Lost Kingdoms II Q&A

When the original Lost Kingdoms was released for the GameCube last year it proved to be a surprise hit on the role-playing-game-deprived system. You took the role of Princess Katia and set out to confront an evil force overwhelming the kingdom. Although the Lost Kingdom's story was fairly standard for the genre, it proved to be an engaging experience. The game's unique gameplay blended traditional third-person action RPG mechanics with elements from collectible card games. For the game's sequel, Lost Kingdoms II, developer From Software has refined the gameplay quite a bit. The game was first shown off at last year's Tokyo Game Show and boasted a number of graphical and gameplay improvements. We had the chance to talk to the game's producer at From Software, Atsushi Taniguchi, about how the game is coming together.

GameSpot: Looking back, how satisfied were you with how the original Lost Kingdoms turned out? How much did that affect the development of Lost Kingdoms II?

Atsushi Taniguchi: With the original Lost Kingdoms, we set out with the goal of creating a fusion of card games and action games. Since there were no similar titles and this concept existed only in my head, the other members of the development team were always facing some kind of hardship. However, the greater the difficulty one faces, the stronger the feeling of achievement. So the completion of development, after numerous meetings and revisions, was a truly joyous occasion. However, there was a downside to all the positive response to this new game system that we had created. We were so eager to create something completely new that we lost sight of some of the finer details, and for this we were sharply criticized. But we worked to create this new genre of which we are very proud and could not let this be the last word, so we began planning Lost Kingdoms II. For Lost Kingdoms II, we began by addressing all the things that players of the original pointed out to us and then began adding new elements in order to give the player an even more enjoyable experience.

Lost Kingdoms II features refined graphics.

GS: How much has the gameplay changed from the original Lost Kingdoms?

AT: In order to enhance the player's sense of freedom and to provide a more expansive game experience, we eliminated limited battle areas for Lost Kingdoms II. This time, enemies are always wandering around the map, and you never know when they might attack. And since cards are always available, knowing when to use which cards is the true judge of the player's skill. Accordingly, we refined the camera to give the player a better perspective on their circumstances. We feel that these changes make the game more action-oriented and each battle more exciting.

GS: Why did you decide to make those changes?

AT: Ultimately, I envisioned creating a game that people would not forget. The reason that I decided to make these changes for Lost Kingdoms II was to accomplish this.

You'll find new cards to use in the game.

GS: How challenging was it to implement them? How much work had to be done to the game engine to accommodate them?

AT: We did not reuse much of the game engine from Lost Kingdoms as is. This was because of the sweeping revisions to gameplay and the extensive enhancements to the user interface that we made. All in all, it required about the same amount of work that we would normally put into creating a whole new title from scratch. Considering that we have much more game volume than the original and we added new members to the development team, it probably ended up requiring more work than the original Lost Kingdoms.