Although New Little King’s Story for the PlayStation Vita looks quite different from the Wii original, the portion of the game I played in the E3 demo was practically identical.

One difference I noticed is that the story is structured slightly differently. In New Little King’s Story, King Corobo’s castle has been taken over by a demon king known as “the Nightmare,” so he has to start from the ground up to restore his city to its former glory, starting in a shack-like castle.

Just like the original, your town starts off filled with “Carefree Adults,” who can be upgraded into “Grunt Soldiers” (who fight more effectively) or “Hardworking Farmers” (good at digging up treasure) once you’ve acquired the money to build the appropriate buildings. Recruiting troops is as simple as pressing the circle button near them or tapping them on the touchscreen. You use them by throwing them at the enemy you want to fight or the thing you want to dig up with square. Triangle will switch the order of your troops, so you won’t have to worry about throwing your farmer at an enemy to get to one of your grunts.

Because I jumped into a demo that was already in progress (the Farmer’s Academy and Military Academy were already made), King Corobo already had plenty of gold. The first thing I did was hop onto Corobo’s throne and build a suggestion box at the behest of the new character Azul (a blue-haired prettyboy who acts as the king’s advisor). The first suggestion I received asked me to do something about the terrifying “sub-monster” known as Skullcow (Cow Bones, from the original game) in the graveyard.

The battle itself was a blast, dodging the Skullcow’s charge so it ran into a wall (its skull popping off in the process), throwing my troops onto it, then calling them back with circle when it looked like it was going to attack. When it was stunned, I’d have Corobo run up toward the headless cow and slash away with X, then quickly run away to protect his three units of health.

While I understood the boss’s pattern pretty quickly, I kept getting my soldiers run over, because I’d only dodge in a way that would protect the king. Before I knew it, I was down to King Corobo and two grunts, but we eventually prevailed. When your characters have low health, their clothing will fall off, Ghosts and Goblins style. Since King Corobo was on his last unit of health, he proudly stood atop the corpse of the Skullcow in his underwear, beaming with pride.

Food for Thought:

1. There was some slowdown in the main city area, I hope that’s resolved for the final release.

2. The font size in this demo was really, really tiny, only filling about a quarter of each text box. Hopefully, they fix that, too!