White Knight Chronicles II Review by: EvilAlu - 7.8/10
Continuing The ChroniclesDescription - White Knight Chronicles II, a Role Playing Game (RPG) exclusive to the PlayStation 3. Released in the US in September of 2011 and June 2011 in the EU. Developed by Level-5 and Published by D3 Publisher and SCEE, Network Play supports 2-6 players.
Plot - A year has passed since Leonard and his friends rescued Princess Cisna, from the evil clutches of Grazel. However times have not gotten any better, as Grazel continues to build his dark army, and strive to gain the ultimate power of Emperor Madoras for himself. But when Leonard is struck down by what seems to be his own power eating
away at him, it is left up to Yulie and the rest of the party to take
up arms and continue the fight for good. Together they set out, and
meet many new challenges along the way, they push forward with their
mission to save the world from the wrath of Grazel.
Story - Not unlike the first White Knight Chronicles game, WKC II follows the same story. What you must remember thou is that this is not a sequel, it is the second half to the story. Continuing from White Knight Chronicles, You begin your journey with a prologue set in Faria, where you witness the Farian general Scardigne. He is attempting to rescue Miu, princess of Faria and get her safely out of the city because of the civil war. With a little effort, they manage to escape the city in to the forest but are quickly followed. At this point the game cuts to a scene, where Princess Cisna has called for Leonard, Eldore and Yulie.
She explains to them that they must head for Faria, and speak to Father Yggdra. Upon hearing this, the groups sets off for faria, where they come across Scardigne and Miu in rather a tight spot. They drop down and rescue them from Ban Nanazels forces, they then learn that the Yshrenian Empire supported Ban Nanazel. Finding this out, Leonard and company travel to the city, where they must fight to bring piece back to Faria and rescue father Yggdra who was the target of Ban Nanazels destruction. Successfully saving Father Yggdra they then receive a magical book, that would allow them to travel to the past. Magical book in hand, they travel back to the day the Yshrenians attacked Balandore castle.
Upon arival the attempt to save the Farian Archduke, but to no avail. However before Archduke Dalam draws his last breath, he hands the party a special insignia. Upon returning to their own time, they learn from Father Yggdra that they must acquire three of these mystical insignia. With this new found knowledge they head for Greede, and are shocked to see that its citizens have been overcome by a terrible poison mist. They search out Ceaser, an old friend and now the new ruler of Greede, it is from him that they learn of the black dragon that is inflicting this terrible purple poison. They eventually discover that in order to beat this dragon, they will need to get their hands on a lance, which was used to defeat it long ago. Once they retrieve the lance, and defeat the dragon ridding Greede of its poison covered air, they learn that the desert town of Albana has been taken over by Yshrenia.
And so they set out on yet another quest to rid the world of Yshrenian rule. But when Leonard is struck down by what seems to be his own power eating away at him, it is left up to Yulie and the rest of the team to take the lead and continue the fight for good. Together they set out, and facing many new challenges along the way, they push on with their mission to save the world from the tyranny of Grazel.
The story as a whole has a lot of different parts to it, so I wont go to far in to the game. But hopefully What I wrote above gave you some idea of how the story plays out, and if you would enjoy it or not. For me I found the story to be interesting at times, however there are parts of the story that feel dragged out, which left me wishing they would stop talking and get on with it. Alot of the time you find yourself back tracking through previous locations as you play through the story, which to me wasn't very appealing. If you have played White Knight Chronicles you will be aware of the locations as you play WKC II, and discover that only a few new places open up to you in the story. Thou exploring the new areas accessible to you had its charm, it quickly wears off when you finish that respected part of the game. The only upside I found with revisiting locations you had previously been to, was that it opened new areas within the area you never saw in WKC. Which again at times was in its element, but nothing to really bring that feeling of excitement I got from the first game. I will however give credit for the massive amount of content put in the game. I score the story 5/10.
Gameplay - This was one of the aspects of the game I really enjoyed, with its what seemed like limitless possibilities. With a huge amount of attainable items, weapons and armor, which left me fully satisfied when it came to customizing my characters looks and power. With so many things you can find, earn and buy I found myself sometimes not playing the game, as I found plenty of enjoyment from trying out different combinations of items. A nice feature about the game, is that your characters will gradually recover HP and MP while walking or running, which really came in handy when you just beat a difficult area and are low on healing items or magic. WKC II also carried over the various poses you can make in game play, for example, if you sit down your health will recover faster and if you pray your magic recovers faster. Again I found this to be nice, and it was used more than once. WKC II also allows you to carry over your saved data from WKC, this allowed you to bring your custom made avatar, money and any gear you had gotten previously. However, the data transfer is far from smooth, as it requires you to rebuild your characters layouts, reallocate skill points to each characters skill tree, rebuild any custom made combos and to make it worse you had to manually pull your gear out of storage to re equip everyone. I feel this should have been done automatically, and just put a negative mark on the feature for me. A good point to the game play thou, is that after the long wait you can finally get your avatar a knight of his own, but yet again this has bad qualities, as this doesn't happen till pretty much the end of the game. One solid positive for the game play is the online interaction. This by far made the game playable for me, even more so than the main story itself. Like in WKC by going online and entering the Geonet, you can make your very own town. Which in time you can fill with residents that you acquire in different towns and cities. Quests are also another great feature of online play, with a huge number of new quests available to you. You can play these quests with other online players, and make a party of up to six people. You will also get the choice to join guilds, and make new friends to play with. Guilds are also a great way to obtain items that can be really hard to get, the higher the level of your guild the more rare the items will be in your guild stores. Of course if you don't wish to join someone else's guild, there is the option to make your own, which people can then join if they wish, however this will cost you a small fee in the PlayStation store. As you will acquire a knight for your avatar in WKC II, which you can fully customize to how you want it to look, if you have the correct items or money needed to get the parts that is. You will be able to use it in any quests you take part in. Thou you can use your avatars knight in the main story, you get it late, its purpose was really only meant for the online aspect of game play.
Combat - The combat is a turn based system set in real time, thou it was greatly improved since WKC it still had some flaws. Movement is possible while in battle, which allows you to escape enemy attacks, however with the use of so many long range spells and attacks, I found myself at times just taking the hits head on. Another downfall to the combat, is the wait time, after you attack you are required to wait for it to re-fill before you can attack again. Thou the speed of the wait time was slightly faster than in WKC, the feeling of waiting around like a useless article still came in to my mind. The way the combat system is set up was terrible in my opinion, at times leaving me dazed in the heat of battle, struggling to find the correct attack or spell to use. This is all well and good if you have a brilliant memory, and can remember how you set your load outs, but if you cant like me then there will be times you get rocked in a fight because of it. There are a few nice features to the combat however, such as the use of combos, that you can custom build from moves you unlock on your skill tree. These let you do some crucial damage if set up correctly and used on the right enemy. Also the use of Knights, by calling out this power you can transform your character to a walking disaster for enemies. Encountering the eneimis in the game is optional most of the time, they are visible as you play through so you can chose to avoid them if you wish, but they will chase you if they see you and some of them are extremely fast. The use of weak spots was carried over to WKC II, breaking these will drop an enemy to its knees for a short time, rendering it useless which can be a big help. Over all the combat as a system wasn't all that good for me, but the challenging enemies and tough boss battles made up for it. Not to mention the bounty system in the game, some of the most challenging fights available and can provide rare items and equipment.
Graphics - When it comes to graphics the cut scenes were beautiful, but the in play graphics felt slightly dated. However this didn't impact me as I played really, it was noticeable but not so much that it made the game so you didn't want to play it. Detail in big cities were good, but not the most impressive I have seen, I found small towns within the game to hold more detail. I give the graphics a score of 6/10.
Sound - The sound was again ok, the voice acting was enjoyable and seemed to fit each respected character. The sound track within the game was nice, but very repetitive in more than a few locations. This is not uncommon in RPG games, but it has the same grating effect on the ears. I give the sound a score of 5/10
Depth - When depth comes in to play it certainly does not lack it, with such a massive amount of content such as side missions and bounties, you will be kept busy for hours on end. And for anyone looking to obtain everything possible in the game, you will find not be disappointed with the time you need to invest. A downside to the depth however is most of it is in repeated places, and scenery can feel repetitive at times. The main story will give a player 60 plus hours of play time, with extras you may wish to obtain you will get 78 plus hours of game time. And for the player who wants it all, you can expect a massive 750 hours of game playing, which is the most depth I have ever encountered in any game. I award the depth a score of 9/10.
Addictiveness - WKC II has its moments of addictiveness, but in some places it can feel boring and take away the charisma needed to get through the area. But in most instances, once you get past that you will find sparks within the game that hooks you to it, and make you want to play on. I score the addictive side f the game 5/10.
Difficulty - This is something that I found was greatly improved from WKC, battles were more challenging and really tested me as the player. Boss fights were tough but some were more of a let down, with field enemies putting them to shame. There are places you will play through that are very maze like, and left me running in circles for hours at times trying to get to the objective, even with the use of a map, such a Frass Chasm, Greed's Underbelly and under Balandor. However despite all of this, the game wasn't to difficult after some excessive level grinding. I give the difficulty 5/10.
Over All - To sum up WKC II was enjoyable, but not as thrilling as I thought the first game was, locations and dungeons get recycled a lot which let down the game a little. Combat had its moments but can feel rather clunky when mixed with the set up options. As WKC II comes with WKC players who have yet to play the first game will be awarded the option to start that first. Gamers who enjoy putting a lot of time into an RPG should find this enjoyable, for me the online play made the game and chances are you will find the online interaction more enjoyable than the games main story. I give WKC II an over all score of 7.8/10.
Graphics
6 Sound
5 Addictive
5 Depth
9 Story
5 Difficulty
5
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