Little King's Story
Overview -
Co-developed by Japanese companies Cing and Town Factory, 'Little King's Story' was released on the Wii in 2009 to rave reviews. A reimagining by Konami was released for the Vita in 2011 to decidedly less fanfare. The PC version, available now on Steam, GOG, and Humble, is an HD remaster of the original and handled by XSEED (the American division of Japanese publishing house Marvelous).
Video Review
'Little King's Story's visuals definitely look better than they did 7 years ago, but only in a modestly cleaned-up kind of way, not a full redraw. Things like menus and texts look sharp and crisp, but the character models and environments are still unflatteringly polygonal. Other surfaces, like the crayon drawings that occur in the cutscenes, are fuzzy and stretched out. We played 'Little King's Story' at 30 fps because the settings strongly discouraged 60, but XSEED has promised a day one patch that may fix it. 30 fps is perfectly adequate for a game of this nature anyways.
Audio Review
The music selection is palatable, with many old standards represented like Pomp and Circumstance and other recognizable classics at key points in the narrative. Voice acting is limited to babbling and the sound effects are decent except for one nonstop exclamation by the citizens that is so piercing and high-pitched that I had to mute the game to continue playing.
Final Thoughts
'Little King's Story' on PC is a shoddy port of a game that has not aged particularly well. The mouse and keyboard controls are a real pain, and the game is simple enough that they didn't have to be. The gameplay never excited me while I played, and even the trivial things like saving and navigating menus just exasperated me. Returning fans ought to appreciate having a PC version, (especially with so many Wiis seemingly now retired). For everybody else, I really don't have anything good to say about it, and that's surprising given how well it was received in 2009.
