REVIEW: Little Kings StoryWritten By Roy
We all know the Nintendo Wii is best known for its lean towards the more casual attempts at gaming. While there have been quite a few recent offerings aiming to bring more hardcore gaming to the console in the form of titles like House of the Dead: Overkill and Madworld, these haven’t been able to replicate the commercial success of the minigames collections and sport games which have made the Wii such an accessible console even for people who have never played a single game before.
This has led to some believing the Wii lacks depth as a system, but Little Kings Story is here to disprove that theory, offering some lengthy and deep gameplay without resorting to gimmicks or minigames. Even better, the game is incredibly original and even seasoned gamers won’t have seen anything quite like this before.
Visually though, Little Kings does share a lot of its style with other famous Nintendo games. It’s still bright, vibrant and undeniably cute. It still features lots of characters with oversized heads and strange visual characteristics. It still sounds and looks like it would be at home in a Japanese anime show.
At first glance, you could be mistaken for thinking Little Kings was just another Animal Crossing or Harvest Moon clone devoid of its own sense of gameplay or style. You shouldn’t be fooled by the visuals, however as Little Kings offers a completely different gaming experience.
The premise of the game is running a kingdom, rather than being a part in it. On the PC or 360 this would usually involve some sort of heavy handed strategy from the start, but at the beginning of Little Kings you’re given a rather rubbish castle and a few advisors and simply sent off to meet your loyal subjects.
Your subjects talk and act like those you might find in Animal Crossing but in Little Kings they actually serve a greater purpose. You can force them to follow you and guide your hapless citizens towards a number of different jobs such as soldier or farmer. As the game progresses, more specialised jobs become available.
The strategy of the game is to make sure you have enough of each different citizen for each task and to do this you need to balance your own kingdoms economy with its defensive capabilities. Soon enough you’ll be building houses, gaining more citizens, gaining powerups, farming and fighting.
Eventually this all becomes second nature though thanks to the oddball story and charm of your characters, it rarely becomes a dull experience even despite its epic length. While there’s some repetition it doesn’t feel like the grinding you have to do in many similar games just to advance to the next plot piece or area.
The game isn’t without faults however and if you aren’t a fan of things cute and weird, you’ll probably find some of bosses and races you’ll meet in the game more annoying than interesting. For some reason there’s also no auto save feature at all and you have to return to your castle in order to manually save. This can be very annoying when you’re in the middle of doing something more important.
However, providing you’re the type of gamer that enjoys bright visuals and quirkiness — which is likely if you own the Wii – it’s quite likely that Little Kings will be your type of game. It’s got enough strategy to stop it being ‘casual’ in every sense, but it retains all of the fun and addictive qualities as any title offered on the Wii. It proves that the system can still provide the goods in terms of quality, lengthy and enjoyable gaming experiences beyond the next instalment of Ravin’ Rabbids or Sports Party
9/10
The News Release was written by: Roy who produces professional