....But the true, hideous horrors responsible for the terror are the elderly grandmothers who cultivated them en masse alongside the Begonias and Azaleas. Because they "look so pretty while they're digesting bloated corpses."
Your style of humor is so subtle compared to most people on this website, but it never fails to get a laugh from me I'm such a big fan of the simple textures of King's Field I and II. It really takes me back to when I was a kid
Additional is very different so not being on the list doesn't harm it. But I would be really interested to see where Eternal Ring lands if you ever play it, it's familiar enough to the rest of the Kings Fields/Shadow Towers but has plenty of its own unique mechanics and is more story focused than we're used to. Weird but good.
I started playing these games about a month ago. Over a year ago I finally beat Daggerfall and Battlespire but just couldn't find the right vibe to satisfy my dungeon crawling itch. These have been so much fun to play and i love seeing some channels still cover this content. It's also a huge help when they do because as you know finding info/sources for help online is difficult. I think that's a bit of the fun tho. It's like stepping into a forgotten world.
I've only gotten a chance to play the ancient city and shadow tower abyss but I loved them both immensely. Ancient city has immaculate atmosphere and vibes. There's something so comfy about it, especially the friendly hub moving from the above ground village, to the entrance of the ancient city, to the somber elven forest, to the foot of the ancient city's central tower where the gold fountain bolsters your final press into the final areas. Mastering its mechanics such as finding ways to grind spell/weapon experience and using the bone gloves along with the MP fountain to max out your healing ability makes you feel like a master of the domain, and makes the eventual donning of the king's armor and moonlight greatsword feel so fitting. Shadow tower abyss sits at my favorite for sure though. There's something about the silly unbalanced nature of guns that provides a ludo-narrative that I find deeply compelling. It's a land that consumes time and the heroes across it, and while you find golden magical armor of old conquerors, you are also armed with the horrifying power of modernity. The idea that rocket launchers and bullets can kill an ancient being feels disquieting more than anything and the immaculate pacing to get there never really overstays its welcome. I think ancient city dragged a bit near the end so in comparison I think the speedy ending of abyss felt a bit more welcome to me personally. The games are hardly great at providing a final combat challenge, so perhaps we were spared a worse ending for it.
Nomura was the character designer on FF7. That original Cloud is Nomura's art. He's responsible for both "Bold and Determined" Cloud and "Slumped over and helpless" Cloud.
Point taken, and credit where it's due! I actually had no idea he was in charge of emo Cloud prior to making this video, I had to look it up. That's some impressive stylistic range to be honest.
I'm glad I got introduced to your channel. You made me start playing the King's Field games, and about 10 minutes into the Shadow Tower review I had to stop watching to go play those games myself as well. Excited to finish all these videos when I'm done.
Shadow Tower is more interesting than it seems. It is confused with a Kings Field so it is being played like one. Because of that nobody talks about Ceature % and Item % probably thinking that it is just FS being archaic and weird 4 no reason, but in reality that’s the two reasons they added NG + mode there. You may experience hard brutal KF weird cousin by simply running through, BUT if you try finding and killing everyone , that will be the most fun and challenging puzzle and the game true purpose shines. Listen to the sounds of the hidden ones (so there is no music), gamble RNG, return to the boss arena after you defeated it only to find RAREST and most obscure demons, perform LITTERAL SUMMONING RITUAL by moving certain way in a certain place under certain construction, buy special key to kill unique Greece creatures, GIVE AURIEL THE DUEL 🤺 🤺 she mentioned at the beginning! Defeat enemy waves to get the best armour set that covers the whole body but placed only in one slot as a single item so the repair will cost less and acid won’t harm it + great stat boost. Find white katana at one of the bosses arena, which is literally a first glass cannon is FS games. Hidden gem with hidden talents ! Oh and by the way ! The more demons you discover the more of them will be available as a fighters in ADDITIONAL FIGHTING GAME INSIDE OF THE MAIN GAME
Lunacid got me having to look back into these old janky titles. And I have never been the same. Previously I was just into Demon/Dark Souls and above and never looked in the past. King's Field 4 btw has some obvious inspiration on DS2 enemies/locations, like the giants with a hole that help you open a door, or the Drangelic knight statues that wake up, in a castle that has very similar wall brick textures. Or the hanging statues in the dark room that resemble a lot the spitting acid statues in DS2. I see all kinds of similarities to later FromSoft games, but for some reason DS2 might have been taken the most inspiration from KF4.
Man Shadow Tower ditching the awesome unique music that you came to expect as a King's Field fan kind of reminds me of another Playstation 1 series. Tenchu: Stealth Assassins has one of my favourite video game soundtracks to this day. It blew me away how well it fit the game despite the diverse instruments and musical styles. In Tenchu 2 they got rid of the background music outside of the boss fights. Couldn't even play through Tenchu 2. Atleast for Tenchu Wrath Of Heaven they went back to the awesome music and it's one of my favorite games of all time. It's opening theme "Sadame" is second to none.
I really hope formsoft takes another crack at the Shadow Tower series. The vibes are so unique even by their standards and love to it what it look like on modern hardware.
6. Shadow Tower - The only one of these I didn't connect with. Maybe giving it another shot will change my mind. 5. King's Field 2 - While a lot of fun, it's layout is sometimes a bit too confusing due to reuse of textures. 4. King's Field 1 - The most basic of these, but it has a surprisingly natural flow and the exploration is well paced. 3. Shadow Tower Abyss - Unwelcoming but intriguing, megalixir syndrome got me good on this one. 2. King's Field 3 - Deciding where to go and what to explore is a lot of fun here. One of my favorite PS1 games. 1. The Ancient City - The comfiest of them all. The biggest reason I hope Fromsoft will revisit the series.
The kings field videos are how I found you and I am so glad I did. You make banging content and I feel like you really do a great job of articulating why you enjoy something. Above all else your videos are some of the coziest I have ever watched. Your shadow tower videos felt like revisiting an old friend.
king's field and evergrace honestly make me miss the time when FromSoftware games had good, weird ass music. Elden Ring is an absolute masterpiece, golden, perfect, dense with ideas and expansive in vision, a historic acheivement--but god is the music plain. Its all just interchangeable overblown choral yelling. where's my slap bass? where's my weird tribal drums?? where's my bizarrely layer polyrythmic festival songs? huh Yuka???
They've had generic "orchestral" music ever since bloodborne was released (arguably you could say it started with bloodborne). Dark souls 2 OST definitely sounds like a mix between KF and souls game music. In my opinion the ds1 and ds3 osts are the most generic and boring they have done.
Interesting list, I had no idea people regarded Shadow Tower: Abyss as a good game, I thought the original was way better. Here's my boomer ranking: 7. King's Field 1 6. Eternal Ring (if Abyss is a KF game than so is this imo) 5. Shadow Tower: Abyss 4. King's Field 3 3. Shadow Tower 2. King's Field 4 1. King's Field 2
I haven’t played a Kingsfield game but I love soulsborne and my favorite podcasters looove Kingsfield and shadowtower and covered Lunacid (a modern love letter to those games) and got me so interested in them. I want to get a pc just to emulate them all
The Cloud comparison for the skeletons is really funny and true but also it's funny cus Nomura did both interpretations of Cloud. Glad we got something more akin to that original version of him for the "Remake" project haha
3:47 - Ultima underworld was restricted to a horizontal plane? It has verticality just fine. You can fly up and down elevations. It had upper and lower level that crisscross over and under one another. What are you talking about? And King's Field has a whole other axis?/access that it can use in level geometry? I think youre talking about vertical level design? I don't know what you're saying.
@@xXLunatikxXlul he may of just not understood that UU is actually 3d. Wouldn't blame h8m really. How many games from that time were actually 3d? Like flight Sims maybe. Lol
hey, speaking as someone that doesn't have the most up-to-date hardware, i gotta say you really inspired me to play an older fromsoft title to really *feel* that slap bass
I have to say I got kings field 2 back in the day on my ps1 and I struggled the whole time I was playing and I honestly loved every second of it. So much so that it's influenced how I game since then, I always look for the toughest challenging way to play every game I play.
You've inspired me to play through some games of the series. I don't think I'm playing them all, but I'm halfway through Kings Field 2 now as my first game and I'm enjoying it. So far, I had to look up a couple things when I got lost, but I'm trying to do it mostly on my own. I didn't realize until yesterday that you have to actively use keys from your inventory on doors, which is saying something because I already have both shrine keys (no clue where to use them though lol) EDIT: To clarify, I DID find out that I needed to use the keys before I got that second key from Harvines Castle. I didn't spend the 22000 gold on a copy of a shrine key lol.
I just started playing this series, And I am playing the Ancient city right now for a start. This game is fun and it's truly the father of all the souls series because of the similarities it brings to the gameplay and the feel of the game. I am truly enjoying it and will be finishing them all hopefully.
From Software also released one called ETERNAL RING for ps2, the only in the series that doesn't have a dark atmosphere, but uses the same mechanic of king's field 4/shadow tower abyss
King's field IV is the best game of all time for me. Nothing above it. I love newer fast paced games but this just feels different. (Dark reality is my favourite soundtrack)
Quite a great list, most of which is very agreeable. My ranking would probably align mostly with that of Maj, albeit with slight differences. 6. KF 5. KF II 4. ST 3. KF III 2. ST:A 1. KF IV Part of this is mostly due to one very striking aspect Maj mentioned during the ST retrospective - the music. Shadow Tower is excelling in atmosphere while lacking with what started to develop and define one of KF's main strong points. Yet, it cannot by any chance be any better if it had any music because the atmosphere of the game, the setting demand silence and ambiance more. And then there is King's Field IV. Holy Forest, the music in this game is absolutely stellar. IV in my opinion builds a nice bridge between the path Fromsoft would take for later Souls games and portrays a very compelling growth of how they implement music in later games. Both ST and KF are integral to the later success of the Souls series because they combined both musical brilliance and restraint at the same time throughout later titles. If we disregard music, ST:A wins easily - it's faster, has more weapon variety and the combat is just overall doing the genre a better service. With music, I cannot put ST:A above KF IV with a music so good, that I could listen to some track for hours on end and never get tired of them. Long rant, but that franchise as well as Armored Core shaped the kind of gamer I would turn out to be and I cannot applaud FromSoft enough for sticking to their guns and becoming one of gaming's larger behemoths that it is as of now.
One of my favorite moments in King's Field 1 was when I found a secret area on the 1st or 2nd floor not mentioned in any guide or map, something practically undocumented. I really wish I could easily enable some kind of noclip and flying mode and just zoom around the maps. Or seeing map and model data get ripped and viewed. Souls games regularly get this treatment but there's basically no equivalent for From's PS1 and 2 games. It's like an archaeological treasure trove just waiting to be dug up. Hell, just having some actual concrete data on stuff like all of the truth mirror enemy and npc descriptions, item descriptions from the 1 npc who seems to show up randomly in KF2, and what triggers the different journal entries and what they all are in Ancient City would be great. Only thing I'd want to see is the whole ~lore~ community discover the SaGa series because those games are built almost entirely on ~lore~ and not giving the player easy access to ever piece of the story.
My personal experience with the series is spotting (I think) King's Field 2 at a friend's house when we were kids and asking him wtf it is. "That? Oh, it's crap". I tried it briefly before reaching the same conclusion. In hindsight I probably would have liked it a lot if I had given it a proper chance!
One thing about Eternal Ring, its a LITTLE rushed, but only because the fromsoft devs were working on King's Field 4, so they made Eternal Ring first to get it out as a ps2 launch title, but it's STILL surprisingly fun with its magic system and gems, albeit a LITTLE easy in the later game when you get high powered magic rings, but still a good game nonetheless
You're wrong about Eternal Ring. Thanks for not charging me in order to tell you that. But seriously, it's just King's Field with the focus on magic vs melee combat swapped. Outside of that swap it has basically everything King's Field and Shadow Tower are known for; slow paced, methodical exploration with deliberate combat rhythm and a fun near end-game optional backtrack area that gives overpowered equipment. You should definitely play it some time. Unlike King's Field and Shadow Tower, Eternal Ring actually got a PS4 digital release...it even has trophies!
Eternal Ring is pretty good! Easily my favorite along with KF3. The areas are very diverse and have great atmosphere as well. You can make ring combos that add a lot of options and while the story may be a bit weird to get at first, and you'll have only a few backtracking moments (that are very rewarding though!). I think overall, it has the best experience in the genre to me.
Maybe it's just my long long long long history with the gold and silver box D&D games, but I've honestly never thought of the movement in these titles as slow. I mean they super, but when you've played Menzoberranzan they may as well be Kings Quest 1 may as well be Gran Turismo.
Played them all,and they're a blast. Did anyone notice there's a Crescent axe in every kingsfield and darksouls? Even elden ring has its version. Ps: KF2 is the best.
Never played in King's Field 4 but something about its look is so damn familiar. From color palette to texture "crispiness". Somewhat the same qualities have Dragon's Dogma, Dark Souls 2 and few more games, which names escape me. Can't put my finger to 🤔
Go play Eternal Ring, right now. You won't regret it! It's 100% a spiritual successor to KF, and the ring crafting is awesome. You'll feel right at home in the first "dungeon" (the water shrine).
Lemme stop you there early on bud, Ultima Underworld, while perhaps lacking the ability to layer floors ontop of each other within the level itself (maybe it did and I'm misremembering), totally made good use of vertical space and had much more interesting and rich environments than Kingsfield 1. I know you haven't gotten to UU yet in your Ultima series, but just thought I had to let you know there.
Putting king's field 2 as the second worse and kf4 in the middle is definitely a hot take, especially since these 2 are leagues ahead of the rest of the series and the most popular ones.
I would love for fromsoft to hire the same people who did dark souls remaster and do a kingsfield quadralogy remaster for modern hardware. Runing at 4k60. I'd buy it instantly.
Hope you play Lunacid at some point! Excellent evolution of this formula and has a lot of soul. I'd argue it has more rewarding exploration and creative area design than any of the old FROMSOFT dungeon crawlers, at no fault of theirs. I think the skeletons would rank pretty high on your list, too.
This is the first time RUclips's algorithm recommended a new channel I'd actually look for. I've been here for years, subscribing to retro gaming content and rejecting far right nonsense, and now it takes the hint? Anyways, can't disagree with any of this, but I really wish the first game's enemy style had returned in a better game. That abstraction is in a weird place in the uncanny valley. I see a genuine humanity whenever the animation emotes, but often it's purely functional or bizarre...I don't know what to make of it.
I've played each of these games a bunch over the past 10 years or so, and tbh this list offends me. ;) Here is an objective totally not just my opinion ranking: 6. Shadow Tower Abyss - Unironically the worst game Fromsoft has ever made and a gigantic piece of shit you should never play. Also, no skeletons is a definite thumbs down. 5. Shadow Tower - Like King's Field but boring. Level design is lackluster and the lack of any music at all makes this a snooze fest. I hate the vague nonsensical attempt at a story in both games. 4. King's Field 1 - The worst game in the series, but still pretty good, short and sweet. Music and level design is excellent until you get to floor 4. 3. King's Field 4 - Really good, but for whatever reason they significantly reduced the speed of the character controller from the PS1 games and added an annoying motion blur, wish I could remove it. The music is a downgrade from Endo but it's still decent. Level design and art direction are great. Moving away from the setting of the first 3 games was a mistake, as was calling this game King's Field. 2. King's Field 3 - While it seems like an improvement over KF2 at first glance, the level design is a downgrade with it having a lot more width than depth and is pretty linear at first. Otherwise it's great. KF2 - Best game in the series and one of my all time favorites. Has a strong dark atmosphere, mostly thanks to great sound design and music. The interconnected and nonlinear level design makes exploration the best in the series. Its only real flaw is a lack of texture variety. I find myself wanting to replay this game the most.
brother im new to the chanel so i dont know but i imagine you already know it but lunacid is sick gives the same vibe as shadow tower abyss plz check it out if u didnt. I’m certain you will enjoy it immensely it really took notes from kf and st and turned out to be a lot of fun
I actually suspect King's Field 1 does use a 2.5D game engine for constructing level geometry (but not for actually rendering). Correct me if I'm wrong, but the game world seems to be completely devoid of slopes, and any instances of room-over-room are sparse enough that they can use a basic 3D model in place of true level geometry.
That's an interesting hypothesis. I looked over my footage, and I found a handful of instances where the game uses stairs or seemingly has rooms sitting underneath upper floors/hallways. Could be some trickery going on!
KF1/2/3 all render in true 3D, but they do most of the game logic and collisions in 2D space. I’ve worked with these games for years making modding tools, including reverse engineering efforts. The maps are constructed fully in a 2D grid, as a tilemap - this is slightly different in KF2 which allows two layers so you can have overlapping tiles.
@@TheStolenBattenberg Ha! Whadday know? I only caught it because I work with the Doom engine a lot, and a lot of rooms in the PS1 King's Field games, especially KF1, gave me that same 2.5D vibe.
@@HQ_Default Glad I could confirm. :) Honestly the games are a technical feat regardless, the amount of innovation hidden away in the code of KF wouldn’t be seen for years to come. We’re talking about things like early frustum/occlusion culling, scripting systems and general modular game engine design to such an extent that you can change nearly anything without much effort - it really is quite similar to doom WADs like that. For further info, Shadow Tower was the first game using “KFEngine” to use actual 3D collision (proper triangle intersection tests) and multiple real Z levels, which was available because they’d developed more 3D technologies for Armored Core (also uses KFEngine and the same tilemap approach).
The lack of skeletons in Abyss proves that the TRUE mascot enemy of the series is evil carnivorous plants
The sound of the laser plants from ST lives rent-free in my head.
....But the true, hideous horrors responsible for the terror are the elderly grandmothers who cultivated them en masse alongside the Begonias and Azaleas. Because they "look so pretty while they're digesting bloated corpses."
I agree wholeheartedly, glory be to the killer watermelons.
Couldn't agree more.
I don't care about VODs in the slightest but you bet your butt I'm going to watch a ranking of things I know nothing about, I love this sort of thing
Your style of humor is so subtle compared to most people on this website, but it never fails to get a laugh from me
I'm such a big fan of the simple textures of King's Field I and II. It really takes me back to when I was a kid
Additional is very different so not being on the list doesn't harm it. But I would be really interested to see where Eternal Ring lands if you ever play it, it's familiar enough to the rest of the Kings Fields/Shadow Towers but has plenty of its own unique mechanics and is more story focused than we're used to. Weird but good.
New channel kicking off with a banger. For some reason videos like this are so addictive and I'd love to see more - they suit the Maj vibe to a tee
Glad to hear it man :) I always have ideas for little videos like this but they never feel appropriate for the main channel you know?
Totally! I've thought about starting a second "for fun" channel for quite awhile myself so it's cool to see that it's not a terrible idea lmao
When y'all collab'in'?
@RedSpade37 they both cover army of two playing the series in CO-OP
I started playing these games about a month ago. Over a year ago I finally beat Daggerfall and Battlespire but just couldn't find the right vibe to satisfy my dungeon crawling itch. These have been so much fun to play and i love seeing some channels still cover this content. It's also a huge help when they do because as you know finding info/sources for help online is difficult. I think that's a bit of the fun tho. It's like stepping into a forgotten world.
Totally! There's something really elating about stumbling across some obscure mechanic that helps make sense of everything.
Check out Lunacid!
Try a game called Lunacid. I think you’ll love it
I've only gotten a chance to play the ancient city and shadow tower abyss but I loved them both immensely.
Ancient city has immaculate atmosphere and vibes. There's something so comfy about it, especially the friendly hub moving from the above ground village, to the entrance of the ancient city, to the somber elven forest, to the foot of the ancient city's central tower where the gold fountain bolsters your final press into the final areas. Mastering its mechanics such as finding ways to grind spell/weapon experience and using the bone gloves along with the MP fountain to max out your healing ability makes you feel like a master of the domain, and makes the eventual donning of the king's armor and moonlight greatsword feel so fitting.
Shadow tower abyss sits at my favorite for sure though. There's something about the silly unbalanced nature of guns that provides a ludo-narrative that I find deeply compelling. It's a land that consumes time and the heroes across it, and while you find golden magical armor of old conquerors, you are also armed with the horrifying power of modernity. The idea that rocket launchers and bullets can kill an ancient being feels disquieting more than anything and the immaculate pacing to get there never really overstays its welcome. I think ancient city dragged a bit near the end so in comparison I think the speedy ending of abyss felt a bit more welcome to me personally. The games are hardly great at providing a final combat challenge, so perhaps we were spared a worse ending for it.
Nomura was the character designer on FF7. That original Cloud is Nomura's art. He's responsible for both "Bold and Determined" Cloud and "Slumped over and helpless" Cloud.
People give nomura so much grief both deserved and undeserved but they dont really care to admit when he does cool shit.
Nomura, the best thing ever for Square Enix, Co. LTD., and the worst thing ever for Final Fantasy.
Point taken, and credit where it's due!
I actually had no idea he was in charge of emo Cloud prior to making this video, I had to look it up. That's some impressive stylistic range to be honest.
@@KOTEBANAROT I am kinda weirdo, I like his monster design in ff5 and Pe1 and 2 way more than his most human character design.
"On petite skeleton feet" will be on my gravestone. I remember it from many hidden rooms & leather shields & main channel re-watches.
You haven't covered Eternal Ring 😊🎉🎉
Thank you for more Majuular's content!!
im definitely gonna check king's field 3, 4 and shadow tower: abyss.
i really enjoyed the skeleton apreciation appreciation throughout the video :)
I'm glad I got introduced to your channel. You made me start playing the King's Field games, and about 10 minutes into the Shadow Tower review I had to stop watching to go play those games myself as well. Excited to finish all these videos when I'm done.
Shadow Tower is more interesting than it seems. It is confused with a Kings Field so it is being played like one. Because of that nobody talks about Ceature % and Item % probably thinking that it is just FS being archaic and weird 4 no reason, but in reality that’s the two reasons they added NG + mode there. You may experience hard brutal KF weird cousin by simply running through, BUT if you try finding and killing everyone , that will be the most fun and challenging puzzle and the game true purpose shines.
Listen to the sounds of the hidden ones (so there is no music), gamble RNG, return to the boss arena after you defeated it only to find RAREST and most obscure demons, perform LITTERAL SUMMONING RITUAL by moving certain way in a certain place under certain construction, buy special key to kill unique Greece creatures, GIVE AURIEL THE DUEL 🤺 🤺 she mentioned at the beginning! Defeat enemy waves to get the best armour set that covers the whole body but placed only in one slot as a single item so the repair will cost less and acid won’t harm it + great stat boost.
Find white katana at one of the bosses arena, which is literally a first glass cannon is FS games.
Hidden gem with hidden talents !
Oh and by the way ! The more demons you discover the more of them will be available as a fighters in ADDITIONAL FIGHTING GAME INSIDE OF THE MAIN GAME
That Louie Bellson drum opening though. The Majuular is a cultured man beyond his years
Lunacid got me having to look back into these old janky titles. And I have never been the same. Previously I was just into Demon/Dark Souls and above and never looked in the past. King's Field 4 btw has some obvious inspiration on DS2 enemies/locations, like the giants with a hole that help you open a door, or the Drangelic knight statues that wake up, in a castle that has very similar wall brick textures. Or the hanging statues in the dark room that resemble a lot the spitting acid statues in DS2. I see all kinds of similarities to later FromSoft games, but for some reason DS2 might have been taken the most inspiration from KF4.
Your reviews are so good man, and I loved this laid back less serious complimentary video. You got good atmosphere
That video was so short compared to your others I thought I spaced out for an hour XD great first vid for the new channel!
3:13 you tripped me tf up when you repeated that and called it out lol, because i also thought the same thing in my head at the same time
Man Shadow Tower ditching the awesome unique music that you came to expect as a King's Field fan kind of reminds me of another Playstation 1 series. Tenchu: Stealth Assassins has one of my favourite video game soundtracks to this day. It blew me away how well it fit the game despite the diverse instruments and musical styles. In Tenchu 2 they got rid of the background music outside of the boss fights. Couldn't even play through Tenchu 2. Atleast for Tenchu Wrath Of Heaven they went back to the awesome music and it's one of my favorite games of all time. It's opening theme "Sadame" is second to none.
Majuular Upload? *I Sleep*
MajuulArcade Upload? *I'm Jacking In!*
Jacking In ? More like Jacking Off.
I really hope formsoft takes another crack at the Shadow Tower series. The vibes are so unique even by their standards and love to it what it look like on modern hardware.
Agreed. I particularly loved Shadow Tower more than the other games tbh.
6. Shadow Tower - The only one of these I didn't connect with. Maybe giving it another shot will change my mind.
5. King's Field 2 - While a lot of fun, it's layout is sometimes a bit too confusing due to reuse of textures.
4. King's Field 1 - The most basic of these, but it has a surprisingly natural flow and the exploration is well paced.
3. Shadow Tower Abyss - Unwelcoming but intriguing, megalixir syndrome got me good on this one.
2. King's Field 3 - Deciding where to go and what to explore is a lot of fun here. One of my favorite PS1 games.
1. The Ancient City - The comfiest of them all. The biggest reason I hope Fromsoft will revisit the series.
Excellent choices!
I have the exact same ranking
The kings field videos are how I found you and I am so glad I did. You make banging content and I feel like you really do a great job of articulating why you enjoy something. Above all else your videos are some of the coziest I have ever watched. Your shadow tower videos felt like revisiting an old friend.
Now I wait for the JRPG ranking video and celebrate/mourn the position of Skies of Arcadia
king's field and evergrace honestly make me miss the time when FromSoftware games had good, weird ass music. Elden Ring is an absolute masterpiece, golden, perfect, dense with ideas and expansive in vision, a historic acheivement--but god is the music plain. Its all just interchangeable overblown choral yelling. where's my slap bass? where's my weird tribal drums?? where's my bizarrely layer polyrythmic festival songs? huh Yuka???
They've had generic "orchestral" music ever since bloodborne was released (arguably you could say it started with bloodborne). Dark souls 2 OST definitely sounds like a mix between KF and souls game music. In my opinion the ds1 and ds3 osts are the most generic and boring they have done.
Interesting list, I had no idea people regarded Shadow Tower: Abyss as a good game, I thought the original was way better. Here's my boomer ranking:
7. King's Field 1
6. Eternal Ring (if Abyss is a KF game than so is this imo)
5. Shadow Tower: Abyss
4. King's Field 3
3. Shadow Tower
2. King's Field 4
1. King's Field 2
Shadow tower is way less popular than king's field is. You're list is closer to the "popular" take on these games.
Great list!
Abyss towers over the others. Leaving them in its shadow.
Kings Field.
I haven’t played a Kingsfield game but I love soulsborne and my favorite podcasters looove Kingsfield and shadowtower and covered Lunacid (a modern love letter to those games) and got me so interested in them. I want to get a pc just to emulate them all
The Cloud comparison for the skeletons is really funny and true but also it's funny cus Nomura did both interpretations of Cloud.
Glad we got something more akin to that original version of him for the "Remake" project haha
Too bad the Remake project shits on everything else which made VII great by trying to re-invent the wheel.
The remake really was a let down in many ways. @@MrRyoogi
3:47 - Ultima underworld was restricted to a horizontal plane? It has verticality just fine. You can fly up and down elevations. It had upper and lower level that crisscross over and under one another. What are you talking about? And King's Field has a whole other axis?/access that it can use in level geometry? I think youre talking about vertical level design? I don't know what you're saying.
Good question.. I was lost by that bit, too.
@@xXLunatikxXlul he may of just not understood that UU is actually 3d. Wouldn't blame h8m really. How many games from that time were actually 3d? Like flight Sims maybe. Lol
hey, speaking as someone that doesn't have the most up-to-date hardware, i gotta say you really inspired me to play an older fromsoft title to really *feel* that slap bass
I love scoring the skeletons separately, and I think every review of every game, or any form of media, should do it too!
Hype for the second channel! Cant get enough of your content so this is amazing!
I just recently discovered kings field 4 and I’m hooked. About to replay the game and do a fist only run
You are a braver person than I.
@@Majuularcade It’s actually going well so far and surprisingly you can level up fist and get a hadoken style magic
I have to say I got kings field 2 back in the day on my ps1 and I struggled the whole time I was playing and I honestly loved every second of it. So much so that it's influenced how I game since then, I always look for the toughest challenging way to play every game I play.
Can't wait to see what gets uploaded here
You've inspired me to play through some games of the series. I don't think I'm playing them all, but I'm halfway through Kings Field 2 now as my first game and I'm enjoying it. So far, I had to look up a couple things when I got lost, but I'm trying to do it mostly on my own. I didn't realize until yesterday that you have to actively use keys from your inventory on doors, which is saying something because I already have both shrine keys (no clue where to use them though lol)
EDIT: To clarify, I DID find out that I needed to use the keys before I got that second key from Harvines Castle. I didn't spend the 22000 gold on a copy of a shrine key lol.
Have you played the Armored Core games? I think Project Phantasma has a place as "best game" From made before Souls
I just started playing this series, And I am playing the Ancient city right now for a start.
This game is fun and it's truly the father of all the souls series because of the similarities it brings to the gameplay and the feel of the game.
I am truly enjoying it and will be finishing them all hopefully.
I love that intro!
Abyss is so good man. Gunning down monsters in a sword and sorcery setting is so fun.
OK the xenosaga retrospective joke at the beginning tripped me out, cuz RIGHT BEFORE THIS VIDEO, I watched Kbashs full xenosaga retrospective lol😅
What about eternal ring? It belongs somewhere in this list.
Good topic. Looking forward to seeing your work
SO excited for this channel
"Cloud's original FF7 art vs Nomura's interpretation of him" Oh he doesn't know...
fr i cocked my head when that happened like what lmao
No idea what this means.
@@BaraScraeNomura drew both those images
The mid 2000's Nomura solidified his art style. Which gives the character designs a unique look but i do mis that 90's vibe from Nomura's art
@@b0tster yeag...
Thx for video! Great comparison!
Really enjoyed this and hope to see more video on this channel as well as the main channel :)
Oh, didn't realize you had a second channel. Subbed here too 😊
From Software also released one called ETERNAL RING for ps2, the only in the series that doesn't have a dark atmosphere, but uses the same mechanic of king's field 4/shadow tower abyss
Kingsfield 4 has that perpetually ethereal and melancholic music that almost reminds me if a silent hill game was set in the dark ages
King's field IV is the best game of all time for me. Nothing above it.
I love newer fast paced games but this just feels different.
(Dark reality is my favourite soundtrack)
3:49 Ultima Underworld had plenty of slopes and sheer edges to jump off. It was definitely not restricted to a horizontal plane.
Quite a great list, most of which is very agreeable. My ranking would probably align mostly with that of Maj, albeit with slight differences.
6. KF
5. KF II
4. ST
3. KF III
2. ST:A
1. KF IV
Part of this is mostly due to one very striking aspect Maj mentioned during the ST retrospective - the music. Shadow Tower is excelling in atmosphere while lacking with what started to develop and define one of KF's main strong points. Yet, it cannot by any chance be any better if it had any music because the atmosphere of the game, the setting demand silence and ambiance more. And then there is King's Field IV. Holy Forest, the music in this game is absolutely stellar. IV in my opinion builds a nice bridge between the path Fromsoft would take for later Souls games and portrays a very compelling growth of how they implement music in later games. Both ST and KF are integral to the later success of the Souls series because they combined both musical brilliance and restraint at the same time throughout later titles. If we disregard music, ST:A wins easily - it's faster, has more weapon variety and the combat is just overall doing the genre a better service. With music, I cannot put ST:A above KF IV with a music so good, that I could listen to some track for hours on end and never get tired of them.
Long rant, but that franchise as well as Armored Core shaped the kind of gamer I would turn out to be and I cannot applaud FromSoft enough for sticking to their guns and becoming one of gaming's larger behemoths that it is as of now.
One of my favorite moments in King's Field 1 was when I found a secret area on the 1st or 2nd floor not mentioned in any guide or map, something practically undocumented.
I really wish I could easily enable some kind of noclip and flying mode and just zoom around the maps. Or seeing map and model data get ripped and viewed. Souls games regularly get this treatment but there's basically no equivalent for From's PS1 and 2 games. It's like an archaeological treasure trove just waiting to be dug up.
Hell, just having some actual concrete data on stuff like all of the truth mirror enemy and npc descriptions, item descriptions from the 1 npc who seems to show up randomly in KF2, and what triggers the different journal entries and what they all are in Ancient City would be great. Only thing I'd want to see is the whole ~lore~ community discover the SaGa series because those games are built almost entirely on ~lore~ and not giving the player easy access to ever piece of the story.
KF3 is #1 due to childhood, tomboy, elf-wife good ending. Truly the most wholesome fromsoft ending of all time
Localization invention I believe.
@@arciks11 Localization improvement then!
My personal experience with the series is spotting (I think) King's Field 2 at a friend's house when we were kids and asking him wtf it is. "That? Oh, it's crap". I tried it briefly before reaching the same conclusion.
In hindsight I probably would have liked it a lot if I had given it a proper chance!
More Maj content?! YESSSSS
One thing about Eternal Ring, its a LITTLE rushed, but only because the fromsoft devs were working on King's Field 4, so they made Eternal Ring first to get it out as a ps2 launch title, but it's STILL surprisingly fun with its magic system and gems, albeit a LITTLE easy in the later game when you get high powered magic rings, but still a good game nonetheless
You're wrong about Eternal Ring. Thanks for not charging me in order to tell you that. But seriously, it's just King's Field with the focus on magic vs melee combat swapped. Outside of that swap it has basically everything King's Field and Shadow Tower are known for; slow paced, methodical exploration with deliberate combat rhythm and a fun near end-game optional backtrack area that gives overpowered equipment. You should definitely play it some time. Unlike King's Field and Shadow Tower, Eternal Ring actually got a PS4 digital release...it even has trophies!
Eternal Ring is pretty good! Easily my favorite along with KF3. The areas are very diverse and have great atmosphere as well. You can make ring combos that add a lot of options and while the story may be a bit weird to get at first, and you'll have only a few backtracking moments (that are very rewarding though!). I think overall, it has the best experience in the genre to me.
Maybe it's just my long long long long history with the gold and silver box D&D games, but I've honestly never thought of the movement in these titles as slow. I mean they super, but when you've played Menzoberranzan they may as well be Kings Quest 1 may as well be Gran Turismo.
Majuular Upload? I Sleep
MajuulArcade Upload? I'm Jacking OFF!
HE CANT HELP HIMSELF!!
what song did you have playing in the background of the kings field III section? it gave me great vibes ha
Played them all,and they're a blast.
Did anyone notice there's a Crescent axe in every kingsfield and darksouls?
Even elden ring has its version.
Ps: KF2 is the best.
Never played in King's Field 4 but something about its look is so damn familiar.
From color palette to texture "crispiness".
Somewhat the same qualities have Dragon's Dogma, Dark Souls 2 and few more games, which names escape me.
Can't put my finger to 🤔
Go play Eternal Ring, right now. You won't regret it! It's 100% a spiritual successor to KF, and the ring crafting is awesome. You'll feel right at home in the first "dungeon" (the water shrine).
Lemme stop you there early on bud, Ultima Underworld, while perhaps lacking the ability to layer floors ontop of each other within the level itself (maybe it did and I'm misremembering), totally made good use of vertical space and had much more interesting and rich environments than Kingsfield 1. I know you haven't gotten to UU yet in your Ultima series, but just thought I had to let you know there.
The Metallica joke made me chuckle. Stoked for more Maj. Take er easy, dawg.
I know MGS is pretty ubiquitous at this stage, but did bro really have to so casually drop such a massive series spoiler lmao
The twist of Abyss is that you ARE the skeleton, just wearing meat armor.
More Majuular? Yes pls.
We are one mind
Ultima Underworld does have verticality. Like it's present from level 1, I don't know what you're talking about.
I would like to see how Lunacid ranks among this list.
#7
Insta-subbed.
Damn this was hard to find bro. Link on the main channel maybe?
Commenting to help the algorithim. Would love more vide like this.
Ty sir
Yes and justice for all is their best album. Lmao that caught me off guard. Kinda weird I was just watching a live Metallica show from 89
I'd switch the two games. I'd put “King's Field 3” in third place and “King's Field 4” in second. Otherwise, I agree with all the conclusions.
...and justice for all is a great album!
Shadow Tower abyss reminds me of doom but with more swords, and that kinda what it is, an then sprinkle RPG elements into it as well.
Putting king's field 2 as the second worse and kf4 in the middle is definitely a hot take, especially since these 2 are leagues ahead of the rest of the series and the most popular ones.
i came to see just for the skeleton reviews, 10/10
took me forever to find this damn channel. lol
Skeletons: Mind-boggling/10
A second channel?! Ouch, my productivity!
If only the Justice remaster turned up the bass... Justice for Jason
I would love for fromsoft to hire the same people who did dark souls remaster and do a kingsfield quadralogy remaster for modern hardware. Runing at 4k60. I'd buy it instantly.
We all know Abyss won because it's the only game in the series that lets you turn at more than 0.0001 mph
Hope you play Lunacid at some point! Excellent evolution of this formula and has a lot of soul. I'd argue it has more rewarding exploration and creative area design than any of the old FROMSOFT dungeon crawlers, at no fault of theirs. I think the skeletons would rank pretty high on your list, too.
The skeleton hot takes are what I’m here for.
This is the first time RUclips's algorithm recommended a new channel I'd actually look for.
I've been here for years, subscribing to retro gaming content and rejecting far right nonsense, and now it takes the hint?
Anyways, can't disagree with any of this, but I really wish the first game's enemy style had returned in a better game. That abstraction is in a weird place in the uncanny valley. I see a genuine humanity whenever the animation emotes, but often it's purely functional or bizarre...I don't know what to make of it.
I've played each of these games a bunch over the past 10 years or so, and tbh this list offends me. ;)
Here is an objective totally not just my opinion ranking:
6. Shadow Tower Abyss - Unironically the worst game Fromsoft has ever made and a gigantic piece of shit you should never play. Also, no skeletons is a definite thumbs down.
5. Shadow Tower - Like King's Field but boring. Level design is lackluster and the lack of any music at all makes this a snooze fest. I hate the vague nonsensical attempt at a story in both games.
4. King's Field 1 - The worst game in the series, but still pretty good, short and sweet. Music and level design is excellent until you get to floor 4.
3. King's Field 4 - Really good, but for whatever reason they significantly reduced the speed of the character controller from the PS1 games and added an annoying motion blur, wish I could remove it. The music is a downgrade from Endo but it's still decent. Level design and art direction are great. Moving away from the setting of the first 3 games was a mistake, as was calling this game King's Field.
2. King's Field 3 - While it seems like an improvement over KF2 at first glance, the level design is a downgrade with it having a lot more width than depth and is pretty linear at first. Otherwise it's great.
KF2 - Best game in the series and one of my all time favorites. Has a strong dark atmosphere, mostly thanks to great sound design and music. The interconnected and nonlinear level design makes exploration the best in the series. Its only real flaw is a lack of texture variety. I find myself wanting to replay this game the most.
brother im new to the chanel so i dont know but i imagine you already know it but lunacid is sick gives the same vibe as shadow tower abyss plz check it out if u didnt. I’m certain you will enjoy it immensely it really took notes from kf and st and turned out to be a lot of fun
Now you need to play Eternal Ring!
10:24 sir, nomura drew both of these.
Yes
I would highly suggest Eternal Ring purely for the strangeness of it all.
I actually suspect King's Field 1 does use a 2.5D game engine for constructing level geometry (but not for actually rendering). Correct me if I'm wrong, but the game world seems to be completely devoid of slopes, and any instances of room-over-room are sparse enough that they can use a basic 3D model in place of true level geometry.
That's an interesting hypothesis. I looked over my footage, and I found a handful of instances where the game uses stairs or seemingly has rooms sitting underneath upper floors/hallways. Could be some trickery going on!
KF1/2/3 all render in true 3D, but they do most of the game logic and collisions in 2D space. I’ve worked with these games for years making modding tools, including reverse engineering efforts.
The maps are constructed fully in a 2D grid, as a tilemap - this is slightly different in KF2 which allows two layers so you can have overlapping tiles.
@@TheStolenBattenberg Ha! Whadday know?
I only caught it because I work with the Doom engine a lot, and a lot of rooms in the PS1 King's Field games, especially KF1, gave me that same 2.5D vibe.
@@HQ_Default Glad I could confirm. :) Honestly the games are a technical feat regardless, the amount of innovation hidden away in the code of KF wouldn’t be seen for years to come. We’re talking about things like early frustum/occlusion culling, scripting systems and general modular game engine design to such an extent that you can change nearly anything without much effort - it really is quite similar to doom WADs like that.
For further info, Shadow Tower was the first game using “KFEngine” to use actual 3D collision (proper triangle intersection tests) and multiple real Z levels, which was available because they’d developed more 3D technologies for Armored Core (also uses KFEngine and the same tilemap approach).