I got my King's Field Friday night.  I have to say it is a lot of
fun.  First of all, on the surface it looks similar to Doom.  I
never liked Doom: the mindless mass killing, the zipping around 
dungeons at high speed, the lack of skill it takes to run-n-shoot,
etc.  And it makes me nauseas.  [NOTE: Don't flame me because I 
don't care.  This is my opinion of Doom, let me have it.]  

That being said, King's Field is a nice step up.  NO NAUSEA - I like
it already.  There is actually a technique to fighting creatures which 
isn't difficult to pick up on.  The complaints of slowness from other 
people are nothing to be worried about.  The game runs at a nice speed 
and you wouldn't want it to be any faster anyway.  When retracing your 
steps, you can use the Run feature to zip through things quickly.  

The music does get old rather quickly, but you can turn it off if 
you want to.  There is different theme music for different areas,
but it is nothing exciting.  

The graphics are pretty nice.  The NPCs have no features on their
faces (although they are shaped w/ a nose, etc), which is a down
side.. but they are still nice to look at.  The whole game is kind
of dark and spooky, and after a few hours of play I was kind of 
getting into it.  I jumped when I rounded a corner and saw a monster
coming down the stairs right at me.  Creature movements are very 
smooth and they look good and realistic.  The ghosts are kind of 
cheesy looking, but seeing them the first time was kind of freaky.
Looking up and down is an awesome feature, nice for stairs and 
short/tall monsters.

I would agree with other posts that the plot is pretty thin.  There
are NPCs who ask you to do tasks (mini plot lines), but as a whole
it's just a hack-n-slash RPG.  However, there are a variety of items
and spells that you can pick up that keep you going farther.

In conclusion, for a Doom-turned-RPG game, it is well worth the 
money.  There's no way to finish this game fast, so it will last
you a while.  I would definitely recommend it.


!*!*!*!*!*!*
And most importantly.. if you like RPGs and want RPGs to be released
in the U.S., show the game companies this fact by increasing their
sales.  Nothing will bring them faster than the success of previous
RPGs.  Show them that we actually do buy these things, and then we'll
even get FF7. :)
!*!*!*!*!*!*


These are my opinions and should be weighted accordingly.  Hope my
viewpoint is useful to someone. :)

-Jay Thaler