White Knight Chronicles International Edition

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My original video was 12 minutes long so there are a few awkward edits to get it down to 10, but this should give you a good idea of what to expect with this game.

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Graphics-

It's no surprise by looking at numerous videos and screen-captures of this game that it's a far cry from cutting edge. The overall technical level of the graphics is either showing its age or they took a hit by having such expansive and large set pieces and characters. That isn't to say they're awful though. Each individual looking at this game will likely have to evaluate what they demand in terms of graphics from a game. I personally would call them passable because while they aren't astonishing the locations of the game are interesting to look at and the enemies and characters you'll meet are appropriate to their settings and fun. Character and attack animations while mostly understated still manage to be engaging and entertaining with spells being the most impressive of the bunch.

Sound-

The music thus far has been strictly average. At times I feel as though I have a pack of bards tailing me because the majority of the songs I've heard having that kind of simple village music sound to them, flutes with little boisterous drive to get the blood boiling. The voice overs aren't too bad, none of the characters are particularly irritating in cut scenes or battles but the timing does suffer from the typical Japanese to English dub syncing issues. Overall I'd say everything works on a functional level but it does little inspire the player like a very good score sometimes can.

Combat-

Battles play out with a bit of a blend between turn based RPG standards with a touch of MMORPG. Before battles you can set up action bars by placing acquired skills in to slots. During a fight you will have a circular timer count up and when full you can select an action from your preselected set to use. At the very start of the game it seems painfully slow due to few options for skills and the likelihood that you don't fully understand how the system works. As you get more attacks, build combos, and balance your load-out to your liking though it becomes much more enjoyable. One could for example play a mage with little to no armor wielding a dagger and they'd get turns much faster than a heavily armored melee fighter but the obvious trade off is that they become a bit of a glass cannon by trading defense for speed. I think there's a lot of not so obvious depth to the combat which makes it rather enjoyable for me. Granted it isn't a system everybody will enjoy and criticisms against it I feel have been fair from reading other reviews.

Enemies-

The enemies themselves seem to come in two flavors, big and small. Small enemies are pretty much what you would expect, find what hurts them and hurt them with it. Collect your spoils, wash, rinse, repeat. The bigger enemies however are much more fun to fight and offer more nuanced ways of defeating them. Early on you'll be fighting trolls for example. Trolls have 4 targetable zones, their 2 legs, the belly, and their head. You can defeat the enemy just by hitting it anywhere, it doesn't really matter, but you can grant you and your party opportunities by exploiting the enemy's weakness. In the case of a troll for example you can shoot out their legs to prevent them from attacking briefly all the while granting your party an increased chance to hit by way of lowering the troll's evasion. Another option in the single player mode is using the namesake White Knight to put the fight a little more in to proportion but still fundamentally the same. There's a lot of variety in this sense though. You'll encounter a limited number of archetypes for the bigger enemies but exploring these alternative and tactical ways of defeating them is both fun and rewarding as I believe attacking certain body parts can yield certain drops a la Monster Hunter (speculation).

Skills and Character Progression-

Leveling is pretty typical for the most part, kill a bunch of stuff and complete quests to accrue enough experience to advance a level. Upon leveling up in addition to a base increase to various stats you are awarded 4 skill points. These points can be used in several different specialties to grant abilities and stat bonuses to your character. Each individual specialty has 50 things to buy so with 8 trees you're looking at 400 possible purchases, of which I'd say about 80% are skills the remaining 20% being stat bonuses (guestimates). Needless to say that's a pretty adequate repertoire to choose from. Individual characters may more or less select from any set but certain story characters are locked out of certain sets. Your self created "avatar" is open to choose from them all though. From what I've read, but I can neither confirm or deny at this juncture, is that your created character is also given a chance for a re-specialization (or respec as we nerds call it) at level 50 and following the completion of the story mode. This respec supposedly bumps you back to level 35, refunds all of your skill points, and rewards you with 40 additional bonus points. This can be done upwards of 4 times. All things considered it's a very flexible system with a lot of possible appeal to min/maxers by having the ability to dip in to multiple trees. By about level 22 I had "maxed" a single set so those simply going through story mode I imagine will be looking at going fully in to 2 trees or maybe touching base in 2-4.

Combos-

I just wanted to briefly address the combo system. After gaining some skills you can freely make your own combos using those skills. The advantage to a combo is that it allows you to unload several powerful attacks given a single turn counter but they also are costly in terms of battle resources. In battle you have typical MP which various abilities use, not just magic, and then you also have "Action Chips" which for lack of a better way of putting it is effectively a super bar. So a combo will typically have a pretty steep MP/AC cost but again this is pretty flexible depending on how many and which skills you build the combo with. Having a good spammable combo is just as viable as having a devastating nuke.

The White Knight-

The White Knight is a mechanic of the story and doesn't exist in the online mode. The main character may transform in to the White Knight at will (space permitting) and may stay in the form for as long as he has MP. Each attack the Knight uses depletes Leonard's MP and once drained he reverts to his normal form. Your other party members are allowed to fight alongside the White Knight and as you progress through the game, and Leonard develops, you will acquire equipment for the Knight which boosts the combat abilities of your party members in the presence of the Knight. The Knight also gets a baseline increase in fighting power as Leonard progresses ranging from skills to stats.

Story-

Save the princess, save the kingdom, save the world. Nothing to write home about but it's a serviceable and time honored plot. It won't be moving any story junkies in any particular way but it is peppered with its charming, humorous, and exciting moments.

Online-

Here we go, this in my opinion is the meat and potatoes of the game and it's single most redeeming factor. The format is simple, select a quest, recruit some other players, and head out. This is all organized in common areas called hometowns. Initially there is only the one generic town which anybody can access but individual players have the ability to create their own town via the game's Georama system. The town isn't just a place to plop building and look pretty though. Depending on which buildings you have and who you put in them can alter various factors of your town such as shop inventories. Upgrading your Georama hometown is a constant endeavor. Each individual set piece needs to be crafted which requires having various collected materials from the environment and the world's denizens as well as often large sums of cash. The residents of your home are also drawn from the single-player world where NPCs with green speech bubbles can be openly recruited. You're only allowed to have so many NPCs in your roster at a given time so you'll often have to revisit your recruitment efforts to select people of specific professions or finding more able individuals to replace poor performers as your town advances (most recruits have requirements to recruit and aren't immediately available). There's a lot of subtlety to the system though. Each NPC has a job and having multiple NPCs with the same job, and furthermore selecting a leader amongst them, grants bonuses to their respective categories (farmers, warriors, mages...) when placed in the same building. On the flip side penalties can also be issued by mixing your NPCs.

So you've got your town and you've got your quests, now what? As you enter in to a quest you will be met with a staging area where people can prep and meet before the quest starts. Once all the players are organized the leader may manually start the quest or a pre-determined time limit will automatically initiate the quest. There isn't necessarily anything fundamentally exciting about the online missions but the difficult is ramped up considerably and the rewards are typically quite good for completing them. Completing a mission in a timely fashion with varying level of completion also grants a rank for the particular mission and a corresponding scaling in the reward. Being able to coordinate as a team keeps the battles exciting and rewarding and really ties together the various skill sets. Magic for example does heaps more damage than bow skills but the bow skill set features many abilities to open up weaknesses for the rest of your party. All things considered it's very fun and does away with what is sometimes a mundane single player experience to get down to the nuts and bolts of what makes the game enjoyable.

The online and offline mode are more or less tied together though. You must advance through the single player to be granted more access to new areas and online quests so unfortunately those completely appalled by the single player would have to soldier through it to fully access the online mode. On that same note, those who don't care for the solo-player may find it easier to swallow by doing a little here and there as you push your online efforts forward.

And that is basically that. In conclusion I've found that most of the complaints I've read about the game to be fair, or at the very least not wildly off base, but on that same note the bulk majority of them address only the single player campaign. From this we can gather that this game offers much more value to those willing and able to access the online mode. That isn't to say that the single player is a chore, it simply isn't overly impressive in any particular way and it's even harder to get excited about coming off of Mass Effect 2 and leading in to Final Fantasy 13 and several other RPGs. If sold by itself with no online mode I could only recommend this game in good faith at a bargain price or a rental.

Pros-

Good character customization, looks and abilities.

Extremely fun online play.

Big and enjoyable enemies.

Cons-

Forgettable story

Somewhat dated graphics

Rather average single player

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I am going to make this review short and concise, and will not waste your time with a wall of text.

Key Points:

This game was released 2 years ago, so do not complain about the graphics. Overall the graphics are not the best, but I would say the background and the settings of the game is beautifully done.

International Version? No you do not get the Japanese Vocals in this nor the Japanese Intro music you are stuck with the horrible dubbing. But you do get all the update revisions and the bonus quest for Online play.

How long is the game? Single player mode can be beaten within 40-50 hours of game play. But what makes this game attractive is the Online portion of the game, since many veterans who owned this game are still clocking hours and hours in the game. Online portion resembles Dark Cloud in some aspect, where you are given a Home Town which you can build upon; this Home Town can also serve as your Online Lobby among you and your friends. Online play is pretty much based off of questing.

Storyline? Yet a lot of people complain how simple the storyline was, I enjoyed it. A lot of the RPGs these days have a massive storyline, but end up confusing the hell out of you.

Final Notes: There are plenty of mix reviews on this game, but if you enjoy the traditional JRPG play style then this game is for you. All in all, this game does have a lot of replay value if you intended to play the Online portion of the game. Also keep in mind that the story does not have a closure, since a direct sequel is being made at the moment.

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This game was sort of a fluke buy. I watched the trailers, and I was really all for it, but as the reviews started coming out, I started becoming more and more skeptical. This is not like me, because I'm the last person who will base my purchase of a game on a review (does that make me a hypocrite for reviewing games for others?).

Anyways, WKC is your typical 'save the princess' storyline. You've got your heroes, allies, enemies, etc. If you're a gamer, you're familiar with all of these aspects, so I'm not going to delve into them too much. There are a few things that stand out in this game, both positively and negatively, which I will emphasize on.

First, your senses. This game is auditorially (made up word?) a very appealing game. All of the music is very fitting, and really gives you a good feel of where you're at, what's going on, and so on. I didn't really pay attention to who composed the music, but they definitely deserve some credit for coming up with an epic track. There are many different instruments used in each song, and if this game had an OST, I would recommend all game music listeners to purchase it. It definitely completes the project, that's for sure. One thing I noticed about it too is that none of it seems repetitive. In fact, you almost don't notice it's there unless you try hard enough to listen. That's just how good it is.

Also, the graphics in this game are beyond breathtaking. Granted, I played the majority of this game on my 19" 1080i Asus monitor, but still. Sometimes it really blows me away just how much the PS3 can do. The environments are expansive, the towns seem alive (similar to FFXII), and you really have to sometimes just drop the camera low to suck in all of the surroundings. I feel if you don't take in some of the sights (and use the Crystal Camera) then you are not truly experiencing this game.

The third was the battle system, and the primary reason this game lost a lot of points with me. You are able to free roam the environment, and pick and choose your battles as you see fit. This was great, because nowadays, I don't have time to wait as I get into a battle of a traditional RPG anymore, go through the battle, then item and experience distribution, then back to the field, only to get into another battle three steps later. Action RPG's have slowly grown on me over the years, and I have a feeling it'll be like that for a while. However, the way the system is set up feels clunky. Original, but clunky.

You set your attacks up based on the weapon you are carrying. For example, the basic attack of a shortsword is slash. If you change your weapon, and forget to change your attack tray, then you are stuck with no attacks. When you engage an enemy, a ring pops up with the name of the attack you're currently ready to use. When the ring fills, you can press X to initiate the attack, and the ring empties for it to be filled again. This ring fill speed is based on the equipment you have on your player. If you wear clunky, heavy armor, the ring fills anywhere from 6-8 seconds. If you wear light knit armor (or roll nude, which I needed to do a few times), the ring can fill as fast as 1.5 to 2 seconds. So in a sense, you still feel like you're trapped within a traditional RPG waiting for your ATB gauge to fill or something, and it's ugly on the screen. I understand their concern for making a button masher, but I can think of a few different ways this could have been handled. Then again, I'm not a game programmer, so who am I to say?

One of the biggest complaints that I saw in most reviews was the lip syncing and yes I agree, it is really badly done. The storyline is pretty cheesy as well, so it only adds to it. The one saving grace that it does have is that come midway through the story, it stops being cheesy and becomes much more drama filled, giving you much information about the characters you're with, their backgrounds, and why they are where they are. It does get good if you can bear with it, even to the point you almost forget how bad the voice acting is.

The game is relatively simple, and if you didn't horse around like I did, you can get through it in a few short hours. There is a few things to do outside of the main game, such as going on line and playing with peers (which is a lot of fun) or messing around with your Georama, but the game is pretty cut and dry. All of the trophies are hidden though, so be prepared to do a lot of playing to figure out what they are.

Overall, I don't regret buying the game, I just think there were some issues they could have (and should have) worked on before a release. I am just hoping WKC2 will address these issues. Oh, and the ending is totally worth playing through the game, if nothing more.

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(I'm only a few hours in to the game as I type this, right after meeting the Don in Albana and unlocking the binding shops.)

IGN, GameSpot, and the other websites and magazines that gave this game crappy reviews should really pop the disc back in and give it another go! DO NOT BELIEVE THEM! Honestly opinion =/= fact, and if the game appeals to you by all means pick it up, it's worth it in my opinion! The art direction is a little weird but slowly growing on me. It "looks" like a PS2 game, but honestly if you take the time to look around it is most def a PS3 game! Graphics are very crisp and clean and the animation is pretty well done too. The only problem are the lip syncs, but then that's always been a universal problem with JRPGs. Music is alright, but it does fit the theme and the mood of the scenes. Combat and character customizations are awesome and VERY in depth! But by far my favorite aspect of the game is GeoNet/GeoRama! Being able to play quests with up to four people is fun, and the community has been VERY friendly and helpful so far (besides a few bad apples on the in game message boards that got steamrolled over by everyone else!).

If I had to put it in to a few words, White Knight Chronicles is the best of Final Fantasy XII, Dark Cloud 2, Monster Hunter, and Final Fantasy XI all rolled up in to one!

Now, I must get back to my HomeTown...