King’s Field: The Ancient City, also known as King’s Field IV, does not ease players into its hazards. Early in the adventure, a warning beside a mine simply reads: “Beware: Poison.” It sounds like a basic introduction to a status effect. Instead, it marks the beginning of one of the game’s most punishing areas.
The first corridor contains roughly ten slimes capable of poisoning you almost immediately. Use an antidote and they can inflict it again at once. Further inside, zombies spit poison across the ground and hit hard with their weapons. A mushroom projects poison around itself, a poisonous lake is difficult to navigate without falling into it, and another room applies poison seemingly at random while you are merely standing there.
The warning is almost comically understated. King’s Field IV is determined to kill you, and after around ten hours I had spent far more time retrying that mine than I expected. That severity will not suit everyone, but its strange combination of frustration, humour and atmosphere kept me playing.
A cursed city and an inconvenient idol
The opening cutscene establishes the premise with wonderfully gloomy simplicity. A dense, colourless forest contains a cursed land; within that land stands an ancient city; and somewhere in the city is an ominous warning: “Grave misfortune will befall those who behold the idol that stares into the darkness!”
The idol was given to a king, apparently causing the curse that engulfed his kingdom. The king sent soldiers to return it, but they all died. Now the player takes the role of the prince, who must deliver the object himself. The joke is that the Idol of Sorrow remains safely in your inventory throughout the game. You can even sell it to an unsuspecting merchant, although completing the adventure requires retrieving it again.
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When cruelty becomes comedy
The game’s harshness is sometimes genuinely entertaining. One early lesson involves walking into an invisible lava pit and dying instantly. You are unlikely to repeat the mistake, and little progress is lost, but it is an impressively rude way to explain the rules.
Another memorable moment came while escaping an arrow-firing skeleton. I hurried across a bridge towards double doors, only for them to open and reveal another skeleton emerging from the darkness with a goofy grin and an awkward walk. Even the poison area offers a brief lifeline: a spring restores health and removes poison, but it eventually runs dry if you drink from it too often. There is no warning on the sign, so greed can leave you stranded without a cure.
Slow movement, slow combat and repeated deaths
Other parts of the difficulty are less amusing, especially early in the game. Movement is extremely slow and imprecise. Crossing a sinking wooden walkway over poisonous water is an ordeal: you may not reach the other side before it disappears, or you may drift slightly off course and fall in.
After dying from poison, returning from the last save point takes a long time. The character moves at a glacial pace, and every fight along the route becomes an extended exchange of cautious swings. Attacks can miss enemy hitboxes, retreating is slow, stamina must recover to avoid a damage penalty, and combat often repeats the same approach one hit at a time.
Improved equipment, character levels and magic gradually reduce the problem, although stronger and more aggressive enemies arrive as the adventure continues. The result is a game that can make even a short recovery trip feel like a major expedition—quite different from the immediate feedback of a modern arcade machine.
Bleak, bizarre and unexpectedly funny
What saves King’s Field IV is its unusual mood. The world is melancholy, but it is also so bluntly miserable that it becomes funny. The cursed Idol of Sorrow is an absurdly direct piece of grim fantasy, while the first non-player character is an exceptionally mournful man sitting on a rock and lamenting his fate.
Nearby, a shopkeeper named David Bunch has a remarkably ordinary name for a grim medieval setting. In a neighbouring hamlet, a woman is dying from an illness while her husband—unknown to her—lies dead in a nearby mine. Their daughter stands outside, bored and unhappy beside a particularly silly-looking medieval-style dog.
These details make the game feel like it is quietly making fun of its own tragedy. The humour never fully breaks the atmosphere; instead, it creates a strange partnership between the player and the game, even when the player is usually the punchline.
A slow-burn adventure worth understanding
The soundtrack suits the setting with atmospheric, minor-key music. It can become repetitive because the slow pace keeps you in the same areas for a long time, but it remains an effective part of the experience.
King’s Field IV looks like an action adventure, yet playing it is closer to solving a large, hostile puzzle. You must work out where to go, what each area is asking of you and how to survive the journey. The tedium will push many players away, and an invisible lava pit may be enough to end the experiment immediately.
For those who persist, the rewards are moments of discovery: understanding the route, recognising the intended solution and finally carrying it out. After ten hours, I expected to have progressed further, but the game’s peculiar rhythm had become compelling. I may keep playing—not because its poison is forgiving, but because every hard-won step makes the next survival feel worthwhile.
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