What’s On The Shelf | Games, Music & Culture

zzz… HUH?!

Sorry. Must’ve dozed off there. That probably explains the several month-long gap between entries. At this point, Lost Kingdoms feels less like a race to git gud and more like a slow, mildly distracted walk toward basic competence.

Anyway, welcome back to Race to Git Gud, where the goal is to work through the FromSoftware catalog with all the confidence of someone who hasn’t turned on a GameCube in four months. Let’s get back to it.

Last time, Princess Katia was searching for her father, which led her to the kingdom of Kendarie and the missing runestone hidden within the Yyprek Mines. After dealing with the Puppet Master and securing the stone, it was back to the Apothecary to check in with everyone’s favorite old weirdo, Gurd.

Gurd points the way to Whyt, which—conveniently—is also where the next runestone is located. To get there, Katia has to cross Bernden Field, an ancient battlefield littered with broken flags, scattered weapons, and just enough environmental storytelling to make it clear that things did not go well here.

Naturally, something even worse is waiting.

To pass through, Katia has to face off against a Lich and his Zombie Dragon. And yes, if that sounds familiar, it should. In the same way the Stone Gargoyle shows up again in Dark Souls, the Zombie Dragon makes a cameo outside Blighttown. Some might call it lazy. A more accurate description is “a little lazy, but also kind of neat.”

The fight itself is rough but manageable. With enough Wood cards, it becomes a war of positioning. The Dragon is slow and can be kited, but the Lich is the real problem—faster, more aggressive, and equipped with a homing attack that covers an uncomfortable amount of space. It’s controlled chaos, but survivable.

Katia comes prepared, stacks the right deck, and eventually brings both down. The reward is the Zombie Dragon card, which turns out to be exactly what it sounds like: a screen-filling toxic breath attack that deletes anything unfortunate enough to stand in front of it.

Pushing forward, the battlefield finally gives way to something more important—Katia’s father. He’s locked in combat with Beelzabub, and for a brief moment, it looks like this might be a meaningful reunion.

It is not.

He takes a single hit and collapses immediately, which is… not ideal for a king. As Katia runs forward, the boss steps in, and now it’s your problem.

Beelzabub is fast—uncomfortably fast—and carries a chance to one-shot with basic attacks. The upside is that he’s relatively fragile. It’s a glass cannon situation, and once you adjust to the speed, the fight ends quickly. The fly gets swatted.

Afterward, there’s a dramatic father-daughter moment that gets skipped entirely because this game has been played roughly fifty times. The important takeaway is simple: go to Whyt, protect the runestone, keep moving.

Also missed both the Lich and Beelzabub cards as rewards, which feels improbable but is completely on brand at this point.

No time to dwell on it, though, because it’s time for a side quest.

Gurd sends Katia to Lumstead, a town currently dealing with a white fog problem and an overpopulation of extremely unpleasant monsters. The solution, naturally, is to dump suspicious materials into the local water supply and hope it fixes everything.

The mission itself is straightforward: clear enemies and complete the objective. What’s less obvious—at least to a certain type of player—is that the encounters keep spawning, making this an ideal farming area.

A smart player would take advantage of that.

That player is not present here.

The opportunity gets missed, the experience goes unfarmed, and the reward ends up being the very underwhelming Venom Lizard. Functional, but not exactly exciting. A few decent cards come out of it, which is enough to move on without too much regret.

And with that, it’s back to the main path.

Katia stands before Castle Wyht, the next major stop in this slow march toward competence. The stakes are higher now—her father is gone, the world is unraveling, and the runestones are still at risk.

The castle waits.

Stay tuned.