So I just finished White Knight Chronicles and I’ll break down my thoughts on the game into categories. I didn’t want to flood the main thread anymore than I did. I’m gonna be doing a bunch of spoilers as well (marked of course) as well. Also, MOD ABUSE!

Anyway, I’ll do it by area and point so it’s easier to read.

Graphics and Sound:

- Pretty awesome. The environments, especially, are fantastic looking. Very detailed, very pretty, and very expansive. A few of the areas really remind me of Final Fantasy XI and a bit of Final Fantasy XII at times. They’re also pretty well-designed so it’s not just a bunch of straight corridors most of the time.

- Character models aren’t shabby. They look pretty decent after you look at them for a bit. The monsters are pretty good looking, particularly the big ones and the Knights look good. The character creator is pretty good and you can really create your own character if you want although I was disappointed that the game lacked a few options like eye-patches and scars.

- Armor and weapons are all reflected on the character which is a nice touch and very welcome.

- There’s a bit of slowdown later on in one particular area when there’s a ton of stuff going on.

- Music was ok, didn’t really stand out to me though. Voice-acting was solid enough in the game as well. The OP song is still the thing that sticks out in my mind the most.

Gameplay:

The battle system is MMO-like akin to FFXI, FFXII, or a few other console RPGs I could mention. So you face your opponents on the field and can attack when your battle ring fills up. The bars at the bottom of the screen are the commands you can choose from during the battle. The game runs on Action Chips to determine the more powerful attacks in the game and your combos. You gain them by attacking enemies or taking enemy attacks.

- In general, I was pleased with the battle system. It reminded me of FFXI the most with aggro control, positioning, and the general flow of combat being manageable. Action Chip gain and loss doesn’t seem to have hard and set rules so gaining it simply by fighting is really funky. This makes relying on some of the game’s systems like Slash/Pierce/Blunt and the elements harder to take advantage of because many of the stronger attacks require AC and most of the time, you want to save AC for big enemies or boss fights.

- Custom combos are fun to make. However, I really wanted to do more fancy ones without having to waste so many Action Chips. They really needed also to make more combo enders to give an incentive to experiment with more expensive Combos.

- The game really needs a system in battle to make it a bit more lively like how Skillchains in FFXI are. Team combos or follow-up combos would’ve been really cool.
The skill system is pretty decent but a bit simplistic. You get 4 points every level and you can allotment into any of the categories by simply buying attacks and skills. They start off as unknown and unlock as you buy more in a certain category. A bit more synergy between categories or doing something specific would be much nicer.

- Crafting and upgrading are in the game and while nice, they’re a real pain in the ass. It seems they were definitely designed to suck up time.

Online:

I haven’t spent a huge time on this so these are my impressions of it so far.

- The structure of Geonet (the WKC network) is not bad. Each has a page they can manage and rooms they can use for people to come in and play with them. You can update it with messages and customize it to an extent.

- The “My Town” section has 20 rooms that can fit 12 people a piece. The current rooms are simply a corralled grassy area with two vendors (selling basic items) and two guards, one to start/participate in quests and one to leave the room/town.

- Quests are done in groups of 4. This gives it a bit of a Monster Hunter, Phantasy Star U/O, etc feel.

- You rank up in the guild by earning points, either solo or online, during quests. While this isn’t so bad, the problem is that there currently aren’t that many missions, 2 or so up until the guild rank I’m at, which means to get the next rank, you need to do the missions you’ve done already several times. With the limited number of areas (because of how short the story is), unless they really jump the quality of questing up, by making them inventive, this might get a bit tedious.

- There’s no drop in graphic quality playing online but there is input lag specifically during combos.
It’s promising but it remains to be seen if it’ll get better IMO.

Story & Characters (some spoilers but marked of course):

- The story starts off very slow and particularly routine. Kid meets princess, gains superpowers to protect, she gets kidnapped and he has to save her.
It’s particularly offensive early on because of some stupid gaffes that are used to keep the plot going like* having the princess be kidnapped again right after you save her because no one was guarding her during the fight*

- The story does pick-up fairly quickly though with the introduction of *Cesar at the city of Greed or whatever* and continues to get more interesting form that point on.

- The back story is interesting what with the *the origins of the Knights and the truth behind them being explained then what they were meant to be used for, to fight an ancient war. This also reveals the overall plot of the game beyond “saving the princess”.*

- The story keeps mounting up until a pretty great high point then, after that, the game ends leaving you with everything that was building up hanging! The game feels like it’s just starting and they end it there!? ANGER!!!!!!!!!!! The supposed ending in this isn’t satisfying either. >=|

- Directing is still Level-5 quality stuff, so it’s not great. A little annoying but passable at least. It’s far better than Rogue Galaxy at this point.

- Characters aren’t bad but they suffer from under-exposition. So they feel a bit flimsy overall. A bit more time on them would make a big difference and especially considering what the story setup for them.

So on the positive end, I enjoy the gameplay overall although I do think they require improvements to the system. I’m enjoying the story and now I’m looking forward to it. I like the graphics as well.

On the negative end, WHY MUST YOU END THE GAME LIKE THAT JERKS! And I have a few reservations about online at the moment.

Eh, any more questions, feel free to ask.