There’s a bit in Bruckheimer cheesefest Armageddon where Billy Bob Thornton expresses his regret at not being able to join his comrades in jetting off into space thanks to his crippling leg injury. My Life As A King effectively sets you in a similar role – forcing you to watch on from the sidelines as a group of adventurers do the traditional FF dungeon-exploring, monster-slaying stuff while you troll around your home town, talking to people about bakeries and moogles about taxes. This might sound astoundingly dull, but after a few days of simplistic micromanagement, Square-Enix’s latest grabs you by the testicular area and refuses to let go.

As the titular monarch, it’s your job to rebuild a village with a whopping great crystal in the middle of it. Turns out the poisonous miasma referenced in previous CC games has dispersed, and now the world has to attempt to get back to normal. You’re imbued with the power of architek, an appropriately-named skill which allows you to conjure buildings out of thin air. After you’ve thrown up a few houses, though, you won’t be able to do this any more. You need elementite, and this can only be obtained from the various dungeons surrounding your new hamlet. And thus you send out willing adventurers (who must first be commissioned) to act upon your behests, spelled out on a bulletin board in the middle of the town. How to pay for this? Well, by the aforementioned taxes of course – here called tithes, which are collected from your residents, as long as you keep them happy. At first, your average day will be spent wandering around talking to people while you wait for your explorers to return. The trails they blaze will get longer and more arduous, but reap ever greater rewards – as long as you make sure they’re well experienced, fully-equipped with the latest weapons, and in a group in particularly labyrinthine dungeons (so as to avoid getting lost, natch), then your town will expand accordingly. This then provides more things to do during each day – even simply reading the brief synopses of their quests is enjoyable in itself - keeping you both busy and utterly, utterly addicted.

At 1500 points plus a heap extra if you fancy utilising the skills of the other three races from the series (Clavats are the only ones available for the initial outlay), My Life As A King is comfortably the most expensive WiiWare game, and thus presents the biggest monetary risk – if you’re not keen, then you’ll feel ripped off. But if you’re happy to stay at home while others get their hands dirty on your behalf (a bit like a videogame Alan Sugar) then you’ll find this the longest-lasting WiiWare launch title of the lot.

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This entry was posted on Monday, May 19th, 2008 at 6:37 am by Chris Schilling
Columns & Opinion, WiiWare.