Lost Kingdoms

Lost Kingdoms brought an unusual mix of dungeon exploration and card-based combat to GameCube a year before its more successful sequel arrived. The player takes on the role of Princess Katia, who uses a magic book to summon monsters sealed within cards, and with their help makes her way through dangerous dungeons in an effort to save her kingdom from a dark force consuming the land and turning its inhabitants into obedient puppets.

Battles play out in real time, but instead of attacking directly, the player selects and summons cards from their deck, each representing a different creature with its own abilities, range, and cost to use. At the time, this system was one of the more original ideas on the console and required thoughtful deck-building suited to the situation rather than reflexes, since a poorly built deck could make even easier fights significantly harder, while a well-considered combination of cards allowed players to breeze through tougher sections.

FromSoftware added a system for collecting and upgrading cards, which encouraged repeated dungeon runs in search of better cards, along with a darker, fairy-tale atmosphere visually distinct from its contemporaries. The game remained a niche title and got lost among more prominent releases in sales, but it laid the groundwork for its acclaimed sequel a year later, which further developed many of its ideas and brought them to greater balance.

Why play it: For your first taste of an inventive card-based combat system that the studio later refined.