Little King's Story Review
Crowning glory.
Version tested: Wii
Little King's Story is instantly familiar if you've played Pikmin, Animal Crossing, Harvest Moon or that rubbishy thing about wizards I've already forgotten about. The gameworld is cute, cartoony and brightly coloured. Everything in it is rounded at the edges. It's populated by people with improbably large heads and triangles for noses. They all want to talk to you and none of what they say is worth listening to. Everywhere you look there are logs to chop, holes to dig and coins to collect. It never rains.
However, there's more to Little King's Story than that. It's not just a glorious celebration of farming crops, finding treasure, living the pastoral ideal and making friends with cows called Pancho. It's also about monarchy, oligarchy, religious hegemony, the effect of industrial growth on socio-economic power structures, feudalism and genocide. But are the graphics any good?
The visual style is certainly a big part of LKS's appeal. There's a soft sheen to everything, as if someone's smeared Vaseline over your telly. Cut-scenes look like moving oil paintings and tutorials are presented as chalk drawings on blackboards (note to younger readers: this is what teachers used in the olden days before it was all marker pens and holograms).
The pastoral theme is reinforced by the audio - Land of Hope and Glory plays over the title screen, and the rest of the soundtrack is comprised of every piece of classical music you've ever heard on an advert. Speech is subtitled as characters talk in weird backwards gibberish which is supposed to be cute, but often sounds like the dwarf out of Twin Peaks.
When the game begins you're given a shabby castle, a limited area to explore and a small number of citizens to command. You're also presented with a team of three advisors. Strapping lad Liam offers blackboard tutorials on demand while Verde saves your progress and provides updates on the status of your kingdom. (She's a hateful and unhelpful witch, but more on that later.) You'll spend most of your time dealing with Howser the Bull Knight, whatever a Bull Knight is. He's in charge of listing the buildings and power-ups you can buy and how much they cost. The options increase when you unlock new areas, defeat bosses or seemingly just when Howser just feels like it.

This is Howser. Looking not unlike Stalin, in fact, thanks to that moustache.
The task is to head out of your castle and meet your loyal subjects. And they are indeed loyal; they just wander about going "Good morning, my king!" and spouting nonsense about the weather, not one of them questioning the principle of divine right as a valid basis for a political system. Pressing B makes them line up behind you, and they'll then follow you blindly around doing whatever you say. Pressing A will make them perform a task, depending on what they're standing in front of at the time.
If you're standing in front of one of the special job workshops, pressing A will make citizens enter and emerge with a new hat and special skills. Farmers get straw hats, for example, and are best at digging holes and finding treasure. Soldiers get shiny helmets and last longer in combat. As the game progresses new job types are unlocked such as archer, carpenter, lumberjack and IT network solutions provider. Maybe not the last one.
At first you can only command five citizens at a time but as the game progresses this number increases, up to a maximum of 30. The challenge is to construct a team that's optimised for the task you want to accomplish. This is easy to begin with - if all you're after is digging some holes to find some gold, a bunch of farmers will do. But once enemies start popping up you'll need soldiers to defend you too. Archers are more effective, but they cost money, and maybe that cash would be better spent training carpenters so they can build that bridge across the river, or there's that extra health power-up you've been saving up for... And so on.

Later on, you can build your own Favourite Chicken and Rib.
The gameplay soon settles into a cyclical rhythm. You use cash to build houses which produces more citizens, and give them jobs so they get more cash and defeat more enemies, which increases the number of citizens you can command and the types of job available, and opens up new areas to explore... And so on.
Repetitive? Yes. Dull? Yes, if you're the type of person who thinks all games are dull unless they feature 19 kinds of gun, monsters who look like they're made of genitals and a driving bit. If you prefer pretty, soothing, comforting gaming experiences, Little King's Story will hook you in like a lullaby sung by an angel who breathes morphine. The real world will slip gently away, and nothing will matter to you but hats and cows and lumberjacks, and not until someone comes in and says "It's Tuesday" will you realise anything else exists.
For the most part, anyway. Some elements of LKS can irritate, such as the infuriating save system. You know how all videogames have had an autosave feature since 1892? Not this one. Each time you want to save you have to head back to the castle and talk to Verde. You can jump there thanks to a menu option, but if you want to carry on with whatever you were doing pre-save, you then have to wander all the way back.
Also, you know how most games which have day-night cycles automatically save your progress when your character goes to bed? Or at least give you the option to do so? Not this one, so don't make the mistake of making that assumption.
I didn't discover any of this until the first time I died, a good couple of hours in and a fair bit of time since I'd last saved. I came back to life to discover it was if I'd never built the carpenter workshop or trained the two citizens or got them to construct the bridge or taken the soldiers over to the other side or defeated all the enemies or earned enough cash to build the red house. "It's important to save regularly," Verde informed me after this incident. Thanks for that.
Verde is not the only irritating character you'll meet in Little King's Story. There's also a weird religious type, unamusingly called Kampbell of the Sect of Soup. Early on in the game he wanders up to you and asks, "Do you believe in God?" before demanding you spend 44,000 Bol on building him a church. "God will punish you if you don't!" says Kampbell. "And if God doesn't punish you, I will!"
Nothing much seems to happen if you don't, and it's not as if there's a hidden evangelical agenda here. But all the same, Kampbell and his comments have an air of menace to them that don't sit well within the peaceful context of the game.

No idea what's going on here. Doesn't matter.
Then there's Hoswer. For the first hour or so he encourages you to follow a pretty simple plan - get more money, build more houses. But after you've defeated the first boss, he presents you with a new idea: genocide. That's right, Howser says, you must cross over the river where the Onii creatures live. "Beat all the Onii on that side and dominate the world," he commands.
Kampbell throws his opinion in, too: "God says you must punish all the enemies who get in your way!" There's no option to ignore Howser's demands or question what the Onii did in the first place to warrant their wanton destruction, or to just have a nice sit down instead.
It's a bit of a shame, especially following the LocoRoco and Resident Evil 5 kerfuffles, that all the Onii are black. To be specific, black with big white eyes and bright red mouths. I am not accusing anyone of anything. I am saying that you are ordered to kill an entire species, and they happen to be black, and when my friend Dom came in the room he said, "They look like hairless golliwogs." I am saying, wouldn't it be nice to have more black characters in games who aren't baddies?

This is what the Onii look like.
There are plenty of baddies in Little King's Story who aren't black, by the way. Bosses, for example, tend to take the form of giant frogs, raging bulls and the like. The battles with them add another element to the cycle of collecting, building and fighting. But for the most part that's all you're doing, again and again. It all gets tougher as you progress, but you get more citizens to command and more options to choose from.
That won't be enough to keep some people interested, and even the biggest fans of this genre will need real dedication to play right to the end; this is an epic game. However, like all the best titles of its kind, LKS is quietly addictive. Just when you reach a point of frustration and think you've had enough, a new job type will become available or a new area will open up, and it's impossible to resist playing on.
Little King's Story is not the best game you'll ever play. It's repetitive, it's lacking in depth and it can feel slow and frustrating at times. Plus it's got some dodgy politics and a rubbish save system. But it's the best game I've played all year, and that includes Onechanbara: Bikini Samurai Squad. It's charming, engrossing and just plain fun. It's proof that Wii games don't have to be mediocre mini-game compilations or first-party Nintendo titles. It's a reason to be glad companies like Rising Star still exist, and that they're still making games like this. And it's got nice graphics. What are you waiting for?
8 / 10
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Comments (55) Latest comment 3 years ago
Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!
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Me too, didn't think it'd be so good. It's nice to play a "soothing, comforting gaming experience" every now and again.
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Now I don't have the time any more.
;_;
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Anyway, the game sounds fairly decent and I was interested in it until I realised it's a Wii game. Well all Wii games are meant to be rubbish, right?
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I don't own a Wii though.
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Ellie in good game shocker.
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I've bought it anyway!
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Eurogamer, Rising Star didn't make this game, they are only the publisher...
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It's not like the Wii is awash with games like that, eh? In fact there seems to be a prevalence of games where characters are cute, brightly coloured, and have large heads.
I know it's a bit shallow and macho of me, but occasionally I grind my teeth as I resign myself to buying yet another game with cute characters for the Wii to get at some good gameplay.
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*sigh*
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Hang on a sec that would be AWESOME!
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It is very shallow of you!
But why not try MadWorld, House Of The Dead: Overkill or PES 2009? All well received and not at all 'kiddie' in appearance so your friends won't laugh at you and call you a girlie-man.
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Trollolers
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See for me personally, i dont care if other people buy a game or not - as long as im having fun
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Sold.
"...sounds like the dwarf out of Twin Peaks."
SOLD.
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Just like when I bought the Lion King sandwiched between two softcore porn films.
That was an interesting night in.
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Yeah because buying a game with a title like Killzone makes me feel like a man, anyway, this isn't a kids game, just has cutesy graphics, just like myriad great games down the years and yes, I would go into a shop and buy it but then I don't have any problems with my masculinity.
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Onii's just one of several kingdoms in the game. There are plenty more non-black enemies in the game. Presumably developers can include any colour of enemies in their game as long as there are no black ones.
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that's a somewhat contradictory statement; if kids weren't the target audience, there's really no reason to make graphics look cutesy.
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So will you guys seriously go into a store and buy a game called Little King's Story? Do you make the excuse, "It's for my 7 year old daughter."? o_0
Wait, your local store owners interrogate you about who's going to play the game? I'm not so insecure that I feel the need to explain myself to the 20-something year-old who runs the place, especially as I've had lengthy discussions about games with him from Gears of War to Mario Galaxy to Empire: Total War to Pikmin and he loves them all.
Fun is fun: it doesn't have to contain buckets of digital blood and highly detailed, "realistic" rippling muscles on your gun-toting, flat-topped, steroid-junky. However unlike some people 'round here I don't believe cutesy necessarily means fun or "realistic" somehow means it can't be fun; sometimes the buckets of blood shooters are a lot more fun that the cutesy ones.
@JahB
this isn't a kids game, just has cutesy graphics
that's a somewhat contradictory statement; if kids weren't the target audience, there's really no reason to make graphics look cutesy.
There is also no reason not to. Don't confuse your own preferences with logic.
As for whether or not it is a "kids" game, well, games can be designed both with kids and adults in mind, accessible and entertaining to both. Just because they've made an effort to include one demographic doesn't mean it has to exclude others.
Look at movies like Shrek, for example, that has elements accessible to all ages. The very young kids just love the talking donkey and other colourful characters but the older members of the audience appreciate more and more elements of the film and get an increasing appreciation for the dialogue and the subtler (and not so subtle) references.
Edit: I decided that, grammatically speaking, I could do a lot better.
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Erm... That Onii looks green to me, not black. Is this more sigh-worthy stirring from EG?
Onii's just one of several kingdoms in the game. There are plenty more non-black enemies in the game. Presumably developers can include any colour of enemies in their game as long as there are no black ones.
I cringed when I read that part of the review. I deleted my original #2 post because it was basically listing my despair at the tip-toeing and political over awareness that it spoke of. I'd like for a black character to appear in a game and for people not to assume it's an attack on black people. Although that in itself can (and probably will) be construed as a racist attack on black people; "oh, so the only black characters in the game aren't even human! What are they saying, black people aren't human!?!?!?"
I guess it's back to the PC cartoons for us all; the cast has to include a member of every race and at least one disabled kid and episodes need to be focused on stressing how everyone is special and can make a difference and how everyone has their own unique talents! Yay!
As for Ellie's friend saying, "they look like hairless golliwogs." Well, that really speaks more about her friend than the game really. If you seek out offence you'll surely find it.
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Yes, usually when I buy a game like this I also buy a copy of Killzone 2 and Gears of War to reinforce my manliness only to return them for a refund at a later date.
Just like when I bought the Lion King sandwiched between two softcore porn films.
That was an interesting night in.
ROFL
/standing ovation
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Very calming and relaxing with a wry sense of humour.
All the "world domination" thing is tongue in cheek and only adds to the general wackiness.
Plus my baby daughter loves the music.
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Coin-up, you are very funny.
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Rwanda, what?
I'd still buy the game if I ever bought a Wii, mind.
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However, being a fan of custesy Japanese games will def pick this up first chance I get.
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Psychonauts wants its design doc back.
Maybe I'll get this. The Wii's been collecting dust for a couple of months now.
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You need to grow some balls. You walk in a shop, pick something up ,and buy it. If you're that insecure you give a toss what the person serving you thinks you must be about 12. If you're an adult, how do you ever cope with buying toilet roll, or condoms, or anti-perspirant?
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There's no option to ignore Howser's demands or question what the Onii did in the first place to warrant their wanton destruction, or to just have a nice sit down instead.
The Onii are UMA, Unidentified Mysterious Animals: they're freaking monsters! If you get close they attack you without compunction. There's a certain convention in these games: the monsters attack, you kill the monsters. If you didn't you'd get killed. You don't negotiate with the Space Invaders. You don't wonder how it all started between the ghosts and Pacman, I mean who ate what first?
How come no-one champions the goblin or goomba or demon-spawn causes. I am saying, wouldn't it be nice to have more green/fungus-based/demon-spawn-birthed-
only-to-destroy-all-life-everywhere characters in games who aren't baddies?
If you need motivation you can go "Star Trek" and attempt to make peaceful first contact with them and watch them beat-up your humble red-shirts. Then you can feel righteous because they "started it". It happened to me, afterwards I sat there, cradling poor, sweet Lisa (the Basic Grunt's) still warm body to my chest. I cried out my anguish, swearing vengeance through my tears. She was to have been my wife on the morrow, the world will pay! All is darkness! All is pain!*
I felt kinda silly the next day, when she washed up on the beach, alive and well.
Secondly, the Onii King throws down man! He challenges you and says you suck. Yes, perhaps it's not the best reason to go to war, but hey, it's about as good a reason as you normally get in games. Or the real world, based on recent events.
On the building the church thing, if you have one then your worthless peons... erm... I, obviously mean loyal and valued subjects, can get hitched and have kids. Kids can be pressed into labour like adults - they can, apparently, climb trees - which I assume is useful. I can't find the shifty little shi... cherubs anywhere.
* None of that really happened. All is not darkness. All is not pain.
Edit: Got koopas and goombas mixed up, what a faux-pas!
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I´m sorry but i´m getting pretty tired of you being a prick with you comments.
I checked out your forum activity and i´m pretty sure you don´t have a Wii.
If you do, then please give it to someone who appreciates it and never enter a Wii section again, unless through some miracle of God you are given the ability to criticize in an intelligent constructive matter.
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