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i love @evergrace2000's non-souls fromsoftware poll it's so funny and interesting. i love seeing the demographics

You know, I'm surprised more folks aren't clamoring for a revival of FromSoft's Lost Kingdoms series.

Like, "Mons game with the look and feel of a Soulsborne" seems like it'd be a fan favorite/license to print money, so even beyond those games' general obscurity I'm surprised it never really comes up...

Lost Kingdoms monsters that I like

Lately I've been playing a gamecube gem called Lost Kingdoms. It's kind of like if the Dark Souls crew got drunk and marathoned Cardcaptor Sakura and made a game about it.

Hang on, I can talk about this without mentioning Dark Souls.

It's kind of like if a bunch of Japanese young men obsessed with JR Tolkien growing up got drunk and marathoned Cardcaptor Sakura and made a game about it.

I want to talk about the monsters. Not necessarily the 'best' ones or even my personal favourite ones. Specifically the ones that made me unconsciously do my babytalk voice every time they appeared onscreen. Same as when you're out and about and see a cat you recognise.

This is banshee. Her card art shows her looking kind of like a nun in bondage? That's already very cool imagery, sex appeal aside. Sex appeal included just makes her better.

Look closely at her in game model, you can see she has a wispy tail like a ghost. But the affect of the tail becoming slightly transparent towards the end is not very visible.

When I tried showing my wife another of my favourite cards, a worm, she thought that that was this one. Without visible transparency, banshee does kind of look like a worm. Maybe she would have been a better monster as a worm! But ghost girl is good too.

And yeh, I took these pictures myself. There's probly better ones out there online, but I wanted to get the pictures of the actual cards I had collected, the friends I made on my journey with this game. They are my babies. They are my girls.

This is carbuncle. Maybe the first monster in this game who I really fell in love with. We're already off to a great start. Some kind of armadillo or pangolin with long floppy ears and forehead gemstone.

What you're not getting in pictures though is the noise. This creature makes a kind of sea animal singing noise? Like a gentle playful seagull. Very sweet.

I filled my deck with as many carbuncle as I could in the early game. Was useful back then. Sadly doesn't keep pace with the difficulty of later game levels, so I don't have as many decks with baby carbuncle in.

This is cockatrice. She's kind of, the first secret boss you can find in the game? Sort of? To me, I think she was the first notable challenge I really overcame. Also, some of the starting game monsters can be leveled up to evolve into her. So I feel like she's almost my starter monster if that makes sense?

Very cute. Very sweet. Though of course a pretty standard cockatrice. Turns you to stone. Very useful in early levels. Still useful in later levels.

Crystal rose. Pretty lady. Boobies.

She reminds me of the flower girl in Castlevania Symphony of the Night. One of the few characters in media to give me distant aching girl feelings from childhood all through to adulthood. I wish I was her.

Sweet baby rheebus. Kind of a useless card? My introduction to this card is that sea monk can be leveled up and evolve into rheebus. Lost Kingdoms plays some nasty tricks on you like this. Rheebus is very good, but also a weaker version of sea monk. Allowing sea monk to evolve into rheebus makes your deck worse.

A lot of evolutions are like this. Monsters can evolve into weaker monsters and totally waste all of the experience points you painfully collected. Honestly, I hate games that do this. But I choose to enjoy Lost Kingdoms for its other better qualities.

I've never ran rheebus in my deck. Weak and not very useful card. But I do love her all the same.

Any time I find a rheebus lying on the ground in levels, I pick her up and play her. I know she's weak, but it's a free rheebus. I want to give her the chance to come out and play outside.

She's like, what? A kitty cat with goat horns and covered in rich foilage? And she has a cyclops eye that looks very dorky in the ingame graphics.

I'm not sure how much of that is part of her body. Or if it's maybe obscuring her true body. Is that eyeball even hers, or is it the plant's eyeball?

Cute girl. Pretty girl. Beautiful lady. She's a bird. Birdy bird. Birdy girl lady.

Siren. I love her. She's great.

In the game, she stands perfectly still and damages anything that gets close to. No luring in and enchanting and eating alive like you'd expect from the namesake. She's more of an attack musician than a hungry hypnotic predator.

Maybe they could have played into that angle more. But I just enjoy that the artists created a cute or horny character design where the only human element is the head. Makes me feel like fromsoft and myself perhaps share some similar tastes.

This monster used to be my favourite until just last night. It's whip worm. The best monster in the game, bar none.

Lost Kingdoms is set up in such a way, that you have to be aware of a number of factors when building your deck and playing your cards.

-One issue is that each card has a limited number of attacks and missing even one attack is very costful for you.

-A second is that each card costs a resource called magic stones and starts eating your health if you run out of stones.

-A third is that you always have two objectives. Defeat the enemies, and explore the level to find more cards, which requires using up your precious attacks on destructible terrain.

Whip worm is the complete package. She melts enemy health even when she's fighting against type advantage. She costs so few stones you won't notice spending them. And, her attack involves her spinning around you and damaging everything that comes near. So you're not limited to just a few attacks, she just pours out constant damage everywhere you walk, destroying destructible terrain with little cost and meeting both main objectives at the same time.

The creature herself is a funny one. I'm not entirely sure what I'm looking at? She never comes out of that shell thingy so no idea if it's her body or a thing she found on the ground somewhere and made her house.

You can see in the card art she's got those big beefy arm muscles, but she doesn't punch or scratch or anything. In game, you can see she tucks herself in to that shell thingy. The only part that comes out is the tail.

Is she actually a worm? Who knows. I love her.

Oh, another little detail. Carbuncle is also a monster who spins around you and attacks everything close, and she can level up and evolve into whip worm! Since carbuncle is an early game monster, and she was my first favourite, I got this nightmarish game breaking brute quite early on!

This is tiger mage. And last night I learned something about her that shocked me utterly. I sincerely believe that this is the greatest monster I've ever seen in my life.

In the game, she's also another game breaker. You summon her, she waits to pounce enemies with somewhat decent damage, and she halves the stone cost of all cards.

As soon as she becomes available, you've gotta run tiger mage in your deck, surely? Some tough late game enemies will kill her easily but most enemies actually struggle with her, and she's amazing support for all other cards.

And the monster is cute, right? A little kitty cat tiger wearing a mage robe. That's so cute!

That's wrong. Look closer.

I somehow never noticed until playing the game last night when I happened to stand next to my kitty tiger mage and zoom the camera in while waiting for her to murder a goblin. Please take a look at these pictures.

The tiger isn't actually wearing that mage robe at all. There appears to be some sort of mage wearing that mage robe.

Except this also is wrong. The "mage" riding the tiger, hangs limply on the tiger's back most of the time, and only occasionally puppets up to cast a spell for attacks. She has no face. No hands. What exactly is this creature? Is this a creature?

Another disturbing element, and really the reason why I never saw the mage in the tiger mage before, is that the tiger herself is so animated. She growls. She leaps and pounces. She rears up for attack during the attack animation. I always assumed the fireball came from her mouth and the robe was just flailing around from the energy and movement.

At first glance, you have what looks like a wizard riding a tiger, but look closer and it's more like a tiger playing with a doll, right? As if the tiger is pretending that they are the animal companion or pet of a more powerful creature who's the actual monster?

To add to this, there's one more non-cat element. Those bat-like wings. I always figured they were the tiger's wings.

But if you look at my screenshots, you can clearly see the wings lift when the "mage" "stands up". Those are the "mage's" wings.

So this thing that appears limp and lifeless most of the time and has no hands and no face, does actually have at least some partial organic components?

What is tiger mage? Who is tiger mage? Which one is the tiger and which one is the mage? Is the tiger the mage?

I don't know if this is a reference to an established fairy tale creature or game monster or something that I'm not familiar with. Would love to know more if it was.

Finally is doppelganger. She might be my last favourite card. The last one who's capable of making me absent mindedly blurt out "It's doppelganger! :D" every time I see her.

All the other cards left for me to collect at this point are all big divine and deific. Have huge stone costs, often have effects that are very flashy but ultimately actually terrible in gameplay, and the monster design is just like an animal, a monster, looking kind of mean. Not girl. Not baby. And not my own personal aesthetic of mean either.

Doppelganger is very useful in gameplay, and she's a doppelganger, right? She can take any form she wants. But she takes your form! She's a cute girl! I love her. I also enjoy the weirdness of the player character finding a card that clearly has her on it. Carcaptor Sakura had one of these too, and she had a base form that the card art showed of what she looks like before she copies you.

I like doppelganger's card art. Thanks to the awkward use of colour, it looks distinctly like she is checking out her bum in the mirror to make sure she is getting the correct amount of undies rising up and skirt rising down.

But actually, that's not her bum. It's a magical artifact that this game calls the runestone. It's just an unfortunate choice of colour. Skin colour on a round surface and clothing colour on a strap like material. It's not her bum.

Though if it were her bum, then I would appreciate the irony(?) of a doppelganger copying your form and then checking herself out in a mirror. That's cute.

As you know, the legend of doppelgangers is that they are an omen of death. If you see someone who is your complete double, then it is a signal that soon you are going to die.

Lost Kingdoms represents this with doppelganger insta killing anything she touches. Including you. Let's have a see of what that looks like.

Messing about with the models resource dot com rip of that Princess Katia model from Lost Kingdoms. Started doing my usual thing of deleting things at random and seeing what breaks so I learn how the model is put together and how I can fiddle with it.

And I have found the clothes layer. I have found how to delete her clothes. And....

Her eyes?? Are boobies??

i'm a little late, but happy 20th anniversary to lost kingdoms 2, one of my favorite games of all time!! ✨💙 (i made sure to make this one match the anniversary piece i made last year!)

Keep reading

quick portraits i made to use in cards for my lost kingdoms 2 anniversary piece!