Ever since I was young, I’ve always enjoyed graffiti. I’ve never done graffiti in my life, or have any artistic skills at all, but I enjoy it. Maybe it was due to a combination of playing a lot of Jet Set Radio as a kid as well as seeing them when I was living around urban areas as a kid. Now do I condone the act of vandalism for the sake of graffiti….. Mmmmm legally can’t say. Basically, I love the free spirited nature of it and any game that can replicate graffiti is fine by me. And today we’ll be talking about Graffiti Kingdom… this game has absolutely nothing to do with graffiti. There’s art in it, sure, but nothing that really screams graffiti. Maybe it has to do with the looser term for it, the free spirited nature of drawing what you want. Or maybe because Drawing Kingdom or Art Kingdom sounded a little too generic. Regardless, Graffiti Kingdom is a game made by Taito and has music composed by Yasunori Mitsuda, who also did the music for Chrono Trigger, one of my favorite soundtracks from one of my favorite games. So how can you experience this great game? Well simple, just spend over a hundred dollars to get it. Now Graffiti Kingdom isn’t the most expensive game out there on the PS2, I promise more expensive ones exist, but man, I had to get a beat up copy that barely worked just to talk about it. And that alone cost me a good $50. Raidou Kuzunoha wasn’t even that pricey. Well, let’s see what we got and see if it’s worth a good chunk of my paycheck.



So in Graffiti Kingdom, you play as Prince Pixel, a rather lazy little shit who happens to come across a giant door that releases the Devil. And no, not some Demon King or anything. They flat out call the villain The Devil. I mean, sure, he’s not exactly all red skinned and threatening by any means, but just the fact that Shin Megami Tensei was hit with controversy about being a satanic game despite being rated M for “Not for fucking kids, goddammit”, but an E rated game like Graffiti Kingdom could get away with calling their antagonist The Devil is kinda funny to me. Anyway, with a magical wand in hand and an annoying sidekick named Pasel on his back, Pixel makes his way through the transformed castle to fight the Devil and save the kingdom. Now as I was reviewing this, it turns out that Graffiti Kingdom is part of a franchise, kinda. Graffiti Kingdom is actually a sequel to a game called Magic Pengel: Quest For Color. Maybe I’ll talk about that one day on PS2 Cents. Magic Pengel was more of a turn based game, but Graffiti Kingdom is all about an action experience where you attack enemies and level up after a few enemies are defeated. The game is simple. Go through the level, maybe get a curveball and solve some puzzles, fight the boss and move on to the next one. The gameplay is simple enough, but charming. The music has this wonder like feeling to it, and while it certainly ain’t no Chrono Trigger, it has this childlike innocence to it. And I did find myself loving the final boss theme. The level design is really nice too. Everything looks like little clay models or arts and crafts like a child made it in art class. It really does feel like an imagination of sorts. Even the characters have these textures that make them look like dolls without looking too uncanny and it’s only visible if you get a close up. It’s all really charming from a visual stand-point. And I like Pixel’s sort of rude, dickish personality. His dialogue is kinda filled with a tongue-in-cheek, almost self aware vibe that I kind of like. That said, the bickering between Pixel and Pastel got really grating for me after a while. I get it, you two are dumb kids. Get out of your phase and become shitty teens already. But where the game really shines, what everyone knows it for, is the drawing.
I love the drawing mechanic in this game. Now this isn’t super crazy with what you can do. There’s no super realistic looking skins or sets you can do. But what I love about it, what I find so amazing, is that the game lets you create whatever you want. You wanna make a giant pig beat with three eyes, go ahead. You wanna make a weird twelve legged crab demon, do it. You wanna make the biggest cock in the world. Go nuts. I think I spent three hours alone just creating all sorts of monsters. If I had this game when I was a kid, I would’ve loved it so much. This is the kind of stuff you should give to a kid playing video games. Give them something that can really show off their creativity. My favorite creatures to create consisted of Mike Wazowski, Plank from Ed, Edd n Eddy, the sleep paralysis demon, Mr. Krabs, and a little naked man with a knife. Yep, this is the Fuck Satan Squad right here. You can even edit their voices, their walk cycles, their attacks. It’s not an expansive amount, but this would really blow a kids mind away. And seeing the creation walk around like a dumbass is both hilarious but charming at the same time. And you will need these creations because Pixel can’t fight for shit in his base form. You can also use the ability of enemies you capture, which I didn’t really need… until the near end of the game, when I needed to both solve puzzles and also get enemies to fight the final bosses for me, because my creations sucked dick and the enemies I fought were way more powerful. I will say I like the enemy designs. They have really good puns and are pretty creative, also made using the same drawing technique. Some of them give me some Okage: The Shadow King vibes… and that’s always a good thing.
There will also be times where having the right creation will allow you to solve puzzles and get over obstacles depending on how you did. Sure, it’s fun to create a giant penis monster, but you also gotta be smart about it and figure out which monsters will work. If you see coins floating just out of reach, you need to get a long legged creature to jump up and get it. If you need to get through a closing door, get a creature with wheels to drive over to it. You also gotta know which creature to use in a boss fight. I was able to get through most fights with ease. Just keep wailing on the boss, or if they are faster than you, time it just right and get a few combos in. It’s pretty simple… except for this fucking asshole Telepin. Telepin will always jump around and stay just out of reach but jump close at just the right time to start comboing you and you can easily get comboed to death, especially when the floor does high damage magic attacks. It took me a good amount of time, energy, and grinding to beat her and this was pretty much the only roadblock I faced. Every other time I failed was just because I was too uppity to use enemys to get through the level, without realizing it was both easier and more worth my time to do so. That was the final boss… Or what I thought was the final boss.
(SPOILERS FOR GRAFFITI KINGDOM)
So the fight with The Devil sucks. It is a two phase fight and it isn’t even that hard. In fact it’s pathetically easy. But the reason it becomes so much harder is because of the slow down. Graffiti Kingdom has an issue with slow down in some boss fights, but this is where it really hit its peak. Because of the constant barrage of bullshit the Devil throws at you mixed with the little minions, The Devil becomes this doable fight into an incredibly annoying one. I can’t stop getting killed by easy to dodge attacks because the slow down is so bad. I honestly think I glitched him out during the second phase which is why I was able to beat him. Because otherwise, I would not have been able to. Thankfully, the real final boss is nowhere near as annoying. It’s a challenge, for sure, having three phases, but it is more managable and even kinda fun. And if you die, you don’t have to fight The Devil again, so props for that. So technically, I cannot give this game the bonus award of Bad Final Boss because the real final boss is pretty alright. Consider yourself lucky, Graffiti Kingdom.
(END OF SPOILERS)
So that’s Graffiti Kingdom. It’s a decent kids game that I had fun with. A reasonable five hours to spend playing the game. Now is it worth $50… fuck no! Raidou Kuzunoha had some jank to it, but it was a fun game and with it being almost thirty hours, I’d say it was worth the price. Killer7, at leat on the Gamecube, is such a bizarre experience that I’d say it was worth $60, though minigated now that it’s on Steam for $20. Graffiti Kingdom is fun, but aside from the addictive drawing mechanic, it’s really not worth an insane price that it has. It is a five hour game, can be beaten in a day if you know what you’re doing, and it’s story is cute at best and forgettable at worst. It is far from being worth those prices, but worse games have been sold for much, much higher. If you can get this game for cheap, I’d say give it a try. I wouldn’t say go out and get it for the insane price people are peddling it for. It certainly ain’t worth it. I only bought it for a crazy price because…. I mean come on, I review PS2 games. You really think I’m using that money for something useful like paying bills or getting car insurance. What are you, crazy? So with that, I give the game the Award of Simple But Clean. Inoffensive, charming, but nothing too mind blowing. The drawing mechanic and playing with your creations is a ton of fun, but other than that, it’s a simple JRPG. Fun, but nothing too crazy and certainly won’t be a high priority for you.