Thoughts: White Knight Chronicles

This is going to be a short one for first impression

White Knight Chronicles​ (白騎士物語 -古の鼓動-, Shirokishi Monogatari: Inishie no Kodō,l"White Knight Story: Ancient Heartbeat") is a fantasy role-playing video game developed by Level-5 and Japan Studio and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation 3 which was released in Japan on December 25, 2008, and was released in North America on February 2, 2010. It is Level-5's first project for the system. As of August 8, 2009, it has sold 350,000 copies in Japan. At TGS 2009, a sequel entitled White Knight Chronicles 2 was announced.

White Knight Chronicles is presented in third-person perspective. The player can freely choose which character to control. Like most other RPGs, the characters gain experience points and level up, becoming stronger over the course of the game. Level-5 conceives White Knight Chronicles as having 100 hours of gameplay, a length Akihiro Hino considers to be a full length RPG, going against the pressure to make White Knight Chronicles a launch title and cutting the story short.

The story of White Knight Chronicles begins in the kingdom of Balandor, where a princess' coming-of-age banquet is raided by an evil organization called Magi. A boy called Leonard grabs the princess' hand and leads her to safety in the castle cellars, where he finds a strange suit of armor that transforms him into the White Knight – an ancient warrior with the strength to defeat Magi's forces. This marks the beginning of a life-changing fantasy experience, fighting against the fiercest enemies.

The motive behind the kidnapping is due to the princess' ability to unlock any of the five knights (which she is unaware of at first). The leader of Magi is a general called Dregias. Nobody knows what Dregias looks like, because his body and face are hidden under his dark armor. What is known is the fact that he is capable of transforming into the winged Black Knight, Ebonwings.

Title: White Knight Chronicles
Platform: PS3
Genre: rpg
Developer: Level-5

This game was recommended to me by Rid because of the online feature, which then made it among the games that I first bought when I purchase my ps3 back then in March, along with FFXIII, PS3's Vesperia and Star Ocean 4 Int. But a lot of things happened and it took me quite some time before I finally decides to get started with the game, so in the end it was not until last weekend that I finally able to try the game. Playing for about 5 hours (just reaching the Desert), I finally get a grip of the gameplay, a bit of the story and some if not all of the features offered in the game.


Gameplay: too much hassle to explain, so a video would be much better. Briefly, the game features third person real time battle (similar to, for example Magna Carta). You can attack enemies by basic or advanced attack/slash which varied with weapons, or create your own combo by combining single attacks from the same type of weapons. Up to 3 characters can participate in battle, and we can freely switch characters whenever we want.

Each pros in this game seems to have their own cons.

• You can create your own characters for this game in very detail, but it looks to me that s/he is barely important in the main story. I personally never use my created characters once I got 3 party members (Leonard, Yulie and Eldore) and bin the characters I created to the reserve.

• Overall the battle system was nice with all the combos offered, but the fact that the ATP gauge (or whatever it is called) took awhile to charge really slows the battle down. And, everytime we level up, we get skill points to learn new skills. This means you need to re-customize your command tray if you want to fit in your new skills. Too much hassle, I guess.
  

• Incorruptus is cool. It was sorta like your main hero transformed into some gundam to beat the crap out of the huge enemies. Ok, I exaggerate. The bad thing is that they cost a lot of Action Chip (AC) to use, and at this early stage of the game, AC takes time to replenish.

• A lot of weapons and customisations for you to try. Sword, 2-handed sword, spear, bow, axe, magic, you are free to choose your path. Weapons can also be customised/upgraded, but it looks to me that the upgarde bonus is not that huge.

• The story was okay, but to be honest it was not really my cup of tea. It was too cliche of your oh-so ordinary-boy-gaining-superpower-and-saves-a-princess style adventures you find in fairytales.

• The online feature, Georama was nice, unfortunately I really don't have much time to venture into the realm myself. They're mostly to do quests which are not related to the main story, but grant some very nice rewards.

That's all I could say about the game, I guess. Overall I do think that White Knight Chronicle is a pretty nice game to play, offering decent gameplay and good online feature. That being said, I probably won't touch this game for a few weeks in the future, at least not until I'm done with my uni assignments and finishing Valkyria Chronicles :3 Maybe I'll replay the game from the start.