Lost Kingdoms Review
Story 5/10
Soundtrack 6/10
Graphics 8/10
Gameplay 7/10
Controls 8/10
Overall 6/10
Lost Kingdoms is an action adventure game that uses an ingame card system as the way to attack/defend. It's one of the most unique RPGs for the Gamecube and it is definitely worth checking out. Especially if you like the Dark Souls series because the same company that made Dark Souls, FromSoftware, also made Lost Kingdoms!
Despite the really low reviews Lost Kingdoms got I strongly recommend you check it out as well as Lost Kingdoms II. The second imo is better than the first so if you don't want to take a risk with starting a game you may dislike but still wanna try this series, try II.
Story 5/10
The game opens with a substance known as the Black Fog engulfing the kingdom. The fog consumes towns, people and all signs of life and nothing is known to be able to escape it. The games follows Katia, our protagonist, who uses the power of the Runestone which is what allows her to use cards. Overall the story to this game is pretty straight forward and it is fed to you almost entirely through text which a lot of people will end up spamming X through anyway.
Soundtrack 6/10
This game doesn't have a really memorable soundtrack, in fact I can't even remember if the levels have music! The battles do and that's the only catchy song throughout the entire game.
Graphics 8/10
The graphics of this game aren't that good, even for their time you could really tell the developers were pretty lazy. When you're in a building nothing outside is shown, it's just like your building is floating in an invisible void. You can see what I mean in some of the screenshots for the game. Otherwise though, the game does look good. No graphical issues either when playing.
Gameplay 7/10
This is where Lost Kingdoms shines and shines it does. The whole concept of the game is rather unique, the whole battling with cards and having to build a decent deck as you go, if that doesn't interest you then you'll definitely hate this game. However, if it does interest you, you're in for a really interesting experience. I beat the game in 6 hours played time but I went back and did a lot of the bonus dungeons/mastered my deck and brought my total play time up to around 10 - 12 hours.
That isn't very much for a game, but that's how long it took for me to get bored. The time I spent playing the game I had a total blast though.
Controls 8/10
Honestly, sometimes I just don't know what to say in this section. The controls for the game are perfect for me, not a single complaint. It's very fluid and barely even needs a tutorial.
Overall 6/10
Lost Kingdoms is an extremely unqiue experience and honestly feels like mostly an experimental game. You can really tell the company made the game hastily not knowing whether or not their audience would like it. It really feels like they just didn't put in the amount of depth that a normal game would have. The story takes about 6hrs to complete and the side missions another 3 or so. After that the game's over unless you want to collect all the Red Fairies (why?).
That said though, those few hours you spend playing are well spent and quite a bit of fun. We really haven't seen a game like Lost Kingdoms and that's a shame because of how much fun the card system is. If you're really interested in trying out the Lost Kingdoms series I highly recommend you start with the second game as it is way more polished than the first. How to play will stick with you from the first Lost Kingdoms to the second or vice versa so playing both back to back or within a short time frame is highly recommended.