A Clean Slate: Hands-on with White Knight Chronicles
Full coverage on console, PC, MMO and tabletop RPGs.
by Kat Bailey | Jan 14, 2010 1:42PM PST
Tags: PS3 White Knight Chronicles (PS3)
Here's a brief glimpse into the life of someone who writes about games for a living. At around 6 last night, I took a bus into what looked like a relatively secluded part of the Mission. I walked down a dark street, half-convinced that I was about to be stabbed, looking for "The Mighty Bar." I eventually found a shady looking bouncer sitting outside a completely non-descript door. It was a warehouse for all the identifying marks the building had. For a little context, White Knight Chronicles is a game that endeavors to seamlessly integrate a single player and multiplayer experience into an RPG. I heard a lot of talk about Demon's Souls, but it's much more like Monster Hunter with a single player campaign and an MMOish bent. The multiplayer missions are available as a change of pace from the campaign, and as a chance to grab some extra loot. I tried to jump into another mission after that, but I soon discovered that it's impossible to jump into a quest already in progress. I didn't want to start my own quest, so I ended up asking for a tour of the "Geonet" service instead. Geonet serves more or less as WKC's multiplayer lobby and bulletin board service, and provides a gateway into the "Georama" feature, which is a holdover from the Dark Cloud series. I actually like the multiplayer component quite a bit. Being on the PS3, I could definitely see myself periodically taking a break from the story to run a few missions with random players, or with some friends. They're quite quick, they're easy, and there's some decent loot in it for me. This sort of setup is not something we've really seen in a next-gen JRPG, which makes it unique. I like unique.
"Looking for the Mighty?" The guy asked as I approached. I nodded, then headed down the stairs to find... a club that had been rented out to show off White Knight Chronicles. There was a dance floor and everything.
So that's my life -- going to preview events in secret raving spots. Anyway, how is White Knight Chronicles looking?
Well, this is actually my first chance to play it. I was still living in Japan when it first came out, and I didn't own a PS3 at the time (not that I would have purchased it or anything). You could say that I'm in the same spot as a lot of western RPG fans who have heard a lot about White Knight, but never actually played it. It had more or less of a clean slate with me, which is fine. Every game deserves one, particularly one that's been tweaked as much as WKC has since its initial release.
I ended up jumping into a mission with a party of three that required me to find a particular plant while beating a boss. There was no real guidance, so we broke the cardinal rule of RPGs and split the party. It wasn't intentional or anything, we just kind of lost people as we paused to fiddle with combos or explored. It wasn't long before I was all alone, which is something I'm sure voice chat would have mitigated. My particular station didn't have a headset or a keyboard though, so I was more or less on my own.
Being a preview, my character was loaded with what seemed like every attack and spell in the game. Now here's what's interesting about the battle system. Each attack has an associated command point cost, with command points being built up by using basic attacks like "slash." Build up enough points, and it's possible to not only use more powerful attack, but lengthy combos.
The combos are completely customizable too. Every single attack can be strung together in a preset combo ahead of time. The game will automatically tell you whether the moves work together, so the trick is to put together as many powerful moves as possible before the computer starts greying out options. The combos are where the game's visual flair comes into play, and they do quite a lot of damage. Of course, they also eat up a ton of command points, so they can't be used constantly.
After spending some time poking around and killing monsters, I finally happened upon the flower, which automatically triggered the boss fight. The rest of the party beamed in, and we took turns hacking and slashing at the rabbit-monster (it was seriously a rabbit-monster) for a while. When it went down, we got our loot and experience, and that was that.
Basically, Georama functions as your own little village. As your progress in the single player campaign, it becomes possible to build unique shops, invite over NPCs and generally customize at will. Connect to Geonet, and other players will start filtering through your village and generally hanging around. The hook is that player villages contain unique items and treasure, making it beneficial to go and check them out. Honestly, I love customization like this. I could mess around with my Georama all day long.
Now, the big question is whether enough people will actually be playing this thing to make it worth a look. The impression so far is that Sony is sending this thing out to die, but it sounds like they're gearing up for a largeish marketing campaign designed to appeal to anime and JRPG fans. It's been long enough since the first game was released that it does have anything even resembling momentum, so Sony is mostly throwing the revamped version out there and hoping that it finds its audience before Final Fantasy XIII comes along and sucks the air out of the RPG space.
It seems like Sony is aware that it has a slim chance of breaking out of its particular niche, so they're hoping to maximize that niche while they still have a chance. Their feeling -- and I agree, by the way -- is that there won't be any room for WKC in the conversation after Final Fantasy XIII hits. Not until the holiday season hits anyway, and by then it will have been something like two years since it was first released. Expectations are modest for this one, but there's always the chance that it will catch on and actually become a success.
If it has an achilles heel, its the poor word of mouth that's dogged it since 2008. More importantly, Sony did not feature the single player during the event, and I'm told the actual campaign is quite boring. The single player is basically the impetus behind the multiplayer -- you go and play the extra quests to get more loot for the campaign -- so I could definitely see that being a problem.
Ultimately, Sony has a real challenge on its hands trying to sell what is perceived as a mediocre product during a busy RPG season. I had fun during my time with the game though, and there's enough to just the multiplayer that I don't think it should be written off completely, especially with the improvements like voice chat. We'll see how things work out in February.
