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White Knight Chronicles II
PlayStation 3
1+2=0
2/5 stars
“White Knight Chronicles 2” (“WKC2”) is the unanticipated sequel to the much-anticipated “White Knight Chronicles” (“WKC1”), a game that, before release, was so highly-thought-of that it was published by Sony themselves as a PS3 exclusive. Yet “WKC2,” while still developed by Level 5, was published by barrel-bottom-scraper, D3. What happened that caused the fanfare around “WKC1” to evaporate for “WKC2”? Simple: “WKC1” happened.
Since “WKC1” and “WKC2” are both included, almost seamlessly, on the “WKC2” disc, it seems like an admission that the ‘first game’ was merely a ‘first part.’ Yet, despite including both parts of the ‘White Knight Chronicles’ story on one disc, the number of problems in the ‘complete’ game have increased even further. While “WKC2” is finally a complete game, it’s still not one worth playing.
Presentation
The only strong point in “WKC2” is the presentation. The game engine is fully polygonal with detailed textures that look quite nice. The environments are huge, yet suffer no issues with pop-in or blurring. However, Level 5 must not have had a lot of confidence in the game engine, as the game’s cutscenes are all pre-rendered. The character designs, while somewhat bland, are at least not off-putting like so many other Japanese games. “WKC2” also benefits from a custom Avatar generator that blows away similar systems from the likes of BioWare and Bethesda. It’s incredibly easy to make a character that looks anywhere from beautiful to hideous, with diverse choices for height and body proportions in addition to granular control over the face (though, sadly, this character’s facial expression never changes from the default). However, even within the character generator, “WKC2” begins to reveal the evil at its heart: Not all hairstyles, etc. are unlocked from the start, with the locked ones only available as overpriced DLC. In addition, every save point in the game shows a menu option to ‘Recustomize Avatar,’ yet this recustomization can only be performed if the player has a Makeover Ticket in their inventory… which is yet another overpriced (and single-use) piece of DLC.
“WKC2’s” soundtrack might be the only unblemished part of the game. It features quite a few pleasantly-catchy tracks, as well as incredibly impressive opening and ending songs.
The voiceacting in the game is rather hit-and-miss. Some characters deliver their lines well throughout the entirety of both parts of the game. Other characters are acted stiffly and dully from the beginning. The really strange ones, however, are the characters that sounded good in the “WKC1” portion of the game, yet wooden in “WKC2,” as if their actors didn’t really want to revisit their roles, but did so anyway just to get a paycheck. Possibly the worst voice in the game belongs to a character who uses a fake accent in “WKC1,” but drops it for “WKC2”… yet during the random banter characters spew at each other while exploring or fighting will randomly waver between having an accent and not.
Technically, “WKC2” is far more sound than most big RPGs this-gen, as it features no game-breaking bugs. However, I do take issue with the fact that saving the game takes a full 20 seconds. The save file for the game is tiny, yet that 20 seconds seems like an eternity when trying to hurry up and save (i.e., during a thunderstorm that might knock-out the power).
Story
The “White Knight Chronicles 2” disc contains the full stories of both “WKC1” and “WKC2.” Both are horrible in their own unique ways. The only really interesting story material in “WKC2” is the novel Fantasy world in which the game(s) takes place. Instead of standard Humans, Elves, Dwarves, etc., the world of ‘White Knight Chronicles’ is inhabited by Humans, Papitaurs (short, rabbit-like people with no sexual dimorphism), Toads (anthropomorphic toads that come in Human-size and Giant-size), Wargs (an extremely sexually dimorphic race whose men look like Japanese Oni and whose women look like… catgirls), and Farians (Asian elves with antlers). There are also a variety of ‘monster’ races, like trolls. However, the overall roster of monsters is extremely small, relying heavily on the old-school technique of pallet-swapping to mix things up.
“WKC1,” after beginning with the creation of an Avatar character for the player, casts-aside that Avatar and introduces the hero of the story, Leonard, an 18-year-old young man who works at a winery. The player’s Avatar also works at the winery as a new hire, and only gets involved in the events of the main story through proximity to Leonard and an apparent inability to mind his/her own business.
Leonard and Avatar are given an assignment to leave the capital city of Balandor to pick-up a large wine delivery from the vineyard hamlet of Parma and deliver it to Balandor castle for the celebration of the 18th birthday of Princess Cisna of Balandor, who has been mute ever since she witnessed the murder of her mother by a shadowy figure as a child.
Yet, the Kingdom of Balandor isn’t as peaceful as it seems, as a mysterious group of evil-doers, known as the Magi, led by a dark-armored warrior and a fat, balding ringmaster-look-alike with a dastardly mustache, are seeking to kidnap the princess and steal a great treasure from deep beneath the castle. As Leonard, Avatar, and Leonard’s childhood friend, Yulie, return from Parma with the wine delivery, they are swept up in events as the villains attack during Cisna’s birthday party, killing the King in the process. Leonard, upon seeing the princess, instantly falls in love with her due to a vague memory of meeting her once for about 10 seconds when they were both 8 years old. Fleeing the carnage, the group heads into the bowels of the castle, where they discover a gigantic suit of white armor chained to a wall: the titular White Knight, also known as an ‘Incorruptus.’ As the villains close-in, Cisna abruptly recovers her voice and starts chanting uncontrollably, which releases the Knight from its bonds. Impulsively, Leonard snatches up the gauntlet, called an Ark, which acts as the Knight’s control mechanism, only to find himself face-to-face with an ephemeral demon-like creature in an unknown place. The creature challenges Leonard to battle and, upon losing to Leonard, creates a pact with him, allowing Leonard to call upon the powers of the White Knight wherever he might be. As Leonard brings the Knight’s power to bear against the attacking Magi, it turns out that the dark-armored warrior has a Black Knight of his own, and the two battle to a stalemate. Of course, the Magi manage to snatch Cisna and escape via airship.
With the government in shambles, the Balandor parliament assigns Leonard and his crew, along with the mysterious swordsman, Eldore, to pursue the Magi and retrieve the princess. After pursuing the Magi across the entire continent, Leonard and his team finally manage to catch-up with the Magi, learn a bit more about the Knights and the Pactmakers, discover who is leading the Magi, and rescue Cisna. Then the story abruptly ends. No tension is resolved in this ending, as the villains escape, having gotten what they wanted, yet Leonard and company don’t bother to pursue.
“WKC2” picks up a year after the end of “WKC1,” with Leonard and company having STILL not pursued the Magi, now calling themselves The Reborn Yshrenian Empire, to attack them on their home ground, instead allowing the villains ample time to fortify their position and build an arsenal of mechanized weaponry. After an airship crash on the way to Faria for a diplomatic meeting to deal with the Yshrenian-instigated Farian Civil War, Leonard and company find themselves on the opposite side of the continent from their home with nothing but Yshrenian-occupied lands between them. There is very little new story material introduced in “WKC2,” though there is a completely nonsensical time-travel aspect added and an obligatory McGuffin search. The game would be incredibly short… that is if Leonard and company didn’t have to re-traverse every location on the world map that they covered in “WKC1,” only now from the opposite direction (How exciting!). “WKC2” features a meager five new areas that weren’t in “WKC1,” and two of them are relegated to the dramatic Final Confrontation.
The saddest thing about the entirety of “WKC2” is that what little story material is in the game is all poorly put-together and ham-handedly written. The story is super-predictable, there are plot holes everywhere, and it’s just a complete bore to play. While each part of the game (“WKC1” and “WKC2”) clocks in at around 40 hours (for a total of at least 80 hours for those who rush through the game(s)), those hours are mostly filled with running around huge, empty areas and backtracking.
Since the main story is so dull, “WKC2” features a variety of side quests. These come in three main types: Errands, Bounties, and Quests. While I experimented with all three during my play-through, I found that only Errands and Bounties were worthwhile at all.
Errands pop-up randomly as the story progresses, and can be acquired from townsfolk with exclamation points above their heads (these thankfully appear on the area map, making the system much more user friendly than the more-recent “Xenoblade Chronicles”). These are mostly fetch-quests, but there are also a number of ‘just talk to this guy (I don’t care if he’s standing right beside me and I could do it myself)’ quests. Completing Errands awards the player with a variety of things, ranging from Guild Points (used to unlock Bounties and Quests and raise the level cap) to equipment.
Bounties are the most useful, and can be taken, one-at-a-time, from Guild Shops. Upon taking a Bounty, a unique monster appears in a specific area, and it’s up to the player to go kill it. Upon killing a Bounty target and returning to the Guild Shop, the player is awarded with experience, money, and three pre-determined items.
Quests are the most MMO-inspired portion of the game, and thus the worst. While a few Quests are available for free, most of them must be purchased (with game money, thankfully, considering how greedy this game is with DLC) from Guild Shops. Once purchased, Quests can be run-through over and over, raid-style, either offline (with the story characters for backup) or online, with the player’s Avatar and a number of other player’s Avatars. Quests have a time limit (usually ranging from 1-2 hours) for completing their objectives, and are also home to rare enemies that drop rare crafting materials. Of course, the worst insult in the game is that, after the Final Confrontation, a series of Quests become available that supposedly lead to The REAL Final Confrontation. However, by this point I was too apathetic about the game to grind-out 18 more levels in order to qualify.
The strangest aspect of “WKC2” is the way it treats the player’s Avatar. After putting so much effort into creating him/her, the game rarely even acknowledges that the character exists. For the entirely of “WKC1,” nobody addresses the Avatar, and the Avatar never says anything across both parts. In “WKC2,” there are three short scenes in which the Avatar figures prominently and, had the material presented in these scenes been the core of the story (bringing up questions of how the Incorrupti/Knights were built by visiting an alternate dimension where Incorrupti wander around freely, apparently without pilots) instead of a lame ‘rescue the princess and stop the bad guys from taking over the world’ plot, “WKC2’s” story might have actually been good. Instead, the Avatar (along with the good parts of the story) is relegated to looming in the background of every cutscene, not participating, not having a reason to participate, and just seeming pointless and out-of-place.
Gameplay
“WKC2” has a battle system that occupies a space somewhere between “Final Fantasy 12” and “Xenoblade Chronicles,” with an actiony system focusing on knockdowns and damage per second. The game allows the player to have three party members active at once, but only allows the player to control and command one of those characters at a time, leaving the other two in the hands of an utterly moronic AI. While it is possible to switch characters during battle in “WKC2,” it’s a cumbersome action that requires pressing the Select button, choosing a new character to control, then confirming the choice with X. Unlike “Final Fantasy 12,” or even a newer game like “Dragon Age: Origins,” there is no way in “WKC2” to program the party AI with specific conditional actions. Instead, the player can choose between a handful of AI types (that don’t really seem all that different) and issue 5 specific commands to allies in the heat of battle. Four of these commands are targeting based: ‘Attack Whomever You Want,’ ‘Attack the Target I’m Attacking,’ ‘Spread Out and Attack Different Targets,’ and ‘Stop Attacking and Follow Me as I Run Away.’ The fifth command is a generic ‘DO SOMETHING!’ and can be issued to either ally via a different button to trigger that ally to cast a healing spell or perform a powerful attack.
Each character has a command bar featuring four rows. The first three rows are fully customizable rows of seven slots, while the last row is not customizable and features a number of system commands (like Item, Defend, Equip, etc.). Why does a character need 21 customizable slots for skills? Because there’s no way to access skills that aren’t in these slots. Also, the developers obviously felt that ‘Attack’ was an old, boring action, so now characters have vertical, horizontal, and thrust attacks available, with increasing strength, as well as a variety of ranged attacks and spells. The problem with the more powerful regular attacks is that they consume either Magic Points or Action Chips. Each character has a visible Hit Point and Magic Point meter, and these slowly refill themselves outside of battle. Action Chips can only be accumulated (up to a maximum amount) by landing the killing blow on an enemy. Action Chips are also required for a character with an Incorruptus to transform, “Power Rangers”-style, into their Knight form, with a constant drip of Magic Points required to maintain the transformation (Knights guzzle Mana Potions like soda pop!). Other than the fact that they are huge, Knights are functionally identical to other characters in battle, though they have smaller, non-customizable command bars. Also, outside of specific boss battles, only one character can transform into a Knight at a time.
So, why are vertical/horizontal/thrust attack options bad? Well, for one thing, “WKC2” is not a Wii game, nor does it support the PlayStation Move, so there is no novelty to be gained by moving a controller in a specific direction. For another thing, each non-human enemy type has a weakness to one of the three attack forms… and the AI allies almost never exploit this weakness, instead flailing away with largely ineffective attacks and burning through Magic Points as they constantly heal each other. “WKC2” also features the traditional four elements in Arcane Magic (Fire, Water, Wind, Earth) and a number of enemies with weaknesses to one element, yet these spells waste even more Magic Points AND serve to further confuse the moronic AI with regard to what attack to use on which enemy.
Probably the best aspect of “WKC2’s” gameplay is the character development system. As is traditional in RPGs, characters gain experience by killing enemies (the amount awarded from a given enemy decreases as the characters become stronger) to gain levels. Each level awards a number of Skill Points which can be distributed to one of eight specializations: Divine Magic (healing), Staves, Sword & Shield, Two-Handed Swords, Arcane Magic (attacking), Spear & Shield, Archery, and Two-Handed Axes. Purchasing the early skills in each of these specializations unlocks additional skills. Unfortunately, it is very difficult and tedious to fully master any skill set, as each specialization has one or more skills that can only be unlocked by completing an Errand (mentioned in the Story section) for a non-player character.
Characters can also equip a large amount of gear besides weapons and shields: helmets, chest armor, leg armor, gloves, boots, and two accessories. In a poor move obviously inspired by the older “The Elder Scrolls” games, Level 5 decided that equipment should suffer from wear and tear during battle. Each save point, in addition to offering free healing (once every 15 minutes or so), offers for-pay (again, thankfully with game money) equipment repair. If a weapon breaks, it isn’t destroyed, but becomes largely ineffectual until repaired. While most equipment can be purchased in normal weapon shops, the game also includes an unnecessarily-complex crafting system in the form of Binding Posts run by Toads. In order to unlock Binding recipes, it’s necessary to donate items to the Toads. Each item is worth a number of points, and there’s not much difference in donating to the Toads to increase Binding Rank versus selling the items. The problem is that the required point totals to achieve higher Binding Ranks are astronomical, requiring ridiculous amounts of grinding to get there… then even more ridiculous amounts of grinding to acquire the random bits of monster debris required to make new equipment. I found that, by the time I had acquired the rare materials required for most equipment, I could either buy the same stuff from a normal shop or didn’t need it anymore. The Incorrupti can also use equipment, with most of it found in treasure chests. However, the Avatar’s Incorruptus can use a variety of equipment made through Binding… but only if the player shells out an obscene amount of money for DLC to unlock the recipes ($42 for all the equipment plans (24) and paint (18) (Yes, it costs real money to change the COLOR of the Avatar’s Knight!), and the player still needs to acquire the Binding materials in-game!).
Finally, “WKC2” also features a ‘GeoRama,’ a completely customizable hometown (creatively, and unchangeably, called ‘Hometown’) for the player’s Avatar. No story characters can visit the GeoRama, and its primary purpose is to act as a hub for online multi-player games. However, the GeoRama also has the unique feature of an item shop that sells different kinds of monster debris based on the people who have been recruited to live in the GeoRama and the number of resource-generating objects placed in the GeoRama. I thought the GeoRama was a neat feature, but sorely under-utilized. Perhaps the most blatant DLC-related greed in the game affects the GeoRama, as the only way to purchase houses that can contain three residents (instead of two) is to buy them as overpriced DLC.
Overall
“White Knight Chronicles 2” harbors the barest essentials of a good game, buried beneath the moldering corpses of two bad games. When the game(s) takes a break from ram-rodding a cheesy, cliched story down players’ throats or whoring itself out as a fake MMO with loads of expensive DLC, there is a glimmer of solid gameplay and the interesting mechanics of the Incorrupti and GeoRama. Then the horrible AI and user-hostile command bar reassert themselves and that glimmer vanishes. With less grind, a battle system more like “Final Fantasy 12’s,” and a complete excision of the MMO and DLC aspects, “WKC2” could have amounted to something and redeemed its incomplete predecessor. As it is, “WKC2” is just two games on one disc that add up to nothing.
Presentation: 4/5
Story: 0.5/5
Gameplay: 2/5
Overall (not an average): 2/5
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