The power bar is a stamina bar in all but name, and even stats on the weapons and armour feel familiar, with physical damage being divided up into slash, chop and stab types. Like so much of King’s Field, this combat is a clear blueprint for the Souls games to come.
The result is combat that favours timing and resource management over raw speed: baiting attacks, darting forward to deliver a blow, timing the swing so that the weapon impact disrupts the enemy’s own offensive, then retreating to a safe distance carefully circling to avoid fangs and blades while waiting for the moment to deliver your own attack using quick, weak ranged attacks to create openings for decisive melee blows. Attacks made without a full power bar are weakened, while spells are restricted entirely. Weapon swings are achingly slow, and the pace of melee is further impeded by two power bars – one for weapons, one for spells – that are depleted on use and then quickly refill. You turn using the D-pad, while one pair of shoulder buttons is used for strafing and the other to look up and down when necessary. There are no defensive moves to make, other than simply stepping out of range – a difficult task, with the player character’s tank-like movement further compounded by a control scheme designed for an age before dual analogue sticks. Shields exist, but only as passive sources of defence stats. Combat in King’s Field is simple: one button is for melee attacks, one for casting spells. While there’s no helpful ‘You Died’ message, it’s the first of many moments that evoke the modern Soulslike and lay bare the common threads that run through FromSoftware’s catalogue. "Like so much of King’s Field, this combat is a clear blueprint for the Souls games to come". When Sony’s console was announced, From decided to pitch a new game made for it, and produced King’s Field in just six months. The first, a 3D exploration game featuring robots in a subterranean maze, was targeted for PCs but abandoned when the team realised that the desktop computers of the time weren’t powerful enough to realise their vision. The first videogame from a company originally known for making productivity software, King’s Field was actually From’s second game development project. But the reality of the matter is that this cycle began many years earlier, in December 1994.Ī first-person RPG for the original PlayStation, King’s Field was released less than a fortnight after the console’s Japanese launch. For many, this would be Dark Souls, or maybe Demon’s Souls – the label we apply to this particular flavour of action RPG, after all, is ‘Soulslikes’. And so we find ourselves drawn back to the beginning of the tale that led here. Not an end, you would hope, but a pinnacle, certainly in terms of ambition and scope.
Elden Ring marks a significant point in From’s own cycle, as a game developer.
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