchise is just a huge list of references to the old from soft, Seath and Moonlight, Patches, the Crestfallen, and more
Fun fact: the Idol of Sorrow, destroying which is the whole purpose of your quest, is treated in the game just like a regular item, meaning you can sell it, (costs 1 gold, I believe) then, say, kill the merchant, and soft-lock your save file. I just love crazy things like that in old games.
Edit: turns out I was wrong about being able to soft-lock the game, because the first merchant actually respawns, and if you lose quest items, they then appear in his inventory. Oh well.
It would be even better if it gave you back the idol though.
(picks up coin and scoffs) "and they said it would only bring me ruin"
I tried killing the merchant but he respawns so idk if you can do this
@@hesiolite He does? Well shit, I didn't know that. Does every merchant respawn? If so, I might have just bamboozled everyone.
@@nikitas1841 I'm not sure every merchant respawns tho. I only played the beginning of the game and killed the merchant at the village to see what happens and he respawned after five minutes, and when you talk to him afterwards he often says something along the lines of "What?, you look like you've seen a ghost"
But then I played the PAL version idk if it's the same as in the NTSC version
I can confirm that the developers made the first merchant in Kings Field The Ancient City respawnable, no matter how many times you kill him he returns. ALSO if you sell an item that is required to beat the game to a different merchant and kill them, return to the first merchant (David Bunch) and he will have the item needed in his selling inventory!
Not even a minute in and i learn that if you T pose hard enough you can actually travel back in time
Yes, indeed
The "T" stands for "Time Travel"
You also have to say: "yah"
Huh funny, that explains my kid coming home and talking to me about Todd Howards conquest of Rome
Holy crap, it worked!
"You may feel this much help goes too far and trivializes a lot of the secrets"
Yeah, unlike Dark Souls, where 90% of the people who play the games just google everything or rely on notes from others because its obscure af. >__>
Honestly having an item built-in that reveals secrets is a far better solution
To be fair starting a souls game without any experience playing souls or without any map exploration is daunting as hell
Those people are casuals who never actually beat the game. They looked up the solution to puzzles and say they actually beat it.
@@funkymachine I can't believe people are still talking like this, there's no point in being elitist over what someone did with the product they bought for their own enjoyment. This isn't about cheating in multiplayer or abusing mechanics, looking up where to go is just a point in the right direction so they don't stumble around blindly for hours.
@@atticuskoch2965 if elitism is so bad, defend afk taunters tounge. Looking up where to go or how to win is definitely NOT intended.
@@funkymachine I don't mind that as long as it isn't used in pvp, but again, I'm not talking about exploits, I'm talking about getting lost and looking up directions
I love games of this era and especially ps2 RPGs. This looks right up my alley. Looks great for it's time as well
About the Blacksmith:
It may be a boiled egg situation, where 1 egg boils for 2 minutes but so do 5 eggs
I do not need my swords runny in the middle thank-you 😁
Some damn fast boiling eggs you got there.
he boils the swords, i see
One might say he has multiple swords in the fire
Looking at this made me truly realize why I thought Skyrim’s combat felt so outdated.
Same here.... after i instaled Skyrim for first time i was like wtf is this hack and slash combat and wtf is this spreadsheet inventory how is this an RPG :D
@@liberatusblair Perfect rpg inventory was already known for long time every good rpg had it, from Fallout 1&2 , DIablo to WOW and many others. I dont know why they tried to reinvnet circle, my guess is they didnt want to cr8 icon for every item in game ect. You can twist it however you want but its shit inventory and lazy work....
@@orchoose fallout 1 did NOT have a good inv system lol, and it especially wouldn't work in a game like Skyrim.
@@ritenger87 You dont know what are you talking about. Why wouldnt it work?? Its the same inv. every other rpg had. So it works in every other game but it would not work in skyrim... yea right. Stop apologizing Bathesda's lazy work with your poor excuses.
@@orchoose but fallout 1 and 2 do have a terrible inventory system, and its pretty similar to the inventory in skyrim
I bought Ancient City a couple years back and honestly it’s one of my favorite PS2 games. I’ve played and beaten the three previous ones but I feel like this perfected the King’s Field experience.
I don't know much about King's Field but I do know the music for the ending section of the game.
It's called "Dark Reality"
Which I think perfectly fits with what you showed of said area.
Okay, Imagine Vaati saying "You are a moron" in his calm, hypnotic voice
My thoughts exactly. Morgan Freeman level of energy.
So OoC for Vaati, but I love it. It's weirdly cathartic like hearing someone innocent drop an F-bomb 😂
"You looked like you might not be a moron, but that was just a trick of the light."
i cant believe that he A. typed that and B. pineapple called him out for it
*Majula Theme intensifies*
The ancient city looks like it inspired the sunken city from the DS2 DLC. Its pretty cool to think about it like that.
I was thinking the same thing! If it's intentional, that's really cool
The whole thing feels like it inspired DS2.
@@Gabu_ even the giants have face holes
Yeah kings field 4 inspired ds2 super heavily
Any similar feeling you get is extremely likely since FromSoftware officially considers the Souls games "spiritual successors" to King's Field.
This game looks super unique and cool. Hell, a lot of early 2000's games had this special... feel to them. Haunting Ground, Shadow of the Colossus, Eternal Darkness, you name it.
PS2-era games just hit different.
games dont have soul like they used to. even ER and sekiro are both great games on their own but theyre missing the uniqueness and otherwordly atmosphere that DeS or DaS had.
@@_dibbs eh, I dunno. Doom 2016, Elden Ring, Rain World, Factorio, Noita... Tons of modern games have oodles of soul.
@@_dibbs thats just your nostalgia talkin. ER had many very unique otherwordly areas, like visiting caelid for the first time, or the gorgeous water temple area in sekiro with the snake women that had their singing constantly echoing in the background
I think an understated part of the Dark Souls intro is that the broken straight sword can actually meaningfully damage to first few hollows you meet, so that when the Asylum Demon drops in you are potentially lulled into thinking you should just fight it only to see that you deal like 2 damage.
Glad to see he's getting his money's worth with that animated surfing transition
Animation ain't cheap, got to shake that money maker.
@@greenhowie true true
after watching this i went and have played through abt 10 hours of it and, aside from the turn speed and general clunkiness, you're right it's actually pretty fun. Would love to see fromsoft make another one someday
yoooo I feel validated
All the KF games are incredible. You have to emu the first one but it’s worth it. Along with Shadow Tower and its sequel Abyss (which also requires emu)
Considering they remastered Dark Souls then released the Demon’s Souls remake just a few years later (granted, the legwork was done by Bluepoint) it’s not unrealistic to think they might revisit the franchise someday. They’re clearly open to both making new IPs or one-offs (Bloodborne, Sekiro, and now Elden Ring) and revisiting old ones alike.
@@Duplicitousthoughtformentity well, QLOC remastered dark souls, not FromSoft. I don't think FromSoft will ever remaster or remake a game themselves, but they probably will continue to give other companies permission to remaster or remake for them.
If you have to overcome major gameplay hinderamces like cluky combat, and sluggish movement the game is bad. No matter how much you drool over anything fromsoft does, it still a shitty game
Kingsfield on speed 2 +- is actually masterpiece even gameplay wise
I’ll second that. The music stays the same, but the gameplay is much nicer.
how does one do this?
Brah, love your stuff. Especially the teleport sequence at the beginning, so dumb yet so funny!
When you mentioned King's Field I saw the front cover of King's Field 2 and memories started coming back. I remember playing this when I was younger. Its gritty graphics and dark fantasy tone where you start at some bar I believe before exploring. Man, those dragons that would attack you out of nowhere and glowing mushrooms walking about were cemented in my head but I couldn't remember the title until now. Just knowing that I played a predecessor to Dark Souls just feels so satisfying in a way. This video is great, thank you.
Play Armored Core now, we've got MOONLIGHT laser blades, untrustworthy pilots named Patches, and vague stories that get mostly derived from loading screens and part descriptions
And the best goddamn soundtrack of any Fromsoft series. Unless you want to count Evergrace. Really, anything Kota Hoshino touches turns into gold sound-wise.
@@thealliedpowers i can hear the Raven's Nest theme in my head right now.
It's so niche they probably won't make another. *Sad raven noises*
Oh boy can't wait to play it and have no fucking idea what the hell just happened until I watch three hours of lore videos on youtube
@@thealliedpowers Best soundtrack of anything period, I can hear the full ost of any AC after 3 any day without getting tired.
I love the idea of this final enemy being taken out so quickly. It makes me think of the Bed Of Chaos. Something so immensely powerful and destructive, yet simultaneously so frail.
I agree that the idea itself especially storrytellingwise is pretty cool but me having recently finished it I found the end to be a bit anticlimatic lol
So King Allant was a King's Field reference all along
@@DankbeastPaul It looks like the true King Allant is inspired by this idea from Kings Field.
I guess you never played Demon's Souls. :'D
Yeah the boss itfelf its pretty weak but the walk to him(or her, to me it looked more like a woman) its awful, and getting swarmed by these cristal fuckers and dragons makes it an annoying as heck fight
The King of Light's chamber with the continuously spawning skeletons was the best farming area in the game, especially if you got the one item from the shipwrecked sailor after giving him a vial of poison.
Honestly? Id love to see a remaster of these games. Whether from soft decides to keep them as first person RPGS or make them into more of a souls like, as long as the game is truly a remaster at its core, then Id love to see what they can do.
i think like 5 people would buy it then everyone else would ignore or hate it lol
@@PongoDaMan One of his more recent vids covers the game, but Lunacid is pogging up in that category.
@@greysonmiller9407 Lunacid is SO good
how we doing, gamers
swag
Pretty good
Can’t complain
good
Sup gamer
fun fact: this title is known in Italy for having such a bad voice acting , made by people that clearly didnt spoke italian with some massive pronunciation errors , and the into speak is still memed to this day.
Senza lasciare alcuna tracchia
Ay yo, do you spoke Italian?
@@riks081 yess ahah i was quoting one of the most memed line of the opening cutscenes
ODDIO MI HAI RISVEGLIATO RICORDI CHE NON SAPEVO DI AVERE ANCORA
There's not even one sign of "I make-a a spicy meatball" so that's how I know it's a bad Italian translation
Haha grande
Love this video, played all these games with my parents when I was a kid. They are our all-time favorites. The Shadow Tower games are very similar and worth checking out too, especially the JP only one for PS2 (has a fan translation). I became a fan of Demons Souls and then the rest later in life, and thought they had such a similar vibe. I was blown away when I checked the game cases and saw that they were both made by From Software. Such an incredible company that has had a huge impact on my life for almost 30 years now!
It's the half-hearted "Yah" before the amazing surfing dude and music that really gets me.
The blacksmith is just andre's unnamed uncle smithing at incredible speed
clearly he's the dwarf skeleton smith from DS1, I forget his name currently.
@@Alberich_Prince_of_Dwarves I believe it's Vamos
@@kioskthewarlord9590 yes, thank you!
Which kinda makes this exchange funnier. His name means "Go" in Spanish.
SPEEEEEEEEEEEEEEED
Smithing around at the speed of sound
@@youssefbarj9770 high speed**
The moonlight sword with an orbital strike attack. Imagine if it kept that in more From Software games
that is so badass.
No way! I _loved_ this game growing up, and I’m on my 4th run of Elden Ring today. I got bitten by the FromSoft bug as early as King’s Field 2!!
Love the video. I must have mention kings field, One of my favorite series. Not one person knew anything about it. Ty for the memories this video brought back.
The music to this game is absolutely phenomenal. Like you've never heard music like this.
All created by the guy who did The Cleric Beast, Gundyr and The First Hunter themes.
"Dark Reality" is still my favorite song in any Fromsoft game I played, perfectly fits the game like no other song could.
It's why I kind of wish Fromsoft didn't sit on Tsukasa Saitoh. The Gundyr theme is so dark and evil and sounds so awesome and its the only song they gave him in DS3. Then Yuka Kitamura shows up and just takes over and like she's great and all, but she can't capture darkness. Not like Saitoh can. Listen to the way the Gundyr theme ends. Like I killed him first time down to the wire right as that song was ending and I was clenching my teeth the whole time. It was Cleric Beast through and through. He knows dread, and the beauty of knowing we all have a dark fate waiting for us and that it speaks to us in so many ways, sometimes even beautiful ones... he conveys this so well in his music, and I wish Miyazaki and Kitamura could break up already and let the old team back in.
@@Krystalmyth I think Saitoh is a wholly underrated composer and his work in Bloodborne especially was legendary, but Yuta Kitamura was a perfect choice for DS3. Dark Souls isn’t all about doom and gloom and she knows that. She is a master of capturing the stoic tragedy and epicness of the souls games in a way no other Fromsoft composer has. Her work on tracks like Twin Princes and Midir almost made me cry the first time I heard them lol. That isn’t even mentioning her work in Sekiro and oh my lord, the Divine Dragon OST is something else.
@@Odinsday I just think after giving her almost all of DS3, all of Sekiro and now all of Elden Ring, favoratism is at play. She's amazing. But she just can't be all things. Imo, when you're dealing with talent at this level, it's impossible for me to imagine either of them couldn't have excelled at the job, but we only get to have one according to Miyazaki when the osts used to be such versatile casts until she arrived...
@@Krystalmyth I guess you have a point. Still, if we are talking about unused talent, Shunsuke Kida from Demon’s Souls is a prime example of that. Demon’s Souls still has the most unorthodox soundtrack Fromsoft has ever done and it is one of my favorites because of that. Astraea’s theme and False King Allant in particular are brilliant.
@@Odinsday I'd love for all of them to get a shot. Bloodborne was only made better by the use of many composers. The trick is that Tsukasa Saitoh was the lead of the project so he was able to keep all the talent focused. Kitamura was supposed to do that in DS3, and ended up just taking over... and has taken over since. We need more of that multi-talented pool that Fromsoft has, or a big essence of their soul will be gone. Tsukasa Saitoh still works at Fromsoft, he did sound effects for Sekiro.... sound effects !
The final area being the insides of a beast is also similar to DMC1 which also came out months before.
I think I’m gonna have to play this. These old first person dungeon crawlers have such a cool vibe to them, I plan to try these games and the old elder scrolls games out. I’m not expecting riveting gameplay but I think these are essential gaming experiences. It just fascinates me to see how they pulled off certain ideas in old games with the limitations they had. This and the last king’s field video have been some of my favorites of yours
The room where you get the Moonlight Sword gave off hugeeee DS2 vibes.
DS2 borrows a lot from this one, that's one of the reasons I adore DS2 so much despite the flaws.
@@nikitas1841 DS2 Is closer to King's Field than DSS, DS1, or DS3 ever was IMO.
@@nikitas1841 appropriate since 2 is the loneliest of the games.
@@nikitas1841 oh my goodness, I've had this thought that dark souls 2 was in the same world as kf:tac.
Like the boss souls look like forest dew which is used to acivate a golem, while souls are used to activate golems in DS2.
The basic structure of dranglaic castle is very similar to the one shown at the end of kf.
A door in DS2 says "produce the symbol of the king" there's another door in KF that says "you are not kingly" you open it with the ring of wisdom (it belonged to the king)
These are just the ones off the top of my head, but I remember I had more.
Throne of Want?
"This time, you can only teleport by standing on these magic circles on the ground"
*The Seal of Orichalcos*
The one that summons mega ultra chicken?
@@zubbworks No, the seal of Orichalcos is from Atlanteans and their form of shadow duels. Mega UltRA Chicken is Egyptian folklore pirated by a wealthy children’s card game developer
@@malikoniousjoe The only thing that really matters.
Children's card games.
@@zubbworks Soon to be on motorized vehicles
@@malikoniousjoe That's a stupid gimmic and everyone knows it.
(Havn't watched past the one with jaden in it. I do know about the duels on bikes for whatever reason.)
This legit looks like it could be a banger of a VR game. Just speed up the combat, some fresh graphics. BOOM!
I grew up on King's Field series. Those games were brutally hard and felt rewarding when you managed some form of progression though it. Heck some of my map making back then, was just simple graph paper and a ruler and pencil with tons of scribbled notes that only an astrange kid would understand. Heck my parents saw it my maps once and they were concerned I was apart of some D&D cult... (Bad hype back then) Funny enough I became a GM later on. King's Field unknowingly prepared me for it along with other titles I knew.
Edit: added note... I never knew it was From Software back then. Never knew I was initiated in the Souls-like experience before the souls existed. Thank you Pineapple. You're a good cookie for bringing this up.
ive been a kings field speedrunner for almost 2yrs now and im just utterly obsessed. its so cool to see a youtuber ive watched for a long time cover it. great assessment.
How good of a speed run is it? Any fun tech or good decision trees?
@@idlemindedmage6925 kf4 has no glitches but the run itself is interesting. It’s my least fave. I think KF2u (3J) is the most fun. It has glitches and there’s a lot of different ways to do the run. Also has more categories. 1j is still being explored. 2j is a hard run but the shortest. Also has not much wiggle room for creativity. But uses a glitch! An out-of-bounds. That’s sort of my POV. As far as my recommendations. I’d say the enjoyment of the speedrun, in order; it goes: 2u(3j) , 1j, 1u(2j), then 4 aka Ancient City. Casually; Ancient City is the most enjoyable 😅😅 there’s a lot.
“Say you have no life without saying you have no life”
@@shadymcnasty5920 if only you knew
how do you speedrun a game thats literally in slow motion?
Damn, seeing this makes me feel that perhaps we all give Miyazaki a bit too much credit. Of course his direction has been hugely influential and vital to the success of souls and its follow-ups, but looking through King's Field definitely shows that the From team had been quietly doing a lot of the same cool stuff we praise souls for this whole time. Interconnected maps, creative traps, large variety of equipment and enemies, hardcore oldschool RPG progression, depressing NPCs, understated presentation, stamina based combat, etc. I guess the FromSoft team have always had great ideas, if a little jank in their execution, and perhaps Miyazaki just had a knack for fitting that company style into a more solid framework.
if Miyazaki is the one preventing the dev for overwelming the games with traps, let him .
First game I ever found a secret room in a secret room is kings field 2
I'd imagine that's true of any 'auteur' video game director. When a director is a real creative force and deeply passionate about what they do, it's very easy to give them all the credit when their job is guiding the overall development.
I think it says a lot about how perfect of a fit Miyazaki is at From. He wasn't employed there until a few years after this last King's Field game came out, the landscape of game development overall had changed, with games being much more focused on polish/realism, giving players what they want rather than giving them a unique experience, and while Demon's Souls was in development at the time, it was considered a failure until Miyazaki took the reigns. I don't ever remember the King's Field games being popular, and based on the content shown here I can see why lol, but it definitely has the same kind of "fuck it, were gonna do what we want" spirit that Miyazaki brought to Demon's Souls
It's always been stupid to attribute the entire development of a game to one person.
i come back to rewatch this video alot, its very nicely made and i love the nice look at the older fromsoft games, great work iron pineapple
00:36 how i love this its just amazing every video of old games i watch has it, its fantastic and cute
I like to imagine that the repairing of your gear taking a few actual real life minutes is the games way of saying "Go take a bathroom break, get some water, stretch".
Especially since you mentioned the games having no loading screens or cutscenes thus you being in control throughout the whole game.
Just wanted to let you know I smile every time I look at your dark souls print on my wall. It’s an adorable, detailed reminder of the struggles I faced to beat the game.
I'd love to play a port or a sequel of those games, maybe a sequel to shadow tower abyss too
Loved the kingsfield games. I still got my ancient city copy. Going through with no guides or walkthrough will test your memory.
As for the teleport stones I always left one at key spots. Like save, healing locations, or checkpoint on where I am going.
My theory about the dwarf blacksmith is that he is a "VERY fast dwarf smithing at incredible hihg speed"
😂😂😂
VERy niche reference you got there sir.
Goku's Ahhs and Running in the 90s
AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH
H-He's fast!
The whole central tower reminds me a lot of the sunken city from DSII. Looks really neat.
Love the warp so much, especially the "Yah!" before it
20:10
THATS THE FUCKING SECRET ROOM IN NINJA BLADE WHAT
10:27 Yes! This is exactly one of the things that I love about dark souls and what the other souls clones don't or barely do, these brief moments of respite is what kept me going trudging through their doom and gloom worlds. The best examples of said respites are the colorful NPCs that gives a fresh break from the games solitary nature. Dark Souls 1 would've been lesser without Solaire.
6:07 I swear that's literally DS 2's Mytha boss fight area in Earthern Peak
Little late on my part, but there's a whole ton of King's Field references in DS2. The skeleton bell ringer in this video, the magic flask grenade item in DS2 references Seath's Fountain from KF1, Mirrah itself is alluded to be the same island of Melanat from KF1, the Watchdragon Parma is a direct visual reference to Seath and Guyra, DS2's Gyrm warriors use a helmet very similar to the golems in KF4, and the list really just goes on.
@@RekkinOnTheInternet the real moon light greatsword, which is thinner than the Ds1/Bloodborne counterpart, also looks like the one from KF4
hey dude. Thanks for making videos. They still entertain, even years after. Appriciate it.
This video was the drop of water that made me tackle King's Field 4. At the very start of your video I decided that I would finally play the game to completion before watching the video.
Boy it was an adventure! I have played a bit of it when I was little, but didn't even got to the underground areas. So this time I was on a mission and had to see it to the end.
Words do not describe this game. I think it is one of the best pieces of genuine adventure I've had in years. The level and art design stands on its own feet even after all these years. It is as said on the video you just don't know what is around the corner. Even to the end of the game you gotta stay on your feet since you have to learn new things during the entire game. When you think you have the game figured out it throws a curve ball at you. You see the early ideas, that would be further explored on later titles.
It is said to think there will never be a King's Filed 5, but I don't even know if the current team of FromSoftware can make justice to this series. Most all later games lack on the exploration of an interconnected world (the closest being ds1, but still I still think it is not up to par).
Anyways If anyone read it this far I'd like to say I was glad to share this.
Finally a HUGE tanks to Iron Pineapple for giving me this last push I needed.
Thank you for feeding my souls addiction.
I grew up with this series. It was one of the first games I remember playing on PlayStation. When I first played it I had no idea what I was doing, but for some reason I just never forgot about it. I later came back to it and beat all three of the US released titles, and still own the discs for those games now, they all still work as well! The exploration, the secrets, and the difficulty, and how your character goes from struggling to deal with a single skeleton to being able to easily handle dragons and demons all adds to that classic experience you talked about in this video. This game series is one of my all time favorites, and I was so happy when I saw From make it's big comeback with the souls series. It would be nice if a modernized version of this game was made and you could bet money that I would be there playing if it ever happened. Thanks for making this video.
This retrospective is so interesting, thanks man!!
great editing, it's thorough & you can see the time invested in in this
Sick video
WotC woot
Now that you've played Kings Field 4 it's time to play Shadow Tower: Abyss!
Please
yeeeeees
I'd also mention Hungry Ghosts but language barrier is a problem
Yeeeeess
Why, so he can call it another metroidvania? It's a dungeon crawler and From has been making the best examples of this genre for a long time.
@@shards-of-glass-man huh one I haven't heard of wild
The blacksmith is an old god and master of time. He splits the timeline 20 times to repair your swords and then reassembles them into one timeline where all your gear is fixed
This is literally how Dragonbreaks/ retcpns work in the Elder Scrolls series.
@Aaron Eckhart from In the Company of Men ^ seems like a fun person
Just found out about you today and the the last few videos had the warp hole intro
You my good sir have earned a subscriber that’s legendary 😂
That transition in the beginning had me slapping that sub button so fast!
This is one of my favourite games ever. I've 100% it multiple times, know every secret there is.
Imagine if Fromsoftware did a King’s Field remake
King's Field 2000 came with the Sword of Moonlight editor... Though, maybe that's not what you meant.
I played this game as a kid because my dad played the series that was released in America with my mom and I played through it again recently and I'm so glad you enjoy this tank control RPG as much as I do man.
Ur “vibes” have inspired me to learn that kings field music you played on guitar cuz I liked it a lot
So the chests with Poison gas in DS2 came from King's Field. That's cool to know.
when you said "if only I had a way to go back in time", I was REALLY expecting that to transition into an ad.
Probably others have said it before, but a lot of what's been mentioned here, are things that existed in some form or another in the Ultima Underworld games. I'm sure they were a huge inspiration for these games, as they were for The Elder Scrolls.
Great retrospective! I miss the Kings Field series so much. 😢
If Giant Dad isn't in this I'm going to be sorely disappointed
Giant dad in fnf could be great
@@enolagayiniwan913 i would rather drag my nuts across hot coal mixed with glass shards than ever see that idea come to fruition
Kink’s field, the daddy of dark souls. I’m confused but I’ll see where this goes.
"king's"
@@proffessorX that was the joke yes
@@loglog7 This entire interaction just about sums up the CZcams comments section
@@herpydepth3849 Yep…
I still have my copy. It's a great game, and this video does a superb job of showcasing it. Thanks!
Thanks for your video Mr. Pineapple , because of this vid I decided to pick the game up and just recently finished it, I've always thought these games weren't for me and to my surprise I fell in love with it and probably will be playing the earlier ones soon.
I love your videos. They're always about something I enjoy learning about, and your narration and content style is very charming. I also love that you segment your videos by topic, and leave the sponsor until the end. One of my favorite subs on the site.
Also wanted to say I love that for the ad you didn't even say anything false about the product. I've heard middling reviews for that game, but you didn't come on saying THIS IS THE BEST THING EVER AND I REALLY ENJOYED MY TIME WITH DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS SHADOW LEGENDS, you just showed some silly footage, even that it might be too easy, and that it was 'fun for button mashing/killing goblins'. Great great great ethos.
I love that the the place where ere you get moonlight sword is the same area where you get it in ninja blade.
Nice touch Fromsoftware.
A great game heavily inspired by king's field is Lunacid. Its early acces on stram but it still got a lot of content. Its like a unofficial spiritual succesor
What a sweet video, I grew up with the first Kings Field, it was one of my all time favorite. This one and King Field 2 are both on my list of must plays. You really did an excellent job of capturing the real charm of the franchise. That crazy randomness all packaged into a very grounded atmosphere delivering adventure unlike any other title. I hate how refined modern gaming is these days.