I was a little skeptical about these Lost Kingdom games when I bought
them, but the lack of RPGs on the Gamecube made me get them anyways.
Lost Kingdoms had some great ideas but everything seemed rushed and
unfinished, from the story to the battle system.
----------Battle System----------
Lost Kingdoms is a 3rd person Card-Based Action-RPG. There's 3
kinds of cards you can use in this game. The first is an action /
attack card, this is basically like swinging a sword in a Zelda game.
The second card type is an Independent Card, this card can be throw on
the ground and turned into a friendly monster that will fight by your
side, or heal you. The final card type is a Summon Card, this card
transforms you and uses a powerful magic while you can't be touched.
When you or an enemy throws a summon, everything stops while you watch
the transformation. This throws me off in the battles if an enemy
throws a Summon because it zooms in and the camera goes crazy, then
warps right back to you after the transformation.
The encounters are set on the stages. If you walk down a hallway
and get thrown into a battle, you'll always fight a battle in that spot
next time you play that level again. If you wonder around in a certain
area for to long they'll also throw you into a random encounter. When
you warp into a battle an annoying swirl goes across the screen like a
Final Fantasy game. Once you're in the battle you'll notice you are
trapped within a square. If you run out of the boundaries, you'll
escape the battle and lose a card. The background in the battles are
exactly the same as the level you was on at any area of the game, so if
you kill a monster on the left side of the square, and go back to the
level, your character will appear exactly there. This often confused me
and I actually went the wrong way in some areas because I was going
straight before the battle, and then ended up going backwards after.
Each time you use a card, you use up "Magic stones". Each card is
worth different amounts of magic stones in the game. Everytime you kill
a monster, you gain more magic stones to use. If you run out of magic
stones, then the amount is taken away from your HP. Each card has a
different element to it, like Wood, Fire, Water, Earth and Neutral.
Each element has an advantage over another, so this game runs on a
Rock, Paper, Scissors system. After you use a card within a level, you
won't be able to use it again unless you abort that mission or start a
new mission. The card is not gone forever!
There's over 100 different cards in the game, but you can only
carry 30 in your deck at a time. Before going into a dungeon you have
to sort out what cards you want to use in that particular level. Since
some levels have certain elements, its useful to change your cards
before battle. Within a level you'll always find a device that will
heal all your health and let you add the cards you found within the
level to your deck before going into a boss battle.
You don't gain experience in the game, but your cards do. After
your cards gain enough experience, you can go to Gurd and she can
transform them into more powerful cards or she can copy the existing
one. You gain levels by finding Runestones, and there's only 5 in the
game, and you start with 1, so there's not much leveling up in this
game.
Within the stages you can find hidden switches, puzzles, cards,
treasures and blue / red fairies. The Blue Fairies can either help or
harm you. Sometimes they can give you health, give you magicstones,
give you a card back or engage in a fight. The Red Fairies are one of
the few things in the game that talks to you with useful information.
After you capture a Red Fairy you can give it to Alexander and he'll
trade you for cards.
----------Characters / Story----------
The game features a great premise, but the execution of the story
is weak. The story revolves around the black fog that is casting evil
on the land and swallowing up kingdoms. The King of Alanjeh left his
kingdom to warn the other kingdoms of the black fog. You play as
Princess Katia as you search for your father and the 4 Runestones and
that basically sums up the whole game. You don't meet up with alot of
people in the game, but there are a few like Gurd who deals cards with
you, and Alexander who trades fairies with you. The rest are just
faceless soldiers, kings or boss' you dialog with shortly before
fighting. There's not much dialog to the game, so that makes the story
suffer.
----------Graphics----------
The levels are almost cube shaped at times. You're usually running
around a square or a straight hallway / path until you reach the boss
battle and end the level. There's no backgrounds in the game, similar
to Final Fantasy Tactics for the PS1, so you feel like you're walking
around in a cube the entire game. The levels are usually really short,
but considering how hard this game can get, this is a good thing.
However, the level designs look great, and almost always have a nice
dark gothic feel to them giving this lackluster game a little bit of
character.
There's really only about 4 characters in the game that you see
more than one occasion, they look good and are rememberable. The
sub-characters like soldiers, kings, and such all look generic and have
little personality to them. The monsters, boss' and cards are an
interesting bunch to look at. You have fairies, skeletons, lizardmen,
and many more.
The artwork for your cards are very important for the game, since
you have to remember them for your battles when they pop up at random.
The artwork is similar to Magic Cards, just with a little less
background detail and more on the character. The loading screens always
show off a great art picture of the game that I always enjoyed viewing
as the game loads.
----------Sound----------
The music is very good and rememberable from the start, but gets
repetitive after a while. Lucky thing this is a short game I guess.
There's no dialog voice overs in the game, although some characters
will have grunts or sometimes even talk in Japanese. I can't tell if
this is laziness or what.
----------World Map----------
The world map is a small chapter / dot to dot based map. You
unlock new chapters after you complete a field or dungeon or after you
chat with Gurd. After you finish a level you get a grade and that level
is locked from ever visiting again. Lost Kingdoms is very linear and
barely qualifies as an RPG.
----------Time to Complete Game (first run through)----------
3:32:07
Very short game, but once you beat it you can go back and replay
the previously locked levels to get the missing Red Fairies, Cards or
to level up your cards.
