comfy doom and gloom. while its early parts feel small and a little oppressive, i still find it really easy to get into the tempo of king's field 4 and its slow-dance combat. and this one's even sludgier than the first 3 — which, if anything, might be attributed to the dreamlike, harpsichord-laden, sometimes even giallo-esque atmosphere i tend to associate with fromsoft's unique dungeon crawling action rpgs preceding demon's souls. of course, metaphysical dark fantasy mythopoeia remains the soul (forgive me) of their work, but king's field 4 distinguishes itself. being a game with some gnarly ps2 interlacing didn't hurt, if you ask me. if you can get used to the controls, this game is frankly quite refreshingly low-key (and i enjoy revisiting it).