Thereâs a sign on a wall early on in Kingâs Field IV that says, âBeware: Poison.â

When you encounter it, you havenât really been in anything Iâd describe as a dungeon just yet. Itâs marking the entrance to a mine that you need to enter to obtain some items required for progression. Because it was so early in the game I, naively, thought this meant there would maybe be some poison floor to avoid, or one enemy with poison on it. You know, as a sort of introduction to the concept.

I was a fool.

Immediately down the first corridor, thereâs a stack of like 10 slimes that will poison you if you so much as breathe near them. Cure the poison with an antidote, and they immediately do it again. Beyond them are zombies that spit poison on the ground and do way too much damage if they hit you with their weapons. Thereâs a mushroom spewing poison in a radius around it, a poison lake you will fall into repeatedly because of how hard it is to navigate, and a little further on, a room that just poisons you. Randomly. Just for standing there!

âBeware: Poisonââhow trite! Kingâs Field IV is out to kill you. I donât think everyone will enjoy this. Somehow, I did. For about ten hours so far. I thought Iâd be able to get through more of the game during this time than I did, but I misunderstood how many times Iâd have to attempt that damn poison mine.

Kingâs Field IV opens with an absolutely sick introductory cutscene that lays out the story, which is very âAnd The Green Grass Grows All Around.â In a dense, colorless forest is the cursed land. In the cursed land is an ancient city. In the ancient city is a warning. The warning says, âGrave misfortune will befall those who behold the idol that stares into the darkness!â Neat!

That idol was apparently gifted to a king, his land got cursed as a result, he sent a bunch of soldiers to give the idol back, they all died, and now youâthe princeâare stuck delivering it. Humorously, the idol sits innocently in your inventory the entire game, and you can sell it to some hapless merchant if you like, though youâll have to go back and get it later if you want to finish Kingâs Field IV.

Kingâs Field IV is brutal. Some of that brutality is in service of great fun, and even comedy. One of the first things youâre likely to do in the game is walk into an invisible lava pit and perish instantly. Youâll (probably) never do it a second time, and very little progress is lost, but itâs a hilariously rude way for Kingâs Field IV to educate you on its own sick cruelty. I scream-laughed in a dungeon when, while trying to escape a skeleton shooting arrows at me, I ran across a bridge toward a set of double doors. Just as I got close, the doors swung open, revealing another skeleton foe emerging from the darkness beyond with a goofy grin and a silly gait. A spring of water in the poison dungeon will cure your poison and heal your HP if you drink, but not written on any sign is the fact that if you get too greedy (which you will), eventually the spring will run out and youâll be left on your own. Hope you brought antidote!

Some of the gameâs brutality, however, sucks. Especially when youâre at a low level. Kingâs Field IVâs character movement is agonizingly slow and imprecise. You move at a glacial pace. If you need to cross a slowly sinking wooden board across a poison lake, Iâm so sorry, but you will almost certainly either not make it across fast enough to avoid sinking into the poison or you will accidentally veer just off-course enough to plop yourself in anyway. When you die of poison, it will take you forever to get from the last save point back to where you were, both because you walk so slow, but also because any combat between point A and B takes forever. You spend a lot of time moving forward slowly, lazily swinging your weapon, often missing enemy hitboxes entirely, slowly backing away so you donât get hit, waiting for your stamina bar to refill so you donât take a damage penalty, then slowly moving in for a second hit, and so forth. Better weapons, level-ups, and magic help alleviate this somewhat as the game progresses, but thatâs also when the enemies get more aggressive and you probably die more often.

Iâd be angrier about all that if Kingâs Field IV didnât bring such excellent vibes with it. Itâs simultaneously hilarious and melancholy. Its protagonist is carrying around an âIdol of Sorrowâ that curses anyone who beholds it: depressing, and so on-the-nose bad that I canât help but laugh. Its first NPC is the most weepy man ever, sitting on a rock bemoaning his fate. Next to him is a shop owned by some guy named David Bunch, the least-appropriate grimdark medieval fantasy name Iâve ever heard. In a hamlet nearby is a woman dying of a disease; her husband, unbeknownst to her, is dead in a mine nearby, and her daughter is outside, bored and depressed next to the stupidest-looking medieval-drawing-ass dog Iâve ever seen. At times this whole game feels like a joke to me, but itâs a joke Iâm in on and agreeable to even when Iâm (almost always) the butt of it.Musicâs great too. Atmospheric, lots of minor keys. A little repetitive after a while (you spend a lot of time in the same areas because of how slow you move) but still good. Listen to this:

I love how weird Kingâs Field IV is. While its veneer is that of an epic action-y adventure game, the actual process of playing it is a slow burn, an intriguing puzzle of figuring out where to go, what to do, and how to survive doing it. I think the tedium will probably grate with most folks, and I fully understand anyone who chucks the controller and gives up instantly the second they fall into that first, invisible lava pit. But the feeling of triumph when it finally clicks what Kingâs Field IV is asking of me, and when I finally execute it, mostly makes the struggles worth it. By golly, I think I might keep playing it, just so I can keep dying to it.

The story you just read is part of the 2002 edition of Warp Week, a Kotaku series that takes readers back to gaming’s past through a mix of time-dilated reviews, retrospectives, and on-the-ground reports.