King's Field

2026-04-18
Like any worthwhile pilgrimage, the journey to FromSoft's birthplace is work. You will move like codeine courses through you, 7 seconds to turn 360 degrees. You will get lost in a mostly featureless map that asks you to memorize every blocky, pixelated textured corridor. You will try every single key on every single door because there is zero indication which door needs which key.

Your reward is picking up on the threads laid down in 1994 that would become a part of the modus operandi of the studio. I cackled with glee the first time I entered a room only to be attacked by an enemy placed just out of sight to stab me in the back. Tight corridors full of hidden traps that could just as easily have been found in Sen's Fortress or Iron Keep. Weird NPC-centered quests with no tracking or direct indication of what to do. The appearance of the Moonlight Blade. Hell, even before you play, the manual reads:

"You don't need to fight everything. Every time you meet a monster, you don't have to fight with it. For instance, when a monster and treasure box are next to each other, you can take the contents of the treasure box and escape quickly. It's not 'unfair' at all because you have chosen a way to survive."

The same advice I intuited from banging my head on Demon's Souls when it came out is the same advice I've given to friends trying to get into FromSoft's games: sometimes to win, you just have to run and pick up all the shit like a methhead looter. My advice for someone looking at playing the original King's Field is different: don't play it.

When you've scoured the entire second floor and want to get to the third floor would you guess: I should use a harp at a specific spot on the map to make a bridge appear across a chasm? No. That's just fucked. So much of the game is backtracking through the samey corridors replete with infinitely-respawning enemies you've already solved--once you learn the game's flavor of bait-and-poke on the first one, you've learned them all. And after enough of them, when you've used up your MP healing yourself from the mistakes along the way, it's one more trip down to the first floor to dunk your head in the water of the healing fountain and reflect on what the fuck you're even doing here.

Near the end I got my hands on the Triple Fang blade. Beyond having HP/MP restoring abilities, a fucking blessed boon that removed an entire form of backtracking, it also lets you cast spells--once you figure out the fucky controls--which spams a bunch of projectiles like you're wielding a sword-shaped Uzi. Add to this the fact that your starting spell is an insta-cast that I realized interrupted any enemy attack and I became the King's Field Stunlock God. I couldn't believe it, I was having fun! I ripped through the final levels like butter and found myself at the end. And promptly discovered in order to wield the final weapon's magic I had to grind. I used my newfound combo to kill a couple hundred skullboys and dragonmen doing a loop in a room like an automaton. Fun Evaporated.

A true pilgrimage asks you to give a little bit of yourself up in search of a greater purpose. King's Field's barren corridors and droning music hold no greater purpose, no higher calling. If anything a trip in its depths will only take you further from god, questioning your purpose on this earth. And yet in those halls, if you listen closely, past the sound of the rock golem's death noise that sounds like a trucker taking a shit in a Buccee's bathroom with a $3 microphone inside of his mouth, you can hear the sound of a FromSoft sicko telling you--and themselves--that this is good. Don't listen to them. It's not.