Over roughly ten hours, I played King’s Field: The Ancient City, also known as King’s Field 4—the fourth entry in FromSoftware’s series. Long before Dark Souls and Elden Ring, this PlayStation 2 role-playing game was already testing ideas that would later become central to the developer’s modern reputation.
It is also an exceptionally unforgiving game. Its age makes the challenge harder to appreciate: movement is clumsy, the camera is awkward and collisions can feel unreliable compared with contemporary games. For a broader look at classic arcade and gaming history, the contrast between old and new design is especially revealing.
What follows is less a conventional review than a reconstructed stream of bafflement from that first stretch of play. If you have never touched King’s Field 4, imagine the same general experience as playing an early Souls game: slow exploration, cryptic systems, hostile environments and repeated lessons delivered through failure.
The opening cutscene immediately makes a case for the game’s atmosphere. I miss the era when games began with substantial cinematic introductions, and the guitar that arrives at about the 23-second mark is particularly effective.
Then comes the warning that anyone who looks upon the Idol That Stares Into the Darkness will suffer terrible misfortune. My preferred solution would be not looking at it at all, but the game clearly has other plans.
FromSoftware’s old visual identity is already present, including a font that feels remarkably familiar more than two decades later.
My first practical problem was movement. I could not work out how to walk, look around, or do both simultaneously. A few steps later, I was dead without understanding what had happened. The floor appeared to be responsible, which somehow felt appropriate.
Before setting out, I visited the shopkeeper with the wonderfully uncertain name of David Bunch. He looked like the prototype for every sorrowful merchant found in a later FromSoftware game.
His misery had a relatable explanation: he had pretended to be ill to avoid entering the Cursed Land. Faced with that choice, I cannot say I would have behaved differently.
He gave me a wooden club, for which I was grateful. I then spent time trying to equip it, followed by another 15 minutes and some Googling to discover how to attack with it.
There was an early opportunity to retrieve boots sitting on a rock above a magma river. I could either attempt that immediately or try to enjoy learning the game. Naturally, the boots remained a problem for later.
A section of castle wall collapsed beneath me, dropping me into a group of enemies and dealing damage. It felt like an early demonstration of the design philosophy that FromSoftware would later refine.
Saving and healing were separate mysteries. After another 15 minutes and some Googling, I learned that visiting a save point does not restore health. By the one-hour mark, I had killed around eight plant creatures, died once to an apparently harmless patch of ground and still had not found David Bunch.
When I finally located him, I wondered whether I could sell him the cursed idol. Perhaps he could visit the cursed city in my place. I sold it, nothing happened, and I immediately bought it back for two more gold because I felt guilty.
Testing whether the game allowed swimming produced a clear answer: it did not. Several more deaths followed before I realised that the supposedly solid ground was probably a concealed area of lava.
For about two hours, progress consisted largely of killing roughly 30 insects at an extremely slow pace. One villager asked me to find an item called a Rock of Life. Given the condition of the surrounding area, I suspected that any genuine source of life would have improved the entire region.
Her father had gone into the mines and failed to return. I had no evidence, but I was confident he was either dead or transforming into some horrific creature of malice. Her dog, meanwhile, looked as though it had been illustrated by a medieval monk.
Then I saw a sign warning me about poison. Surely that was too soon. It was not.
A magical spring offered a way to cure poison, making the situation appear manageable. Ten minutes later, I had consumed all the water in the spring. For the next several hours, intermittent poison damage produced a repeating soundtrack of regret.
Enemies continued spitting poison across the paths I needed to cross, forcing me to approach slowly and land a few painfully deliberate attacks before moving on.
The poison lake was the final insult: thin wooden planks sank gradually beneath my feet, while awkward gaps and strange angles made crossing them difficult. Combining that layout with a sluggish PlayStation 2 control scheme and an uncooperative camera was never going to be relaxing.
Several hours later, still dealing with the poison lake, I messaged my editor to say I would not be completing King’s Field 4 for that particular piece.
In fairness, I eventually travelled beyond the swamp. Escaping it was also the point when my frustration eased and the game began to feel more like a conventional experience. My thoughts became less chaotic, which was useful for writing a proper impressions piece.
For readers interested in building a dedicated retro setup, the same principles of patience and careful planning apply when choosing an arcade machine buying guide or browsing full-size arcade machines. And if space is limited, compact bartop arcades offer a smaller way to celebrate older game design.
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