Kingsway is a good demonstration of the importance of packaging.

Interesting, I believe that’s what most people would think of it at first glance, as did I. And I can firmly confirm that it’s unique type of interaction along with the retro interface thingy truly is interesting and fun - while it lasts. The sad news is, the fun doesn’t last over an hour, or two hours max. Once you get acquainted with it, you’ll soon realize that under its ostentatious packaging, the core of Kingsway is just a very basic, subpar old school RPG w/ superficial rogue-lite elements, while also suffering severely from the lack of variety, top-heavy difficulty curve and oversimplified randomization algorithm. And ultimately, the icing on the cake – it has those “Unfinished / Early Access” brands all over it.

(if you’re in seek of direct answer, jump to the last paragraph)

Like I said, in spite of its seemingly innovative look, Kingsway, at its root, is just a conventional RPG, so it ought to be judged as per RPG’s standard. Let’s start with Kingsway’s enemy design, which would be a good entry point into the discussion of its lack of variety. All the adversaries Kingsway offered can essentially be divided into three groups: 1)Bosses, 2)mobs that occasionally shoot projectiles and 3)mobs that don’t. While all the bosses are properly designed and customized, we’ll just leave it there. As for the rest two types, well, they are basically the same, both of whom attack with identical speed and deal identical damage, except the latter one was deprived of the projectile-shooting (sometimes spell-casting) ability. Here is the problem: the projectile the former one shoot is able to be countered through a QTE (sort of) which is extremely easy and I believe no one could fail it (at least I haven’t in my 6 hours of playtime, not even once!), unless you’re from an alternate timeline wherein mouse was never invented. Therefore, the projectile feature serves more as a free turn for you, rather than an actual threat. As a result, the diversity of enemies has been further narrowed into: mobs that occasionally give you free turns and mobs that don’t. Thus, despite all the different names and portraits out there, all the non-boss enemies in Kingsway are per se the reskinning of these two basic types. Furthermore, they all got indistinguishable attributes that scale while you level up, so you won’t feel any sense of progression either. This pretty much represented the rest of the game in regard of variety: NPC encounter? Quite frequently but no more than four varieties in total, mostly just that you encountered a (group of) stranger that was 1)in need of health potion, 2)under enemy attack or 3)looks suspicious from afar. After the encounter was resolved, you’ll be given the option to acquire either a rumor or suggestion, each of which has no more than 5 instances … You should get the idea by now.

The lack of variety in Kingsway’s enemy design could have been avoided if the dev had at least provided some backstory to personalize them. And yes, they tried, there is this bestiary thing that keeps track of all the enemies you have encountered, including names, appearances and some flavor text, only in a completely lackluster way: Enemies of the same category share the same freaking description, be it a Skeleton Mage or a Skeleton Brute, a Priest or a High Priest, they all share the same description… Well, you might roll your eyes and think I’m nitpicking at this point since who on earth gives a damn about those worthless skeletons? Now behold the punchline. When I’ve finally encountered a more interesting type of enemy, and decided to look up the bestiary to find out the role it served in the whole schemes, here is what I got:


Wat!?

Mind you, plenty of enemies were described this way… And some of the most intriguing figures who also played crucial roles in its plot, only got a singular freaking “-“ as their flavor text. Yes, no one cares about backstory in this kind of games, but since the dev decided to keep this bestiary feature, left it like this? I don’t know if it was due to the incompetence or unwillingness of the dev to write proper stuff, to me, it’s just like a big middle finger: “Huh, you wanna some flavor text? Here you go, in your face!”

As for the rest sins of Kingsway, such as the top-heavy difficulty curve and the oversimplified randomization algorithm etc., all of which are not uncommon in this genre of games, and are feasible to fix provided the dev ever cared to. That’s why I mentioned that it felt so “early access” in the first place.

Be that as it may, I’m positive that most people took interest in Kingsway not because of its RPG gaming, but rather the innovative mechanism. So now is the time to move on to the elephant in the room: is Kingsway truly that “innovative”? Frankly, I applaud all attempts to reform the human-machine interaction, be it successful or failed. But can Kingsway truly be considered as such? Taking cooking as an example, the most primary method is, of course, using fire. As technology improved, convection oven and microwave oven were invented, both of which offered different approaches to achieve the same goal, efficiently and effectively. Therefore, we may say that convection oven is an innovation, microwave oven is an innovation. But rigging a gimmicky contraption ATOP of some already-existing developed inventions to complicate the accessibility? Like reinventing a microwave oven that requires the user to solve a Sokoban before setting the timer? Well, it’s something new, while it’s also the lamest approach towards innovation … And unfortunately, in my opinion, Kingsway is just like that gimmicky microwave oven.

[i]Kingsway[/i] is a good demonstration of the importance of packaging. Interesting, I believe that’s what most people would think of it at first glance, as did I. And I can firmly confirm that it’s unique type of interaction along with the retro interface thingy truly is interesting and fun - while it lasts. The sad news is, the fun doesn’t last over an hour, or two hours max. Once you get acquainted with it, you’ll soon realize that under its ostentatious packaging, the core of [i]Kingsway[/i] is just a very basic, subpar old school RPG w/ superficial rogue-lite elements, while also suffering severely from the lack of variety, top-heavy difficulty curve and oversimplified randomization algorithm. And ultimately, the icing on the cake – it has those “Unfinished / Early Access” brands all over it. [i](if you’re in seek of direct answer, jump to the last paragraph)[/i] Like I said, in spite of its seemingly innovative look, [i]Kingsway[/i], at its root, is just a conventional RPG, so it ought to be judged as per RPG’s standard. Let’s start with [i]Kingsway[/i]’s enemy design, which would be a good entry point into the discussion of its lack of variety. All the adversaries [i]Kingsway[/i] offered can essentially be divided into three groups: 1)Bosses, 2)mobs that occasionally shoot projectiles and 3)mobs that don’t. While all the bosses are properly designed and customized, we’ll just leave it there. As for the rest two types, well, they are basically the same, both of whom attack with identical speed and deal identical damage, except the latter one was deprived of the projectile-shooting (sometimes spell-casting) ability. Here is the problem: the projectile the former one shoot is able to be countered through a QTE (sort of) which is extremely easy and I believe no one could fail it (at least I haven’t in my 6 hours of playtime, not even once!), unless you’re from an alternate timeline wherein mouse was never invented. Therefore, the projectile feature serves more as a free turn for you, rather than an actual threat. As a result, the diversity of enemies has been further narrowed into: mobs that occasionally give you free turns and mobs that don’t. Thus, despite all the different names and portraits out there, all the non-boss enemies in [i]Kingsway[/i] are per se the reskinning of these two basic types. Furthermore, they all got indistinguishable attributes that scale while you level up, so you won’t feel any sense of progression either. This pretty much represented the rest of the game in regard of variety: NPC encounter? Quite frequently but no more than four varieties in total, mostly just that you encountered a (group of) stranger that was 1)in need of health potion, 2)under enemy attack or 3)looks suspicious from afar. After the encounter was resolved, you’ll be given the option to acquire either a rumor or suggestion, each of which has no more than 5 instances … You should get the idea by now. The lack of variety in [i]Kingsway[/i]’s enemy design could have been avoided if the dev had at least provided some backstory to personalize them. And yes, they tried, there is this bestiary thing that keeps track of all the enemies you have encountered, including names, appearances and some flavor text, only in a completely lackluster way: Enemies of the same category share the same freaking description, be it a Skeleton Mage or a Skeleton Brute, a Priest or a High Priest, they all share the same description… Well, you might roll your eyes and think I’m nitpicking at this point since who on earth gives a damn about those worthless skeletons? Now behold the punchline. When I’ve finally encountered a more interesting type of enemy, and decided to look up the bestiary to find out the role it served in the whole schemes, here is what I got: [code]Name: Phantom Mass. Description: A hostile enemy.[/code] Wat!? Mind you, plenty of enemies were described this way… And some of the most intriguing figures who also played crucial roles in its plot, only got a singular freaking [b]“-“[/b] as their flavor text. Yes, no one cares about backstory in this kind of games, but since the dev decided to keep this bestiary feature, left it like this? I don’t know if it was due to the incompetence or unwillingness of the dev to write proper stuff, to me, it’s just like a big middle finger: “Huh, you wanna some flavor text? Here you go, in your face!” As for the rest sins of [i]Kingsway[/i], such as the top-heavy difficulty curve and the oversimplified randomization algorithm etc., all of which are not uncommon in this genre of games, and are feasible to fix provided the dev ever cared to. That’s why I mentioned that it felt so “early access” in the first place. Be that as it may, I’m positive that most people took interest in [i]Kingsway[/i] not because of its RPG gaming, but rather the innovative mechanism. So now is the time to move on to the elephant in the room:[b] is [i]Kingsway[/i] truly that “innovative”?[/b] Frankly, I applaud all attempts to reform the human-machine interaction, be it successful or failed. But can [i]Kingsway[/i] truly be considered as such? Taking cooking as an example, the most primary method is, of course, using fire. As technology improved, convection oven and microwave oven were invented, both of which offered different approaches to achieve the same goal, efficiently and effectively. Therefore, we may say that convection oven is an innovation, microwave oven is an innovation. But rigging a gimmicky contraption ATOP of some already-existing developed inventions to complicate the accessibility? Like reinventing a microwave oven that requires the user to solve a Sokoban before setting the timer? Well, it’s something new, while it’s also the lamest approach towards innovation … And unfortunately, in my opinion, [i]Kingsway[/i] is just like that gimmicky microwave oven.