Shadow Tower

Shadow Tower acts as the connection between King's Field's dark medieval aesthetic and Demon's Souls/Dark Souls use of naturalistic atmosphere to convey a sense of being in a greater world, which the player just happens to stumble upon. And as such, leaves the player wondering what the hell is going on as the story is very, very fragmented and clumsy.

The gameplay mechanics do one step forward, one backwards. The hit detection is sometimes laughable, but the enemy bestiary is wicked and bizarre. The repair and durability systems are enticing, yet making the rings breakable seems like a jarring move to annoy the player more than an usable combat option, as you actually don't really use magic that much. The backtracking required to get your stuff on foot again makes this oniric journey establish a sense of world building with no major irkness, but some maps themselves are quite annoying in retrospect. The leveling system is quite straightforward and suits one part of the experience really well, but the inclusion of Soul Pods is completely unnecessary and seems like a cope out for the amount of enemies' abuse of Acid and Paralysis states. Geez.

There is a weird dichotomy on Shadow Tower: it certainly wants to be a more combat-driven experience (even more than King's Field) by removing NPC dialog and rest hubs and creating a "collectionist" type of bestiary, yet it also wants to be a survival horror game with item and damage management. It doesn't converge in something entirely round, but it is a pretty unique, albeit sometimes too cryptic experience. Nice spin-off to the KF formula, and there are not that many games like this out there.