White Knight Chronicles International Edition
The monsters may look interesting, but slaying beasts is way too easy in this forgettable role-playing game.
The strangest aspect of the story is the manner in which your created character is utilized. Before your adventure begins, you enter a robust character creation screen in which you choose the gender, the physical attributes, and even the voice of your hero. However, when your quest begins, you will find out that your personalized avatar is not the protagonist but a silent companion along for the ride. Whereas everyone else in your party will mutter their desires, hint at their unrequited feelings of love, or pine for a far-away princess, your character will stand dumbly by only to observe the quest without ever being included in the camaraderie. It is a jarring, exclusionist feeling that makes it difficult to form any kind of connection to your created character. When you tackle side missions online, you control your created character, so you better get their skills in order and equip them with the finest weapons. But it feels really strange that they are never given any lines of dialogue or included in any substantial way during the main quest.
So much for the silent approach.
Thankfully, there is more to White Knight Chronicles than a dull story. You will spend most of your time engaged in combat, and though it’s certainly more enjoyable than the forgettable plot, it has its own issues. Battles are essentially turn based, although at any time you are free to run screaming from the fight or move around the battlefield to get better positioning. That’s useful when you want to target a specific area of a large enemy, but it has no impact on whether or not enemies can hit you because even their melee attacks will find you regardless of your position and your distance from them. You have a standard spread of melee and magic attacks, as well as healing and buff spells that provide a dose of variety. The combat is fairly cut and dry, but there are two elements that make it a bit more interesting. First of all, the protagonist Leonard can turn into a giant knight when he has enough stored power, and it is pretty neat to see your mythical doppelganger go toe-to-toe with a roaring Cerberus. Second, you can create your own combo attacks, which lets you take down your enemies with a flourish. Performing a rising sword attack on a tiny troll then smashing him back to the ground is pretty fun, and creating new combos lets you put a bit of your personality into battles.
But those good elements are tossed unceremoniously to the curb when you realize that every battle in the game is mind-numbingly easy. It doesn’t matter if you’re fighting a lone spider in a mining cave or an enormous dragon donning its own magical armor because even the most powerful enemy in the game will be hard-pressed to kill one member of your party, let alone the whole lot of you. And don’t think that the game only becomes easy after you create a bunch of neat combos or grind your way into becoming an unstoppable killing machine. From the very beginning of the game until the end boss, you will face off against a wide assortment of enemies that are simply unable to take down the fine heroes who are intent on saving the day. To make matters worse, these monsters often come with inflated life bars, so even though they pose no threat, it will still take an awfully long time to whittle their health to zero. Fights in White Knight Chronicles are often tedious because they test only your patience but never your skill.
