'King's Story' fantastic in every sense

• By JOSHUA WASCOM
• Special to 2theadvocate.com
• Published: Aug 24, 2009

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My army stands in patient rows behind me as the last rays of the setting sun reflect off their polished helmets. In moments, we will face the feared Red Turnip Warrior, the guardian of the land that borders our kingdom. Fresh off our victory against the ruler of the Party Kingdom and his alcohol-fueled magic, we are feeling quiet invincible.

Unfortunately, in less than a minute, half my army will be dead and the other half will be mindless turnip-men with a taste for human flesh.

This is the world of “Little King’s Story.” At any moment, it’s a combination of a conflicting adjectives. This game is cute, silly, deep, frustrating, addictive and always fun.

Despite its cute title and art style, “Little King’s Story” is a complex game. You play as a young boy who suddenly finds himself sole ruler of a very small kingdom – as one of your advisors explains it, “10 citizens, 3 cows, 0 chickens and no money in the treasury.”

By leading your people in battle and exploration, you expand both the size of your kingdom and the usefulness of your citizens. You exercise control over your people through the simple means of telling them to run at things. If it’s an enemy, they’ll attack it. If it’s a hole, they’ll try to dig up whatever has been buried in it. It’s simple, but it works very well as a means to keep you engaged in the gameplay. You always need to pay attention to who you’re sending to deal with which objects, and combat becomes a carefully-timed dance as you send soldiers in to attack, then call them back when an opponent seems poised to strike.

The game also rewards you liberally, showering you with small fortunes for every bit of exploration and combat, and giving you many choices about how to spend your wealth. As you conquer each new bit of land, your advisors and citizens come up with ways to develop it, and you choose the order in which these developments are funded.

The various elements of the game work beautifully together as you fund your construction addiction with the spoils of war and power your army by building. The story isn’t creative or extremely well-executed, but there are some bright spots of comedic absurdity or surprising poignancy.

The game’s flaws are, regrettably, large enough to bear mentioning. Boss battles can be extremely fun, as they require a coupling of patient observation and tactical opportunism, but some of the bigger boss battles can be frustratingly difficult.

In fact, I’m fairly certain that the last boss battle qualifies as torture under the Geneva convention.

The control scheme gets unwieldy at times, particularly as your royal guard increases in size, and it becomes more difficult to walk up a set of stairs than to destroy an evil dragon.

“Little King’s Story” is worth all of its problems, though. Despite its similarities to recent odd real-time-strategy games like “Pikmin” and “Overlord,” it is a unique and addictive experience, with gameplay that stays fresh throughout, and it is one of the most creative major titles of this generation.