White Knight Chronicles is a tough game to rate. It's tough because most of the game will be spent playing the offline story mode, however, it is the online functionality that is the best aspect of the game and saves it. It was a tough decision to weigh but overall I can place White Knight Chronicles just barely into the "worth the $60 purchase" category provided you have access to online.If you enjoy playing RPGs for fantastic plots with memorable scenes and epic moments, then don't bother with White Knight Chronicles. Despite a few plot twists, there's absolutely nothing here that anyone who has ever played an RPG for the past 20 years wouldn't be able to see coming. The main character of the plot is driven by a young boy, Leonard who, for reasons that are grossly inadequately explored, falls in love with Princess Cisna because he saw her once when they were children many years ago and has taken the mantle upon himself to save her from a group known as the "Magi" who wish to use her to awaken the powers of the "knights", large body armor suits a la Escaflowne or Aura Battler Dunbine for those familiar with those anime shows. Of course, "because I saw her once a few years ago" hardly constitutes any realistic justification to involve oneself with such important world matters and in any realistic scenario the Princess wouldn't be waiting to be saved by her shining "prince" Leonard, and would probably issue a restraining order or in the very least assume he's just as evil as those that would kidnap her. Nonetheless along the way you'll meet the usual ragtag bunch most of whom just tag along "just because" with the only real interesting characters of the bunch being Kara and Eldore who's mysterious personalities barely hold the plot above water during your quest.
This is unfortunate given that terrible pacing of an already hum drum, paper thin plot only compounds matters. Once the party arrives at the city of Greede about halfway into the game, I very nearly quit as the storyline comes crashing to a screeching halt and the game enters "fetch quest hell" as at least 4 to 5 hours of the game are spent backtracking to previous areas to find items only to have to repeat the process and find yet another item the party must obtain before finally progressing to the next chapter of the story. This wouldn't be such a problem if any meaningful advancement was made. There's no character development, no new areas to explore, no meaningful backstories revealed. It's literally there to pad the length of the game and try to squeeze every last ounce out of a plot that barely held much water to begin with. Once this awful valley is finally overcome, the plot does improve towards the end, but that middle portion will have many gamers less patient than myself crying foul.
Fetch Quests are really nothing new to RPGs really, but its particularly noticeable with this game's plot due to its length, or rather, lack thereof. The main quest can literally take no more than 20 hrs just playing it normally, so when nearly 1/4 of a game's plot is relegated to fetch quests, it's highly noticeable. Once finished the game feels like a TV dinner for starved RPG fans. It satiates those of us that were looking for a next gen RPG experience just enough, but ultimately I and many others are probably already hungry for a real, true next gen RPG storyline. The story ends on a cliffhanger, which hopefully will lead to a much more intriguing plot in future installments, but for now the plot just seemed like a complete waste of time as the only moments of merit could be summed up in about 5 hours.
Well, the storyline is out but what about the gameplay? Suffice to say, the gameplay is vastly more interesting than the scenario. Once the game begins the player must create his/her avatar to use in not only online play, but you can also take that character and use them for the story mode as well. This is an exciting feature that unfortunately is amazingly underutilized by Level 5. Often times during scenes the avatar is barely even seen in the background and has virtually no involvement with the main plot whatsoever. The idea of the avatar being not the main character but rather an "onlooker" to the events unfolding isn't a particularly bad in and of itself but the problem lies in the fact that the other characters in the story never even acknowledge the avatars presence. The avatar never expresses any kind of emotion whatsoever and is really just a doll who happens to pop up in a frame from time to time.
Gameplay is structured very similarly to that of Final Fantasy XII. Combat is a combination of free roam and turn based. A timer bar fills up and once filled the player can execute a variety of commands that the player assigns from the menu screen. Unfortunately, the combat is really just a poor man's version of the previous mentioned battle system as it lacks any of the refinement or challenge of FF XII. Simple tasks like changing targets is made ridiculously cumbersome as it requires a few seconds of fumbling around the menu systems just to find the command. A "hot key" that instantly allows you to switch targets would have been much preferred. A nice plus to the game is the amount of customization. You can literally build your party members however you like as you earn ability points to spend on various skills and magic. Weapons each have their own class and abilities allowing for a large amount of flexibility and strategy. You can even create and name your own combos by stringing together abilities and assigning them to various command slots provided you have enough Action Chips stored to do so.
Not that you'd need to employ strategy or anything. Unfortunately the game is so ridiculously easy that you can pretty much skate by the entire game by teaching the party healing spells and giving them the strongest equipment and weapons. This is without employing the main characters ability to transform into the White Knight armor. Then the game becomes borderline broken. I never once had to transform into the knight unless the game dictated that I do. Magic doesn't even become a remote factor until perhaps the final area of the game when the game begins to present at least some modicum of challenge. RPGers looking the plumb the depths of strategy and really be tested akin to something of a Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne will be sorely disappointed here.
Where this game shines is in it's creativity. How creative of a person are you? That's really the question that has to be asked when deciding on a purchase of this game. The most shining moments of the game come in the form of the different ways you can be creative. The game gives you the option to literally create your own town and populate it with select residents in the various towns in the storyline. You can find and pick up materials to build houses and other structures and then assign those residents to cultivate the town. Hiring different professions yield different items that are created. This town can then be uploaded into the online mode and you can invite players to come visit the town or visit other players towns as well. You can take materials and items and combine them to create new, more powerful weaponry. Online is literally where its at. Up to four people can go on assigned quests that can be purchased in the story. Eventually you'll recieve a camera that lets you take pictures of you and your friends and upload those online as well. If you get involved and make friends online you can have tons of fun playing the game and its many shortcomings become less noticeable. I've logged about 60 hours total myself because I was having so much fun online.
Even still, even though I'm having fun going on quests with other players and friends, once you return to the main game, you're reminded all too well of how mediocre everything really is. The game isn't awful by any stretch of the imagination but you can't help but notice that Level 5 had a ton of unrealized potential here and coming from them, that's a disappointment. Also a company known for having great graphics in their games, Level 5 did a surprisingly subpar job here compared to their previous work. Rogue Galaxy and Dragon Quest 8 are among the finest games ever graphically on the PS2 but White Knight Chronicles doesn't even come close to maximizing the graphical potential of the PS3. The graphics aren't bad, but this game is seriously behind the curve and the fact that this finally released over year later doesn't help matters. Even still, there's fun to be had in this title provided you make a lot of friends who also enjoy the creative aspects of the game and if you so desire, you can go through the main quest one more time and unlock even more items and equipment on a second playthrough, but suffering through it once may be enough for most gamers. The final verdict: Level 5 and JRPG fans who are looking to be creative and not to be challenged, will get most enjoyment out of this game. The rest of you are perhaps better off looking further to the horizon to get your RPG fix.
