Shadow Tower (and old From Software games general I guess)

How big of an improvement is it over King's Field, anon?

>>4172603
I've barely played the first King's Field, never played 2 and 3, only played 4 significantly. The first Shadow Tower seems very far from having the best mechanics out of all these games, but I still want to experience it just because the visual presentation is my favorite out of any From game I've played so far.

Some people say the controls are unbearable but if you emulate it you can easily change it so that it controls the same as KF IV on PS2. I didn't, though, if only for the novelty of playing with pretty dated controls.

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>>4172654
Actually to add to this, I mostly mentioned the mechanics because a lot of people seem to have huge trouble with this game, a lot saying it's pure garbage and not worth playing if you're going through the old From dungeon crawlers. I've yet to encounter the supposed horribleness of the mechanics; weapons breaking has not been a huge problem for me, I got used to the controls pretty quick (and can be easily reconfigured to fit more modern tastes if you're emulating) and the more annoyingly punishing elements are really not

Maybe it gets absolutely unforgiving later but so far nothing is particularly wrong, even close to the point of being game breaking. I've been playing all day and I'm up to the point where I just killed Duhrin and revived Auriel.

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>>4172673
What's also interesting is that this game seems pretty well-liked in Japan and it's only really a 'black sheep' among the western From fanbase. Amazon Japan is where hatebases generally flood 1/5s and yet the reviews are largely positive and someone once posted a thread on /v/ showing the results to a "favorite PS1 games" survey in Japan; Shadow Tower was among them.

Is it perfect? No, but it has a lot of atmosphere and charm and the bestiary is miles above what I've seen or played of other From games.

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>>4172678
In Bloodborne's first few hours you start off fighting a bunch of infected-yet-still-sentient villagers that are basically just smart zombies, werewolves, hunchbacks and giant rats and the cloaked guy that's really hard to kill and pretty much forces you to parry perfectly. The giant pig that you take out by shoving your arm up its asshole is a zany enough stand-out, as are the crows, but generally it's nothing super special.

From the hours I've played of King's Field 4 I mostly just remember plants, annoying tiny fish, generic slimes and skeletons.

KF1's enemies from the clips I've seen look like jumbles of polygons forming generic fantasy creatures.

Shadow Tower meanwhile throws super-creative enemies at you from the get-go. A parasite that pops out of a corpse's stomach? Check.

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>>4172684
Giant skulls wearing a cloak made out of ooze? Check.

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>>4172685
Whatever the fuck this thing is? Check.

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>>4172691
Laser-shooting eyeball plants? Check.

I would honestly play a Pokemon/SMT-type game where you have to collect these creatures.

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>>4172694
It's actually a Tumblr http://zodar.tumblr.com/post/72752140306/let-it-be-known-that-shadow-tower-psx-has-one-of post about the game's creatures that got me to play it. It's something I've not seen anyone else talk about and yet likely the best part of the game.

>>4172484

That's a fun game anon.

The crazy PS2 sequel got an English translation! play that next I still need to.

>>4172703
Yeah I will. Not sure how I feel about the "western shootan gaem man in a fantasy world" element; I wonder if it's something that's actually really thematically well executed or if they just stuck it in there to get mainstream audiences to buy a niche 1st person fantasy dungeon crawler.

>>4172708

It seems cool to me. I would love to adventure through Shadow Tower in current year.

anyway, I hope you enjoy Shadow Tower as much as I did. FROM SOFTWARE had some really good vittles on PS1 I tell you what.

>>4172718
I highly doubt I'll get around to playing most of them since I'm terrible at finishing RPGs and most of what I play is very short arcadey games. I'll try to finish Shadow Tower though since its world is particularly fun, and I might go for the sequel too because it seems similarly colorful and varied.

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>>4172736
I'm getting some memories of when I tried getting into Might & Magic through World of Xeen because I thought the enemy designs were really cool, except the exploration & combat turned out to be really shitty to me. This game's mechanics ain't perfect but they're still definitely more good than bad and engaging enough for me to keep going.

>>4172603
It's more of a straight dungeon crawler than King's Field, but the core gameplay is much improved. It also has killer atmosphere and I was hooked from beginning to end exploring the tower, whereas with King's Field I lost some steam once I got to the mines and village and ended up putting it on hold after I got endlessly lost in them.

>>4172812
I haven't looked in a while, but are there any good maps floating around for the first US kf? I know there were the in game ones but I don't remember them being all that helpful since you have to buy them separately and didn't cover much.

>>4172697
>>4172694
>>4172691
>>4172685
>>4172684
Hmm, always was more of a KF guy, but these might make me have to give ST another go.

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>>4172484
I've played all kings field games but none besides 4 really grabbed me
they're fine but too traditional and stiff

However shadow tower i beat like 5 times and even 100%ed every region
it's amazing

>good exploration
>good characters
>fresh atmosphere
>mystery and secrets

Sure not for everyone and very cryptic and unfair and offers little actual gameplay challenge outside of "WAAH I USE MY EXPLODE THE ENTIRE ROOM ATTACK SHOCKWAVE YOU BETTER HAVE BROUGHT A BOW TO SNIPE ME EHEHE" or some other garbage
you basically just circle strafe and hit things with little though and manage durability

But if you're into that and willing to get lost/draw a map of every floor on your own then go jump in and explore, it's worth it


I never played st2 on ps2 though, i always got bored with it 10-15 minutes in, maybe one day

>>4172876
God damn why does everyone either say games like this are too easy or impossibly unfair and thus horrible. JUST today someone replied to me with "this game is too fucking hard".

So far I'm finding it, intermediate; not super hard, not piss easy, just enough to be fun. There is some resource management and the circle-strafing & attacking can require some good reflexes when facing multiple and/or specific enemies.

I feel like I'd love this game if I got it as a kid, or if it had better controls.

I really love Armored Core 1 but god, Fromsoft couldn't into controls until like, halfway through the PS2.

>>4172896

The real reason why these games are considered hard is not because of the combat but rather because you will get lost if you don't draw maps

>>4172902
The controls are flawed, sure, but I can't help but think people blame their failure too much on them.

>>4172909
I just want to be able to turn around better.

I can't explain how hard it is for me to play a game without dual-analog control.

>>4172908
Actually, no. The complaining about the controls making the game too hard makes it clear you're wrong and some user reviews clearly make it sound like people are dying to enemies constantly.

Shadow Tower > Shadow Tower Abyss > King's Field 2 > King's Field 4 > King's Field 3 > King's Field

>>4172896
As i said i played it and kf way too much and nothing can beat the ring around the rosie slaughter and tactical step away slowly from the shockwaves occasionally

Also ranged attacks do not only trivialize shadow tower but are actually physically required to beat the game since second to last boss who casts infinite spawning blood skeletons also constntly explodes in close proximity to him practically melting you if you get too close
So yeah


The appeal is more in the exploration, secret weapon hunting and collectibles and cryptic puzzle solving to unlock like the secret boss
And for complete maniacs like me also rare monster spawn hunting for that completion and rare shit.

Also i found the controls fine
They're not hard to adapt to and when you do play very smooth
People who complain about them clearly havent played even an hour to coordinate to them, like come on its 4 buttons get a fucking grip

>>4172938
I'm just saying that if "where do I go" was the only thing people had trouble with they would talk about the game's difficulty very, very differently

>>4172819
Same here. I was the anon who asked about ST in comparisson to KF. I'm a big fan of 2&3 and this really makes me want ST. Too bad copies are like $80

>>4172947
>>4172938
To elaborate, an example of something that requires higher attention than what the typical player would be used to: dealing with groups of laser-shooting enemies while making sure not to be hit by a second enemy type that can poison or paralyze you. It's a kind of multi-tasking that mixed with the heavy-feeling controls can confuse some people.

By 4chan standards there's no such thing as a difficult action in a single player video game. Dark Souls/Bloodborne? Piss-easy, only casual hipsters would have trouble with them. Any 2D twitch-based action game, whether a shmup or an NES action game or anything of the sort? Absolutely memorization-based, zero reflexes involved, once you've memorized the Simon Says sequence there's nothing else to it.

>>4172959
Oh my god just drop the autistic collector bullshit and emulate it. It's a better experience anyway.

>>4172912
I think what he might be getting at is that people get lost because they have no map and then they succumb to the enemies after wandering around lost for too long. If you had full detail maps it would be way easier to know where you're going so you wouldn't get lost and wouldn't have as many opportunities to die.

>>4172968
You don't have to be a dickhead. The second someone doesn't do exactly what you want doesn't mean they're disagreeing with you or insulting you. I've emulated it and every other PS King's Field game before. I prefer having the original game with the manual playing it on my CRT with my original Playstation controller. Again, just my personal preferance, aspie.

>>4173027
I'm 99.9% sure that is not what he meant.

>>4172931
KF4 is the definitive KF saying it's below other entries in the series is a objective mistake. It's only real fault is the slowest movement speed everything else is a step up compared to the previous games. Not to mention the Ancient city is really a atmospheric place with a interesting layout.

>>4172697
One shot johnny

>>4173191
KF2 was more impressive technically for its time, and the horrendously slow turnspeed in KF4 kills it. The story and lore sucked shit compared to 1~3 too.

>>4173239
>The story and lore sucked shit compared to 1~3 too.
its a sequel though so it's the same lore

>>4173275
nah, it was a new canon, dont think it even had any references to the psx games

>>4172965
Yeah but that really isn't that hard
sure you might die once or twice in such encounter but it's a fucking videogame, you're expected to die there because that is the specific purpose for why that situation was crafted

it's like people don't understand that and the second the get a game over and they didn't do a perfect job of a golden god they scream "REEEEEEEEEEEEE TOO HARD WHY DID I DIE REEEEEEEE"
like jesus fucking christ have you not played a game on NES in your life where you died 100 times over and didn't give a fuck because that was what you expected getting into it and no one got their panties in a twist of how "terribly brutally hard it is", because it isn't.
it's all in the mentality

sorry for the rant but that jaded way of looking at things just really gets me every fucking time
of course this game isn't a walk in the park but it isn't hard, it just takes a bit to figure it out and get used to

>>4174220
Oh yeah I definitely agree it's not hugely hard. But I think the problem here is when a game has SOME problems with the controls, or camera, or other stuff like, and has some level of challenge past a certain threshold, people will not even consider the possibility of getting good at it and blame all of their deaths on the camera or controls or whatever even though the great majority of the hits they take will be their fault.

Shadow Tower is definitely an example. Another PS1 one would be the first Crash Bandicoot along with Maximo on PS2 by one of its co-creators.

Gave Shadow Tower a try but it was too difficult for me. King's Field is amazing though.

>>4172902
AC1's controls hold up pretty well all things considered. L2/R2 for vertical camera movement isn't a huge issue with a few painful exceptions.

>>4175029
Keep playing ST mate. It starts off ridiculously hard but gets much easier later on, once you obtain regen rings, ranged weapons and such. The atmosphere and level design is 100x better than any KF game.

>>4172902
I used xpadder to remap all the Armored Core PSX controls into a modern scheme and it works fine...in fact, it may make the game too easy since fluid movement means the enemies can't really do shit.

>>4172484
"what colour am your blood" the game i with played a child but not ever do all the percent. it was a game it was a time played with brother but never stopped conclusion of finishing it. Great game although if you liked the spidered man

>>4180559
>>4180542
it wasn't that funny. clearly some foreign person who doesn't have English as a first language.

>>4180559
I... uh... what?

Something that I always wondered about these early From Software games is how they engineered such perfectly creepy low-res audio for all of the ambience and creatures. Does anybody know how they did that with this era of games? I've always been fascinated by the dream-like sound design.