White Knight Chronicles

It's hard to launch a role playing game in the West in the beginning of 2010, developed by a Japanese company and exclusively for the PlayStation 3 from Sony. The reason is called Final Fantasy XIII and although the Square Enix game did not exactly live up to expectations, it also led to limited attention towards White Knight Chronicles, a JRPG that appeared in The Land of the Rising Sun in late 2008 and took more than one year to also make it to other markets. It got a score of 29 out of 40 from Famitsu, the definitive review magazine in Japan, and changes were made by developer Level 5 (responsible for the Professor Layton series and for the classic Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King) before the Western release.

White Knight Chronicles is an odd beast. At times, the fighting sequences are annoying only to turn impressive when the various Knights step in. There are some birds, which serve the role of R2D2 in Star Wars, although the setting does not lend itself to it. There is music that does not suggest a clear cut fantasy role playing title, with some rocking guitars.

Gaming reason

Battle time

Plot There's nothing too original about the plot of White Knight Chronicles. The main character is just a poor and perspective-impaired delivery boy tasked with getting the wine needed for a party at Balandor Castle, where the princess, named Cisna, is finally coming of age and probably getting the legal right to finally enjoy a stiff drink. In usual JRPG fashion, nothing goes as smoothly as originally planned and a secretive group known as the Magi assault the castle as the party is in full swing with the poor delivery boy ending up saving the princess and, in the process, stumbling on an ancient relic, which will allow him to turn into the White Knight. Also in typical JRPG fashion, this is a mile-high metal monster who has the power to pretty much squash all enemies besides other Knights.

If the premise does not sound extraordinary, then the rest of the story is equally mediocre. One of the most off-putting elements is the limited role the character plays in the overall story. If Level 5 had wanted the player persona to only play an actual part in multiplayer, they should have removed the creation interface from the single player section. It makes more sense for the player to identify with Leonard and his heroic journey than to have any sort of attachment to the silent and always dumb smiling avatar.

System

White Knight

Gameplay

The player control in White Knight Chronicles is limited to one character in the party, with the Artificial Intelligence taking care of the other two who travel along. Sometimes, for certain important quests, another character jumps in to give some extra options in the battle. When enemies are encountered on the map, a battle begins with actions listed at the bottom of the screen and a meter called the Command Circle determining what actions can be performed.

The cooldown for actually doing something is pretty long, making the encounters turn boring at some point, and there's a strong pressure to just use, over and over again, the most powerful attack that a character possesses and ignore everything else to get through a battle quicker. Of course, there's also an ability tree that can be unlocked using Skill Points and that opens up a whole new array of battle options. The biggest damage dealer is the White Knight himself, with his unique attacks and nicely detailed character.

One of the highlights is the possibility to put together a huge array of combos, which are then named and added to the interface. As long as the player has a bit of imagination and has unlocked at least two thirds of the skills of the characters used, the combinations can be impressive, mixing magic, physical strikes and even a bit of flight. Unfortunately, it's not necessary to experiment and create combos as the predetermined attacks work just as well in taking out enemies for the lazy or unimaginative player.

The fact that the enemy encounters play out in real time suggests an action role playing experience and some might be tempted to run around the map and hide behind obstacles in order to get away from attacks. Actually, this does not work, as everything is still determined by the hidden numbered values attached to attack, defense and to hit chances. This leads to the weird occasions when enemies are judged to be in close combat even if the player-controlled characters ran away and put some distance in.

Visuals and audio

White Knight Chronicles looks pretty good although it uses the same old Japanese role playing game style that has characters grow weird hair and leads to the creation of creatures that actually have cities built on their back. The character models seem to lack a bit of detail but the White Knight itself and the other gigantic enemies that clash look nice and confer a sense of scale to the proceedings.

The voice acting is efficient, if not stellar, but it would have probably been a good idea to keep the original Japanese tracks on the disk (presumably space was not a problem on the Blu-ray) as lovers of the genre, even if playing in North America or Europe, might have been interested in the authenticity Japanese actors would have introduced.

Hedge bets

Active

Multiplayer

White Knight Chronicles has quite an interesting perspective regarding cooperative multiplayer play. The character that can be created when you start the game takes his experience, skills and items with him and can join others in a series of quests. These are based on the areas that have already been explored in the single player and those who are not interested in progressing can actually buy new quests. Through them, the player can also upgrade their items, which can then be used in the single player story. Be warned that two players interested in questing together need to exchange invites to Geonet and that normal PlayStation Network friends lists are not involved.

Players can also put together their own Georama, a town of sorts, with a number of cosmetic options. Characters from the single player can be brought in to live there and other humans can come and visit it. There are 20 instances of Georama a single player can put together for one Geonet profile.

The Good

The Bad

Conclusion