White Knight Chronicles II

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Positives

-Story continues exactly where WKC left off and it's a trilogy, 3rd one is on the way.

-Improvements on Graphic and voice acting

-More skills for all weapons

-A LOT more weapons and armors since max level is now 80.

-No more X button harass when searching for Ores/bugs/flowers etc. It gives you all the materials at once

-More GR quests and new Monster Bounty quests(these can be harder than final boss)

-Customize Knight for your avatar

-Data import from the 1st one is impressive. Includes all the mats,weapons, armors and georama layout

-Online mode! now up to 6 people in a party with Knight transformation

-Better AI for your companions

-Better AC,MP balance for your skills and combos

-Plenty of challenges towards the end of the game and after you've beaten the story mode. New game+ and you unlock a castle to test your strategy/skills.

Negatives

-Story mode environment. You get 1 more new town and 2 new initial & final dungeon but everything else is the same. You basically play through the towns & dungeons that you've already beaten on 1st one all over again. This was a huge let down.

-Errands(resident quests These suck, the reward is very good. Mostly, you just go around the world map and talk to different NPCs over and over again, nothing else. Just spend time running for 1hour to complete a few of them. Boring and annoying.

-No online mode for Bounty hunt and Otherworld(to get your avatar knight's equipment) I got excited to pull off something like capcom's Monster hunter online, but found out that it's offline only.

-Same towns and dungeons mean same monsters and same soundtrack...seriously.

I managed to beat the story mode without getting too boring because of new weapons, skills with more level ups and some cool cut scenes. But overall, it felt more like online grinding than an epic story mode.

I clocked in 270hours for the 1st one. Currently grinding and playing I'm at about 60+ hours on this one. There are plenty to do and plenty challenges. Nevertheless WKC saga is still among my favorite PS3 RPG with Demon souls. I give this one 4/5 for more improvements than negatives. Could have been 5/5 if they weren't so lazy to create more maps and dungeons and new monsters. Because it lacks those, Story mode feels like WKC1 with a good patch to fix bugs and better interface. But I know that online is a kick ass time with a friend or two... especially for being free.(no monthly fee)

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I was a big fan of the original game when it came to the US last year and had been looking forwards to White Knight Chronicles II for a long time now.

Then, about two weeks before it came out, my PS3 died and I lost ALL of my game save files.

So, I was disheartened, and went to purchase a copy of the original again. Until the fellow selling it to me told me that White Knight Chronicles II actually came with a complete copy of the first game, remastered to the new graphics levels.

I was astounded to say the least.

So I brought it home and tore it open and started a new game of White Knight Chronicles I and let me tell you, the graphical difference is amazing. The texturing and shadows are far deeper and more detailed. The characters are more detailed and animated.

I have yet to get through even the first few missions of the first game, but had to post a review so that people know just how much effort the publishers put into this.

The game is amazing, pure and simple. I love the combat system, the graphics it is one of the VERY few old school RPG games to have come to the high definition systems. If you're a RPG fan who is on the fence on this one trust me, get it. It is well worth it and you can invest hundreds of hours, or just enough time to get through the plot.

It has something for everyone.

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I really love RPGs, and there aren't enough of them on the PS3. WKC I/II both attempt to address that shortfall, but still leave me feeling unfulfilled. Don't misunderstand; I want to like the WKC titles. I really do. And I would, if it wasn't for the battle system. What's wrong with it? It is built in such a way that discourages the player from using all his available power during a battle. Think about it: If you are battling a group of monsters or even just one monster, you don't want to have to wait for another "Action Chip" to become available to you before you can unleash a powerful hit. Or, having finished a gnarly battle, you press onward to find yourself suddenly attacked by the level boss, requiring Leonard to fight. Leonard, having only 2 Action Chips, cannot transform into the White Knight. Yet, without the White Knight, there is no way to beat the boss and the party is defeated one member after another. Should Leonard actually survive long enough to earn the AC's needed to transform, by that point, his mana is certain to be running low, so the White Knight likely will vanish after a single attack, leaving Leonard and his party high and dry.

If the game didn't have the Action Chip mechanism, which doesn't do anything but slow down and hinder the party, it would be a great game worthy of more stars. I wish I could give it more.

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White Knight Chronicles II has so far been an engrossing experience for me. I'm a big fan of Level-5 RPG games such as Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King and Dark Cloud -a big inspiration of this game. As a matter of fact, I was glad to see alot of Dark Cloud elements in this game. Sadly, they leave alot of the better elements.

One thing I'll get out of the way first though, is that WKC2 is a lot like FFXII. A fairly large and adventurous world map, pseudo-MMO feeling, and even a filler character (ironically, the character you create), leave this game feeling alot like Square's title in it's flagship series. As such, it carries alot of it's stigmas, and adds a bit more. For one, the story isn't that very well developed. Many people complain the story starts off in an odd position in the story, which just sounds like spiteful idiocy on their part. The game comes with both WKC1 and 2, therefore there should be no reason for someone to blame the developers for them not playing through the first game first. But the story overall feels cliched to death. The main objective is to save the princess, and our main character, one of the heroes, has fallen in love with her after...looking at her once? He even goes so far as to put his life in danger to protect her, while his childhood friend is lost (with you, thankfully). This alone was enough to show me that this story wasn't going to make as much sense as I hoped it would. Still, the story is fairly ok, leaves few plotholes, and the accompanying voice-acting is surprisingly well done.

On to the gameplay. The first game's slow and tedious combat system was revamped using the second game's system, making for a fuller, faster system overall. Just like FF12, it features an ATB gauge that fills before your character can act. A good design decision was not locking the skills. Unlike many RPGs, you don't have to be a White Mage to use Heal, or be a Barbarian to use an Axe. You can unlock the use of anything as long as you have the skill points to unlock it, again, a really good decision reminiscent of one of the better parts of FF12. The skills you unlock are set to a bar of 7 empty slots for you to use to command. There are 3 rows, and each can contain any skill you want, and you can use it as long as you have the required weapon equipped. The downside of this system is that it does not allow you to change what character you are using on the fly. You have to open the main menu, select the character submenu, and choose which character you want to switch to -all in real-time. This could have been better designed. Another disappointing but glaring fault is the rehashing of maps and monsters. WKC2 only introduces about 2 new areas and a few new monsters with those areas, which was just pure laziness on the dev's part.

Another part, which I'll step away of detailing in favor of time, is that only the second game offers a full online experience, but this game isn't online-based. Although the online is a big part of the game and adds alot of fun, I see it as just half of an already great game. It's sort of like a Monster Hunter game that has Monster Hunter 2, 3 and Frontier -2 and 3 are already great experiences and Frontier is a whole new experience. That said, the online in this game is fairly well designed and even has a similar style to GeoRama from Dark Cloud, so fans of that and MMO questing will love the online in this game.

The music is superb, especially during boss fights adding to the subtle level of epic in journeying across wide open fields or a great divide in the earth. That brings to me to the stunning visuals. It is a MUST to play this game using the HDMI output. The graphics are absolutely breathtaking with overworld models having textures as good as Uncharted 3. No exaggeration there, hands down beautiful scenery with a soundtrack to match, unfortunately also rehashed in WKC2, so not much new sounds to hear or sights to see.

There is alot more I could say, but much has already been said by other critical reviewers already. Overall, if you're a fan of RPG games and can deal with a few cliche'd characters in favor of a 200+ hour adventure spanning 2 (soon to be 3) games, with a creative battle system and breathtaking scenery, and isn't afraid of the daunting scope of this game, then it is definitely worth the price. (I got it for 11 bucks) You'll be shelling out 20 bucks on a great and beautiful homage to retro JRPG's, with quirky characters and a cringe worthy story, but you'll be enjoying it. If JRPG's aren't in your boat, then this game isn't for you.

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While White Knight Chronicles 2 is a fun game, it has its flaws. Such as setting level caps before the final (non-Japanese) level cap of 80, forcing players to run through already explored areas just to pad the game time, and a steep learning curve.

Most of those flaws are forgivable.

Re-exploring areas? It's a good time to level up on the new enemies with higher levels.

The steep learning curve? Expectable for a Japanese RPG.

But what is NOT, and I repeat NOT, acceptable is D3 Publishers and Level 5 saying "eff you" to the rest of the world by focusing only on the Japanese gamers.

Being a veteran from White Knight Chronicles 1, I knew how to deal with disappointments from Level 5, such as the lack of patches. Over the 3 years that the game was out, we only received a handfull of patches, while the Japanese recieved a metric ton of patches. But I was not prepared for D3 and Level 5 to completely abandoning the non-Japanese market.

Not only did White Knight Chronicles 2 only received 1 patch, the guild system being ignored by Level 5, the promised DLC being cancelled for its non-Japnese players, but its non-Japanese servers are being shut down on June 18, 2013.

The online multiplayer was KEY to get to the non-Japanese level cap of 80. (Yes, the Japanese also got a bigger level cap and Guild Rank cap while the rest of the world didn't.) You needed other people to help you get your Guild Rank up, a system that only levels up by completing quests quickly and efficiently, but the whole charm from the game was its online community. The game had its own forums--IN THE GAME. People could log on and talk with others in a contained online community, but as of 6/18/13, that online community will cease to exist.

Without the help of others, the game is slow going, completing the same quest numerous times in order to level up your Guild Rank ONCE just to get rid of the level 35 level cap. Leveling up your Guild Rank was hard enough online, but without the multiplayer to help you out, don't expect to get to the level cap of 80 anytime soon.

The bottom line is, White Knight Chronicles 2 is an online game, and, soon, its online capabilities will no longer exist, making the game just an empty shell of its former self.

If you aren't Japanese DO NOT BUY THIS GAME. You're only setting yourself up for disappointment.