Can this RPG finally shine?
The original White Knight Chronicles was a disappointing RPG that had a mediocre story, dated mechanics and never lived upto its potential. The sequel hopes to put this right along with having a Director’s Cut version of the original thrown in for those new to the series, but is it enough?
Sadly, no. The game still suffers from the same problems as the original, the plot is clichéd and dull, while I still have no idea what the point of your own designed character is since he/she doesn’t have a single line of dialogue or importance to the story, so it’s pointless once again…especially considering you don’t even have to use your avatar in combat, you can just leave it to fight. The combat system is improved slightly, but it’s still incredibly flawed and at times, feels like a button-masher.
One good thing is that you can import your save from the original or Director’s Cut over to the sequel, which is a nice touch. All your standard RPG elements are here such as visiting towns, gathering new equipment and levelling up. This time around you can actually play with upto 5 players online to tackle the game through co-op, this is a decent addition and it would have worked wonders if the game had a personality to go with it.
By that I mean that no single character is engrossing in any way, which is rule number 1 when you are making an RPG…have interesting characters with an air of mystery to them and the gamer will be intrigued enough to maybe play till the end, but as such there isn’t one person that I can think this applies to. The simple truth is that while it’s nice to get two games for the price of one, neither has enough polish to compete with today’s modern RPGs.
There’s also the presentation that lets it down. Visually, it doesn’t look much different from the original and its average for a PS3 game, very average. Character models are a mixed bag and the world feels bland. Voice-acting is pretty bad too, but the poor script wouldn’t have helped even the greatest actors to make anything sound believable.
The Verdict
White Knight Chronicles II is a very average RPG that doesn’t improve things that much from the original, but it does have 60-70 hours of content and a co-op mode that can actually be fun at times, it’s just dated by today’s standards and doesn’t use the most of the hardware.
The custom characters sole purpose is for online quest. You can use him/her for story mode or online and it’s armor, weapons, level ups etc can be brought back-and-forth between the two.