Fieldlikes: Queen's Domain

Earlier this week, I picked up and played through the majority of Queen's Domain, a spiritual successor to King's Field. If you're unfamiliar, King's Field was one of From Software's original forays into the western-style gothic action RPGs all the way back on the PS1. I myself never got into the series that much as that style of first-person exploration games never quite appealed to me.

So Queen's Domain was sort of a first for me. After seeing someone compare it more to a weird form of Metroid Prime I became much more intensely interested, picked it up and marathoned my way through most of the game. My impressions on the game are...varied, to say the least. This blog will contain a lot of spoilers especially for the late game, and the game certainly Goes Places so this is your first and only warning if you have your eyes on it yourself. Mainly it's because I can't easily take screenshots anymore without the UI itself explicitly spoiling things, so it is what it is.

A Whole Field To Play

Queen's Domain plays deceptively simply at first: Each weapon has a regular swing and then a special move it can perform. In combat you have a 'power bar' which empties with most moves you can perform, and this power bar dictates how much damage your swing does. Attempt to spam attacks and you'll find yourself dealing literally no damage. Skyrim this is not. Weapons also have damage types: impact, slash and pierce. These types matter quite a bit as trying to use a slash-type weapon on a slash-resistant enemy is an exercise in futility.

Ranged options quickly open up as well, as you unlock left-handed tools which can allow you to throw things like daggers or axes for additional damage. These tools charge over time and while their usage is often very simple (just chuck as many of them as quickly as possible as an opener or when available) having an option to fight from range is incredibly important for playing safe. Fighting more than one enemy at a time can become very precarious so caution is always needed to try and lure enemies out to an advantageous location.

You can hold up to three ranged tools and three weapons at a time, and for most of the time I constantly swapped between each set. Weapons can have special abilities which are charged over time, or in combat, or on hit all of which can have specific utility so you're often juggling weapons to keep them juiced or to use that utility as needed. For example, one of the first couple of items I bought in the game was the Cestus and the Spiked Buckler. I was initially interested in the Cestus because I love fist weapons only to discover that it was there that they hid the double jump for the game, and used it to break a lot of the typical routing. The Spiked Buckler on the other hand did a bit less damage, but the special let you parry which was invaluable in dealing with certain annoying enemies.

Combat movement is generally fairly restricted so fighting involves carefully orchestrated movements to weave in and out of enemy attack range, positioning yourself for a good hit and then backing off. Your attacks are very stubby but thankfully so are your enemies, so every hit you take always feels like you overstepped just a bit.

(an example of one of my favorite and most used weapons in the game, the parry buckler)

The core mechanic of the game for both traversal and combat movement is a quick wind dash forward. In order to leave the tutorial zone you defeat a boss and are granted a mythical sword with wind powers called Endu. At first it only has one crystal letting you dash a short distance, but eventually you unlock up to 5 letting you move further and further horizontally. This has its own dedicated bind, so no need to have it equipped to dash.

And then there's guns.

Yes, the game gives you guns. Outright rifles, rocket launchers, beam cannons. These are tied to a specific battery resource which you unlock at roughly the midpoint of the game which keeps them from overtaking swords and shields and what not. But still, they become a core part of your arsenal and another resource to juggle in the middle of a fight. The combat (mostly) stays relatively fun despite suddenly giving you Gun.

Combat in my opinion is the strongest point of Queen's Domain even though it seems rather content to throw it out the window later in the game. A shame, but a point I'll revisit here in a bit.

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The story certainly exists. It's not something that'll wow anyone nor do I think it's even the point beyond giving some context to the world you explore. It's perfectly utilitarian.

The king has gone missing. He and a small contingent of soldiers went out to try and stop the queen Siraatsu from using her dark magics to control the world or something and never return. So you as the prince decide to follow in his footsteps, only to get suitably owned as you get close to the island and wash up on the beach.

You'll scour the island top to bottom looking for loot, progression and the king. Exploring a corrupted Tower of Knowledge slowly turning into the Meat Planet, to the depths of the island's mausoleum. And of course there's a poison swamp, there always has to be a poison swamp.

(one of the first areas i focused on trying to enter, the tower of knowledge)

The mid-game twist comes from finally locating your father who tells you that you must see the truth of the island for yourself. You fall into what is essentially the island's ventilation shaft and begin fighting drones firing bullets and swinging laser swords. You pick up your first gun and slowly descend into the Ancient World.

(a recreation of the first time i fell into the ancient world. i'm equipped with FIST)

Fantasy-worlds leading suddenly into modern edifice certainly isn't a new twist but I think it's performed well here. Depending on your progression through the game it's certainly possible to see hints of this earlier; one island in the game in particular has a ventilation shaft and rustic aesthetic to it that you can find early on with some smart movement.

The Queen's Flawed

For a good I would say 80% of the game I was having quite a bit of fun. Exploring new areas, finding new toys, fighting bosses. I'm a very thorough kind of player, one that enjoys going off the beaten path and marching through hard areas.

The problem is that as much as Queen's Domain actively encourages you to do so, the game falls apart the moment you do. It's not difficult to find yourself overleveling large swathes of the game, rendering bosses impotent and regular enemies yawn-inducing. The game gets easier the further you get into it, which makes finding new weapons no longer exciting because there's nothing worth challenging. It's sort of the opposite of the Dark Souls series where even though you certainly can overlevel earlier parts of the game there's still always something new to test yourself against.

So when I found myself against the final boss of the game, she melted into a puddle with a barrage of rockets and bullets. Nothing she could do was a threat to me. A disappointing climax to the game.

Made even more disappointing by it being a fake one. The moment the final rocket slammed into her face, my character suddenly flew up to her with his sword and got promptly impaled. Then the game kicked me out to the beach and told me 'that was merely one ending, find the others chump'.

I'm not against this sort of thing on principle. However at the point that this occurred I had explored most of the game, found all of the areas, thoroughly looted and cleaned things up. Now I was being asked to do more on top: I was to find a new lens for my mask which would allow me to unlock seals for another door. Roughly 8 seals in total, all of which were hidden in random locations across the entire world. With combat now thoroughly trivialized the game expecting me to just wander around the same areas aimlessly playing the Triforce Hunt for the sake of unlocking a better ending felt...insulting? Rude?

I took a brief look around and unlocked a couple of seals while finding some new weapons which were now pointless to use and shooting enemies which died instantly. This was my point earlier about the game throwing combat out the window. It's a damn shame, because what makes combat work in these games is that it's the edge exploration needs: It makes the world feel threatening, it slows you down and makes you take in the details and it gives purpose to the tools you find.

It was here that I stopped playing the game. I don't know if I'll find it in me to return to the game and push for the other endings. I don't even really care that much that the first ending is a bad ending; I just find myself disappointed that the game didn't quite know when to reign itself in and end on a high note.

I can't say I didn't have fun with the game while it lasted, but it's hard for me to say if I'd recommend it to others at this point knowing that they'll get slammed by that same wall. In either case, Queen's Domain is on Steam for $20.