Lost Kingdoms has really surprised me. It's surpringly fun and polished, and I just can't seem to quit playing once I start.

First off, fans of Magic: The Gathering will go nuts for this. The battle system is actually a lot like building and using a deck of cards in Magic, except the cards you use have real-time, animated consequences. The joy of getting a rare new card with cool art and a great effect...it's awesome. You can waste a lot of time between levels working on your deck, balancing things out, fiddling with new combos and interactions. This has to be one of the most original and complex and compelling RPG battle systems I've used in quite a while.

Everything else kind of pales in comparison to the battles; you can tell that's what From Software focused on heavily. The graphics are very simple, but they actually have a bright, clean style that I like a lot. There are also some really nice textures on occasion; I noticed a ton of great texture work in one cutscene, but during gameplay the textures, and everything else, are pretty average. The sound is also not much to write about...a couple songs are catchy, a couple are kind of annoying, but none of them stand out.

So far, Lost Kingdoms is proving to be much deeper and more challenging than I ever dreamed of. Look for a full review soon.