Forever Kingdom
In the opening of the game, three friends have their souls bound together. If one is cut, they all feel it. If one dies, they all die. If one is tickled, they all laugh. Consider me the fourth soul bound to this trio.
This is a prequel to Evergrace, the first game I tried as part of this series. The world is still painted in teal and amber. It feels good to be back, like returning to a dream that I had years ago. The world feels more designed. The arches, canyons, skywalks, and alleyways crisscross in clever ways tempting me to look in each corner.
Features of the landscape are surprisingly responsive to my touch. There’s a log next to a river. If I whack it, the log falls in and creates a bridge downstream. There’s a chest frozen in a cavern. If I set it on fire, it’s free to open. These examples are simple, but create an illusion that there are dozens of other, hidden ways I can affect the world.
The world’s science and culture is still obscure. There’s no display telling me the elements with which my enemies are aligned. I learn through entering my closet and trying different outfits and cutting them with different swords to see what makes them bleed most. Scattered plaques continue to speak in riddles of goddesses and the elements, but the mechanisms appear more elaborate.
I near the end of a labyrinth and find a pond which heals me and replenishes my spirit. Down the hallway, there’s an enormous minotaur marching around a column. If he strikes me, I die. I carefully skirt around him and come to an obelisk monitored by statues of godesses. There is a locked door behind it. I heard about this room through two of the riddles before. When I read those riddles, I was distracted by my team’s banter. They talked about how it didn’t make any sense. They complained that they had no idea what to do. Since I forgot, I had to walk back around the minotaur. He…killed me this time.
I ended my session in a battle where my team was separated, fighting in two encounters. I think the game was trying to teach me something with each one. One of the bosses was a plant monster that would unload a barrage of attacks on me. No matter what armor I seemed to wear, each hit would take down half of my life. I learned that, even when blocking, I can still use the magic from another team member. I lived. In the other, a council of slimes teleported around me. Sometimes they would stand erect and other times flatten into puddles. I’m fairly certain the slime changed its attributes depending on its state. I switched between powers and lived again.
That’s the thing with Forever Kingdom. I rarely feel like I’m obtaining solid knowledge of the world. Rather, I apply inferences and sometimes, maybe those make a difference. I love this ambiguity. It makes the game feel much larger to me, as if I cannot fence it in.