It’s…playable?
I’ve heard people clamoring about Little King’s Story ever since its release in 2009. “It’s a great Pikmin-esque experience!” and “It’s so cute and charming, you gotta play it!” they’d say. I’m not exactly sure why I didn’t get around to playing it, but here we are seven years later, and my time has come.
I don’t think this is the experience everyone else had in mind all those years ago.
[All screenshots taken by me.]
Tested on: Intel i7-4770k 3.50 GHz, 8GB of RAM, Geforce GTX 970, Windows 10. Frame rate measured with RivaTuner
Surprisingly, there are a handful of PC-specific options to tinker with in Little King’s Story. Before launching the actual game, an options menu will pop up with some drop-down menus and check boxes. A lot of what you would expect is here: graphical options, resolutions, 30/60 FPS, VSync, etc. Here’s a screenshot of the options menu:
What’s interesting, and I’m sure you already noticed, is the little (not recommended) next to the 60 FPS option. It’s like putting a delicious steak on the table right in front of you, but there’s a small sticky note next to it that reads “not recommended.” What?! Why the hell not?
Well, since the frame rate is tied to the speed of the game’s mechanics, increasing the frame rate also increases the speed of enemies and, well, just about everything. Basically, it breaks the game a little bit. XSEED has even commented on this, saying that it knew it would break things but added it anyway because PC gamers want a 60 FPS option. Well, I’m here to say that you should put your pride aside and just play at 30 FPS — it’s a much better experience.
You will also need to bust out your controller for this one, because while using a keyboard is certainly possible, the controls are horrid. Using WASD to move just feels unnatural in a game like this. In addition to that, occasionally the arrow keys must be used to navigate menus and not the WASD keys. It’s completely sporadic and frustrating to have to switch between keys just because the game says so. The same goes with controllers: sometimes you must use the d-pad for menu navigation instead of the joystick.
There is no mouse support, even for menus, which is unfortunate. Originally I had assumed that the Wii version used the pointer for something, but evidently that was never true. It’s a shame no effort was put in to add mouse support into the PC version, since the aiming line for sending out citizens feels awful. It’s very rigid and I’ve sent people in the wrong direction enough times to feel quite frustrated.
Make sure you choose your control method in the pre-launch menu, because switching mid-game isn’t possible. At least after choosing your controller, all of the in-game prompts are correct. I primarily played with an Xbox One controller and had no issues other than the movement feeling janky, but really that’s just the game itself. Everything is limited to an eight-direction input and damn it feels stilted.
There are other niggling issues as well. The camera takes for-ev-er to start moving and there’s no option for sensitivity. There’s also plenty of terrible-looking scrolling text slowly crawling across the screen, obscuring vision, and looking jittery as all hell. Seriously, it can’t even scroll smoothly. If you take the time to watch it, which isn’t hard since there is almost always text scrolling and many times you’re simply waiting for things to happen, you’ll notice that the text shimmies back and forth while scrolling.
Technically, Little King’s Story is playable on PC. That’s about as far as I’d be willing to go. It is certainly not an enjoyable experience, which is a shame because so many people recommend the game itself. It seems quirky, interesting, and mechanically interesting, but I’m not willing to stick with this port for dozens of hours hoping that some of that charm shines through the muck and mire.
[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]
