I've never actually played this game, I've just played the original and have had to research this one for the wiki. Let me tell you, this game is offensively bad. Let me explain.
Little King's Story (Wii) was a game made from the minds of passionate developers such as Yoshiro Kimura. The characters are layered, and sometimes assholes, but never evil. In fact, many of them are actually based on personal struggles the developers have had in their lives or people they had met. The story has a lot of dark but well-explored themes, and was truly aiming to be different. The game was published under Marvelous, who unfortunately were starting to exhibit shady practices and poor treatment of their staff, which contributed to LKS doing worse in Japan. The main debs behind the game cut ties with the company, but the IP stayed with them.
Marvelous then decided only two years later to use the LKS name to fulfil a licensing agreement with Konami. They created this game, New Little King's Story, by simply modifying the original game's code like a ROM hack in an attempt to "JRPG-ify" it. The characters are now turned into anime tropes, and have turned from lovable into outright disgusting people. The themes of loneliness and overambition in a story with no real villain of the first game have been replaced with a story about the power of magical crystals to defeat "The Nightmare". They took something special, someone else's work, and tore it apart to repurpose it as a generic game to grab a market and fulfil a deal. I don't think any gameplay additions could possibly change my mind on how gross this is. Even the original's director and producer said that when he wasn't even asked to work on this, he cried. This is desecration of art. If you've played this game and you enjoyed some semblance of it, chances are you'll enjoy the real Little King's Story a lot more, so I implore you to please play the original on Wii and see how special it is.
Little King's Story (Wii) was a game made from the minds of passionate developers such as Yoshiro Kimura. The characters are layered, and sometimes assholes, but never evil. In fact, many of them are actually based on personal struggles the developers have had in their lives or people they had met. The story has a lot of dark but well-explored themes, and was truly aiming to be different. The game was published under Marvelous, who unfortunately were starting to exhibit shady practices and poor treatment of their staff, which contributed to LKS doing worse in Japan. The main debs behind the game cut ties with the company, but the IP stayed with them.
Marvelous then decided only two years later to use the LKS name to fulfil a licensing agreement with Konami. They created this game, New Little King's Story, by simply modifying the original game's code like a ROM hack in an attempt to "JRPG-ify" it. The characters are now turned into anime tropes, and have turned from lovable into outright disgusting people. The themes of loneliness and overambition in a story with no real villain of the first game have been replaced with a story about the power of magical crystals to defeat "The Nightmare". They took something special, someone else's work, and tore it apart to repurpose it as a generic game to grab a market and fulfil a deal. I don't think any gameplay additions could possibly change my mind on how gross this is. Even the original's director and producer said that when he wasn't even asked to work on this, he cried. This is desecration of art. If you've played this game and you enjoyed some semblance of it, chances are you'll enjoy the real Little King's Story a lot more, so I implore you to please play the original on Wii and see how special it is.