trashbang
@trashbang

It's another Game For Sickos™ and I love it.

I've never been much of a King's Field enjoyer, but as a pretty blatant love-letter to it (and Shadow Tower), this game might have tempted me to go back and try them again. It's beautiful, baffling, extremely mean in places, and occasionally horrifying (no surprises, given that Kira also made the very cool Lost In Vivo). It's nailed that old Fromsoft vibe in a way very few games have. You have to be able to laugh at yourself a little, and you also have to be very patient and persistent, and sometimes you just have to trip over shit by blind luck.

I don't think it's for everyone, but I can't stop thinking about it. It's the most I've fallen in love with a first-person dungeon crawler since... Arx Fatalis, maybe?

Here is an unordered list of things in this game which I think will help you to determine whether you will like it:


  • Slow, methodical 'wind-up, hit, retreat' melee combat
  • Infrequent save points
  • Critical path areas hidden behind mandatory illusory walls
  • Critical path areas hidden behind obtuse puzzles
  • Systems that are affected by the real world lunar cycle
  • Bottomless pits that might kill you instantly, or might be zone transitions
  • The ability to level up your speed to ridiculous values and zoom around like the freakin' doomguy
  • Status effects that can last for minutes at a time (including blindness)
  • Spells that drain health
  • Spells with absolutely no useful function
  • Spells that will flat-out kill the caster
  • Spells that are probably too powerful for their own good
  • Confusingly-structured levels with no map system and often perilously-few landmarks
  • In-game manual that you really ought to read
  • Extremely well-hidden alternative endings
  • Infrequent but extremely jarring anachronisms
  • Items with a maddening lack of apparent function
  • Invisible enemies
  • Invincible enemies
  • Invincible enemies that pursue you through walls
  • Running around areas you've visited a dozen times before, plaintively asking "is this anything? is this anything??" as you mash the use button on every wall
  • Clive the Skeleton

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