Ok, hear me out; what if Kirby & The Forgotten Land and the creature creator from Spore had a baby, but the creature creator was actually 3D Mario Paint and the baby was actually a competent action-adventure RPG with monster collecting?
There's a lot to unpack here at Graffiti Kingdom, and it's mainly because the gameplay is such a breath of fresh air. The core premise is that you are some lazy prince who let loose a demon that has wrought destruction by kidnapping your parents and transforming your kingdom into Howl's Moving Castle but somehow more kiddy and maniacal. As such, you must now free your parents and (reluctantly) your kingdom with the help of a blue cat thing called Pastel with your magic brush, and transform into your own magical creations to fight back against other graffiti monsters and save the world. I'm not going to pretend I completely understand the narrative (especially since I haven't played Magic Pengel, the game in the series before this so I don't know if they're intrinsically connected by story), but I do think the story is just cheesy and serviceable enough to get by.
So let me try and explain the core gameplay, starting with the drawing program. You can draw your own monsters with the internal creature creator; you basically draw a 2D shape on a 3D plane that you can rotate, and the game's engine interpolates that into a 3D object that can serve as the body, an arm, a leg, a wing, etc. It's actually quite easy to do once you get the hang of it, and you can manually set up connectors to link your body parts however you'd like. Once you've drawn up your parts, you can select them to set their functionality which will determine what attacks you'll have access to when you go editing your moveset. The drawing program does remind me a bit of my early days learning AutoCAD, but with less functionality since it's a PS2 game; that said, you get access to more customization and more tools inside the drawing program as you level up in the RPG, which is a fantastic perk. There's a syringe tool to capture and inject colors, there's a pretty competent copy function that lets you transpose and flip/rotate copied parts, there's even a custom color selector with a transparency and shade slider to boot as some of the examples of unlockable features. The only notable feature that I'd say is missing is a free rotate option in the 3D space for body parts, so you have to make sure you capture your orientation well from the start or you might accidentally draw your creature upside down/sideways. Otherwise, it's a super impressive program for its time and despite being quite easy to use, has plenty of depth in its customization.
Outside of the drawing program, you can transform into your creations and traverse the overworld and fight in their bodies. From the save points, you can also change your moveset to adjust for enemies/bosses in the overworld, and there are tons of elements that require certain attacks, such as some boxes that are marked as to be punched/kicked, or elemental (ice/fire/electric) switches, or even flying functionality later in the game to ascend to new heights. You can gain these new attacks either by "capturing" enemies in the overworld with your pen as Pixel (admittingly not easy because Pixel isn't particularly fast but is quite fragile) or by collecting their cards after defeating them; the functionality of the body parts on your monsters is key to determining what attacks your monsters can utilize. As mentioned prior, leveling up will also play a role in unlocking further functionality to attach to your custom characters. Oh, and after collecting the cards, you can actually play as those monsters yourself, hence the "Pokemon" aspect of Graffiti Kingdom. What results from all of this is a practically endless creative burst of interactions between your own creations and the overworld + its elements, thanks to the many customization options lending themselves to constant experimentation. In many ways, Graffiti Kingdom is a sandbox game with RPG elements (leveling up will also increase your health and "energy meter" that determines how many attacks you can throw out in a row so you have more room to play around) and rough but still fun combat, and I'd say it more than succeeds at carrying out this premise.
That being said, there are some issues here and there being a PS2 game of this era, so I'll quickly point them out:
- Most of the boss fights are pretty easy; you can either beat them with classic hit and run tactics, or you can camp them with projectiles until they decide to approach you, which is when you hit them with your own close attacks when they do approach you and repeat the cycle. The exception to this is one of the final bosses, who loves to constantly throw out in-your-face hitboxes until the boss himself takes enough damage, and because the game doesn't afford you many i-frames, you might end up getting wobbled. So there's this drastic spike in difficulty between most of the somewhat straightforward boss fights and the dastardly obnoxious and aggressive boss fight at the end that you'll have to be aware of.
- Graffiti Kingdom uses a free cam, so hopefully you're used to rotating the camera as you perform actions in the overworld (there is at least a snap to character perspective button in R3). It's fine for the most part, though you can't rotate the camera upwards from the baseline, though you can rotate it downwards. So often times, I found myself having to back up to try and see enemies/platforms above me and did have to fight the camera occasionally if it became too focused on the ground to see my surroundings.
- Try not to fall off the stage; you won't die, but you will lose a little bit of health and respawn all enemies in the area/reset all switches. Minor complaint here, though it can get annoying if enemies are constantly knocking you into the abyss/water.
- If you want to try and collect all the monsters, do keep in mind that some of the monsters will only show up for one-time encounters as scripted in the game. There's no reward for collecting everything, so this is more or less a warning for completionists.
Overall, I'm really impressed by how much I enjoyed Graffiti Kingdom despite its relatively short runtime (less than 5 hours) and the crude yet entertaining fun combat. The sheer amount of customization options linked with the monster collecting + leveling up systems really allowed me a ton of room to mess around as I pleased, and though the narrative itself isn't anything special, it's got that gleeful, kiddy feeling down on lock with a pretty pleasant soundtrack, vibrant cartoony artstyle, and a middling English dub that reminds me of some of the sub-par Studio Ghibli dubs I've sat through. It's a real shame that this game isn't very well documented (with the exception of this guide I found regarding body part functionality & unlockable attacks), as this is probably the hidden gem that surprised me the most this year, and I'll definitely have to go and play Magic Pengel at some point; give this a shot if you're looking for something off the beaten path that exudes childlike wonder with thoughtful and practically limitless design elements.
There's a lot to unpack here at Graffiti Kingdom, and it's mainly because the gameplay is such a breath of fresh air. The core premise is that you are some lazy prince who let loose a demon that has wrought destruction by kidnapping your parents and transforming your kingdom into Howl's Moving Castle but somehow more kiddy and maniacal. As such, you must now free your parents and (reluctantly) your kingdom with the help of a blue cat thing called Pastel with your magic brush, and transform into your own magical creations to fight back against other graffiti monsters and save the world. I'm not going to pretend I completely understand the narrative (especially since I haven't played Magic Pengel, the game in the series before this so I don't know if they're intrinsically connected by story), but I do think the story is just cheesy and serviceable enough to get by.
So let me try and explain the core gameplay, starting with the drawing program. You can draw your own monsters with the internal creature creator; you basically draw a 2D shape on a 3D plane that you can rotate, and the game's engine interpolates that into a 3D object that can serve as the body, an arm, a leg, a wing, etc. It's actually quite easy to do once you get the hang of it, and you can manually set up connectors to link your body parts however you'd like. Once you've drawn up your parts, you can select them to set their functionality which will determine what attacks you'll have access to when you go editing your moveset. The drawing program does remind me a bit of my early days learning AutoCAD, but with less functionality since it's a PS2 game; that said, you get access to more customization and more tools inside the drawing program as you level up in the RPG, which is a fantastic perk. There's a syringe tool to capture and inject colors, there's a pretty competent copy function that lets you transpose and flip/rotate copied parts, there's even a custom color selector with a transparency and shade slider to boot as some of the examples of unlockable features. The only notable feature that I'd say is missing is a free rotate option in the 3D space for body parts, so you have to make sure you capture your orientation well from the start or you might accidentally draw your creature upside down/sideways. Otherwise, it's a super impressive program for its time and despite being quite easy to use, has plenty of depth in its customization.
Outside of the drawing program, you can transform into your creations and traverse the overworld and fight in their bodies. From the save points, you can also change your moveset to adjust for enemies/bosses in the overworld, and there are tons of elements that require certain attacks, such as some boxes that are marked as to be punched/kicked, or elemental (ice/fire/electric) switches, or even flying functionality later in the game to ascend to new heights. You can gain these new attacks either by "capturing" enemies in the overworld with your pen as Pixel (admittingly not easy because Pixel isn't particularly fast but is quite fragile) or by collecting their cards after defeating them; the functionality of the body parts on your monsters is key to determining what attacks your monsters can utilize. As mentioned prior, leveling up will also play a role in unlocking further functionality to attach to your custom characters. Oh, and after collecting the cards, you can actually play as those monsters yourself, hence the "Pokemon" aspect of Graffiti Kingdom. What results from all of this is a practically endless creative burst of interactions between your own creations and the overworld + its elements, thanks to the many customization options lending themselves to constant experimentation. In many ways, Graffiti Kingdom is a sandbox game with RPG elements (leveling up will also increase your health and "energy meter" that determines how many attacks you can throw out in a row so you have more room to play around) and rough but still fun combat, and I'd say it more than succeeds at carrying out this premise.
That being said, there are some issues here and there being a PS2 game of this era, so I'll quickly point them out:
- Most of the boss fights are pretty easy; you can either beat them with classic hit and run tactics, or you can camp them with projectiles until they decide to approach you, which is when you hit them with your own close attacks when they do approach you and repeat the cycle. The exception to this is one of the final bosses, who loves to constantly throw out in-your-face hitboxes until the boss himself takes enough damage, and because the game doesn't afford you many i-frames, you might end up getting wobbled. So there's this drastic spike in difficulty between most of the somewhat straightforward boss fights and the dastardly obnoxious and aggressive boss fight at the end that you'll have to be aware of.
- Graffiti Kingdom uses a free cam, so hopefully you're used to rotating the camera as you perform actions in the overworld (there is at least a snap to character perspective button in R3). It's fine for the most part, though you can't rotate the camera upwards from the baseline, though you can rotate it downwards. So often times, I found myself having to back up to try and see enemies/platforms above me and did have to fight the camera occasionally if it became too focused on the ground to see my surroundings.
- Try not to fall off the stage; you won't die, but you will lose a little bit of health and respawn all enemies in the area/reset all switches. Minor complaint here, though it can get annoying if enemies are constantly knocking you into the abyss/water.
- If you want to try and collect all the monsters, do keep in mind that some of the monsters will only show up for one-time encounters as scripted in the game. There's no reward for collecting everything, so this is more or less a warning for completionists.
Overall, I'm really impressed by how much I enjoyed Graffiti Kingdom despite its relatively short runtime (less than 5 hours) and the crude yet entertaining fun combat. The sheer amount of customization options linked with the monster collecting + leveling up systems really allowed me a ton of room to mess around as I pleased, and though the narrative itself isn't anything special, it's got that gleeful, kiddy feeling down on lock with a pretty pleasant soundtrack, vibrant cartoony artstyle, and a middling English dub that reminds me of some of the sub-par Studio Ghibli dubs I've sat through. It's a real shame that this game isn't very well documented (with the exception of this guide I found regarding body part functionality & unlockable attacks), as this is probably the hidden gem that surprised me the most this year, and I'll definitely have to go and play Magic Pengel at some point; give this a shot if you're looking for something off the beaten path that exudes childlike wonder with thoughtful and practically limitless design elements.