King’s Field IV (2001): the Ancient City

King’s Field IV was released in Japan on 4 October 2001, and in North America on 26 March 2002 as King’s Field: The Ancient City. It leaves Verdite behind entirely. The king of Heladin received a gift, the Idol of Sorrow, and his court fell to ruin; Lord Septiego led more than a thousand men into the accursed Land of Disaster to return the idol, and none came back. A stranger then places the idol in the hands of the young prince, Devian in the English text, Ixion in the Japanese, and the game is his walk into the same silence.

It is a bigger, stranger game: an ancient city unfolded zone by zone, settlements of survivors, and a score by Tsukasa Saitoh, who stayed with the studio and later led the music of Bloodborne. Critics split hard. Famitsu gave 30 out of 40; the Western average settled at 60 on Metacritic, with EGM at 3.33 out of 10 and GamePro at 4 out of 5 in the same season. It was the last mainline King’s Field: after it, the name survived only in phone games, two grid-based PSP side entries, the 2007 Dark Side Box collection, and everything the studio went on to build.