King's Field III, I'm in love. I restrained myself in only posting one screenshot of dialog but could probably have posted every line of dialog from that first shopkeeper if not almost any line of dialog. I had originally started playing King's Field II but never finished it until coming back to it in my FromSoft Odyssey. King's Field III fully locked me into that odyssey.
You arrive in the world a prospective hero of the land but are met often by people not sure if they have the hope left for a hero. The urgency of my quest mixed with the often resignation of the world's denizen's in it's own way gets to the presumed disconnect in games between a threat's urgency and a player's tendency to just fuck around in the world. Sure, there's a mad king someone ought to stop, but people are nothing if not adaptable and it's not as if there's a clear countdown for the end times.
There's also the actual playing of the game. At first it felt sort of slow but eventually I just sort of got used to it? I find that a constant truth of games (unless perhaps they're truly and quite actually broken) is that any non-standard-ness you just sort of get used to, so this will probably be the last time I mention that.
I loved the bob and weave of the first person combat as I learned enemy patterns, the rubbing against each surface in search of hidden passages, walking the long loading tunnels in anticipation of each new locale. I'm not saying that I am becoming a King's Field Person but I'm also not denying that I may have pushed my friends in the direction of "hey, you should play some King's Field. Casual internet searches imply that King's Field is inspiring a new wave of games and I'm curious what that means.
Andrew Says: Hell yeah, this rules. You should play it
Diary backlog check-in: Currently playing Armored Core 2 (11 games away)