Its been seven to eight months
since I first purchased my Gamecube. Hell, I got it when it came out and played through
the slew of good but not great launch titles, knowing in my heart there were some decent
titles in development. All I would have to do is wait. One genre Ive been eagerly
waiting to see a title in is the RPG. Lost Kingdoms, from Activision, is a unique
combination of card-battle and RPG, making it the first for the GC. The game opens with the news of a
horrible, dark fog having overtaken the five kingdoms, which have long sworn to not ally
themselves together. These kingdoms serve as guardian to the five Runestones. You play the
role of the young princess Katia, whose father, the king, has gone off to meet with the
other kings. You are tasked with obviously saving your father and kingdom, while
protecting one of the Runestones. For some reason, the whole "dark fog/mist"
seems redundant; it reminds me of the premise to Legend of Legaia on the PSOne. At
the start of the game you hook up with a master of the card arts, Gurd, who instructs you
during your first mission on the use of your cards and how each one varies from the other
in terms of their attributes, their strengths, and their weaknesses.
Lost Kingdoms isnt just built around a mission driven quest. On occasion, if you
speak to Gurd at the Apothecary, your neighborhood card-shop, shell tell you about
the people suffering in your kingdom and how you can help them. While its possible
to collect a sufficient amount of cards to beat the game if you skip these quests, they do
serve to build your coffer so that youll hopefully never run out. Additionally,
youll only be able to get certain cards by doing these tasks, so its a good
thing to help the people. For me it served as good practice. You get to learn the power of
your own cards, how to play them against various enemies, and how to conserve what you
have. Its also nice to build up a stockpile of at least a few of each card.
Lost Kingdoms
also has a feature that allows you to create and name multiple decks for various scenarios
in the game. This is quite nice, as youll be constantly reshuffling your deck,
adding in certain cards, removing others, all depending upon what youre about to
embark upon. I started out by creating decks stacked in favor of various elements, i.e. I
had a water deck, an earth deck, etc., but as you progress you realize that particular
levels call for a variety of cards, so you create more dynamic decks that stack in favor
of stronger cards, with just a few weak ones you can toss away on your way toward the boss
battle at the end of each mission. Its much like how you would organize, say, your
Magic: The Gathering deck. Once you go through the game, youll be able to build
decks customized for each mission, at least the tougher ones. Youll also face a good
chance of replaying some of the missions, so youll get to learn the hard way which
cards work and which dont.
As each of your cards gain in experience, usually accomplished by using them over and
over in battle, youre able to transform them at the Apothecary into more powerful
cards. This is on a one-off basis, which can be kind of tedious if you havent done
it in awhile; however, you dont necessarily have to upgrade your cards when they can
move from level A to level B. Since there are multiple levels for each card, you have the
option of waiting till they can skip a few levels. But one recommendation is that you
wont be able to make it through some of the more advanced missions if you dont
have powerful cards. Also, you might pull out that card you could have leveled-up, but
instead held onto, and watch as it is summarily slaughtered by an overly tough opponent.
Needless to say, Lost Kingdoms requires you to be careful with your card supplies. At the
end of each mission you are given the option, depending on how you do, to select cards
from a deck as bonus cards earned in the game.
I found the
battle system, at times, rather clunky. The key you must remember is fire beats wood, wood
beats earth (dont ask me how), earth beats water, and water beats fire. One of my
chief, and I mean chief, complaints with the battle system is the color to attribute
associations. By that, I mean this: fire is reddish-orange, wood is green, earth is brown,
and water is blue. Now, I dont know about you, but my mnemonic association for earth
is green not brown, while my association with wood is brown not green. What does this mean
when youre in a battle? Simple. You always have to stop and think about which cards
youre using; I never got used to the associations, except for the easy ones: fire
and water.
Another complaint I have is that when you are engaged in a battle it is sometimes
difficult to move around the field and I found myself having to shift the camera and kind
of jostle my way around some of the enemies when they had me cornered or after I tossed
down a card. Character movement isnt too fluid.
If youre unfortunate enough to use up all of your cards prior to completing the
mission, guess what, you get to redo the whole damn thing. For some, this type of trial
and error may seem fun and all. For me, it becomes torturous--especially when I found
myself toward the end of the game. Nothing like spending hours on some Mission where you
lose at the end--time after time after time. I guess Im one of those souls who
quickly run low on patience when I need to repeat things too many times.
While Lost
Kingdoms possesses some unique elements to it, there isnt enough to hold your
attention for more than ten hours or so, and there definitely isnt too much replay
value . . . that is unless youre into collecting all hundred plus cards scattered
and hidden throughout the game. Granted, some of the card summons are pretty cool, but
that still doesnt absolve the horrid redundancy of this game. Graphically, the game
is on par with launch title qualitydecent, but nothing to write home about. Its
storyline is hacked together, drawing you along from one card-battle to the next; rather
than being structured around narrative and the RPG elements, Lost Kingdoms is built around
the card-battles, and unless youre into card-battling, the game transgresses into
sheer boredom.
For some RPGers, Lost Kingdoms runs the potential of a serious disappointment. I
would recommend renting before purchasing, even if youre a person who goes in for
the card-battle, RPG experience. You might even be able to beat it over a Blockbuster
weekend.