This King's Field-like carries a confident, grungy aesthetic that recalls the low-fidelity horror of old Playstation games. But its presentation makes cover for a shallow game with no edge or interesting ideas. The game's premise, that of entering a corrupted feudal Japanese estate/castle to uncover a source of evil, feels stuck in first gear from the outset. There's no tension or escalation in its design (nor storytelling). The first hour passes much like the last. I wandered, lost, more than a couple of times. It wasn't a puzzle (there's scarcely any) or demons that stumped me: it was sliding doors that looked like walls. Despite its grotesque appearance, the game's combat is neat and tidy, as are the levels that give the feeling of being in a labyrinth, but are in fact dull interiors filled with imposter doors. (Nothing evokes fear of the unknown like a clearly marked map). Some ideas are half-kidnapped from other games and left to shamble. There are level transition door animations, but these are make-believe loading screens, and there's too much brawling to evoke terror for most of its playtime, so I began skipping them entirely not an hour in. Demons reappear between levels, but the game respawns the annoying ones, so there's hardly even a meta cheesing strategy. One persistent nonthreatening horror became so familiar that, when the opportunity to banish it forever came up, I merely shrugged--I was at the finale anyway. The sense of adventure or descent into madness from 1 hour spent in a Thief or Dark Souls level is not found in this game's entirety. Nor are the combat tactics/attrition and variety of RPG dungeon crawlers. I do not wholly regret my time with LoTDK, but it is a letdown. The older, rougher games it draws inspiration from are all more worthy of attention.
