[ PS3 ] White Knight Chronicles

[jujimum]

Finally a PS3 game I'm actually thinking about playing. I'll have to chisel the dust off of my system and also buy that thing that Jeffrey mentioned here.

White Knight Chronicles. I saw this one a while ago and the screenshots and concept completely had me hooked. They've added a few features which I'll quote from Gamespot. While some of it doesn't apply to me, I'm happy to see that you have the choice of playing solo or with 3 other people for the online quests. Being a loner, that's a huge plus:

Originally Posted by Gamestop

Three modes have been added, which include Geonet, Georama, and subquests. Geonet is a social networking service for players online. You can set up a profile and blog, participate in message boards, send mail, and customize your friends list. Only one home page is available per PlayStation Network user. You can access Geonet at anytime via your menu or from a logic stone within the game. You'll receive administration announcements and be able to read who commented on your blog.

Georama is a mode that lets you create your own town, which will then function as a lobby. You can set up a shop and invite your friends over to take a look around. We were given a quick demo of the editing mode, and it seemed pretty easy to follow. Once you place your objects down, you can immediately wander through your creation to see whether it looks good from your character's angle. You pick from a huge list of objects that range from houses, fences, garden objects, and anything that you would need to customize your own town. Depending on what you want, you can have your town situated in the plains, desert, or wilderness, and there are six variations for each field type. Elevated platforms, embankments, trees, and other items can help you shape your hub. If you want, you can create your own obstacle course or maze within and watch your friends run through it like mice. There are colored crates as well, which you can place and stack on one another to decorate the landscape if you're into pixel art.

The attributes of your Georama changes depending on who lives in it, meaning you can also recruit non-player characters to join your town from the Story mode. NPCs have jobs and specific skill levels, which will affect the kind of materials and items you can use in your georama. Each person on Geonet can create up to 20 georama rooms. A maximum of 12 people can hang out in your customized town and four can enter your quest room.

Subquests are multiplayer quests that you can clear with four players. You control your own avatar instead of using Leonard, the in-game character. Your avatar's level and equipment is the same as in the Story mode, which is nice so that you don't have to start over. As you go through the story, more quests will become available. By accumulating points, your guild rank will increase, which will unlock more quests and give you access to stronger weapons and armor that you wouldn't be able to get on your own. You can always play these quests on your own as well.

[Jeffrey99]

You should already be getting that PS3 dusted off for God of War 3 and Heavy Rain.

Honestly this type of game doesn't interest me at all but since you mentioned my name I just had to post. LOL

[jujimum]

Originally Posted by Jeffrey99

You should already be getting that PS3 dusted off for God of War 3 and Heavy Rain.

Honestly this type of game doesn't interest me at all but since you mentioned my name I just had to post. LOL

Never played God of War and those types don't interest me. White Knight Chronicles comes out before Heavy Rain Sadly, not too long ago Heavy Rain was my first anticipated game for PS3. It was basically Little Big Planet, White Knight Chronicles, and Heavy Rain. I say "sadly" because for a year or so there were maybe two games on my radar for the PS3.

[TommyNuGuns]

This game sounds interesting. When is the release date?

[jujimum]

Originally Posted by TommyNuGuns

This game sounds interesting. When is the release date?

Gamefly has it for February 4th. Probably more like February 2nd if there are no delays though. Games typically come out on Tuesday.

Check out this screen (*EDIT* Might be from a cutscene so I'm not image tagging it):

http://image.com.com/gamespot/images..._screen004.jpg

Last time I read about the game, none of the screenshots were in English I might have to read a little bit more and see if it's "turn-based"....UGH! I'm looking at screenshots like the one below and not sure if this is something I want or not now I'm also not a fan of games where you can't customize your character.

[TommyNuGuns]

Yeah I was hoping for something more action based. Oh well I will keep my eyes on this one.

[jujimum]

Originally Posted by TommyNuGuns

Yeah I was hoping for something more action based. Oh well I will keep my eyes on this one.

Well, definitely not action based

I put a good chunk of time starting this game last night. I'll play it a bit more through the weekend but if it doesn't get any better, I'll send it off Monday.

It's not a BAD game, it's just not my type of game.

This was my first venture into a "JRPG" game. Two things I wasn't ready for were long cutscenes and squad based combat.

The cut scenes are good and I found them interesting even though story isn't all that important to me. Maybe because it was a "movie" and not part of the game I was able to get into the story more. However, they are fairly long and I found myself fighting the urge to skip them. Also, they are long but split up. So just when you think it ended, another segment comes up. I picked up and put down my controller quit often

Having a "team" isn't fun. I definitely enjoy being the "lone wanderer" ala Fallout/Oblivion/Fable/Two Worlds/etc. That very reason is why I didn't check out Dragon Age: Origins. I don't know why I thought this one would be different. Having to micro-manage (my term for it) isn't fun. Whenever one person levels up, I have to go and choose what they learn. So basically you can control any of the 3 people in your party (party of 4 so far, one is a "reserve"?). That takes me right out of the game because it's not all about me. A role playing game for me is just that, I'm taking the role of the character so the character should be me and my feelings (for the most part).

And the funniest thing is, and it's not a spoiler at all, your character that you create doesn't get to be the big knight. It's the main character "Leonard" that does. Again, I don't care about Leonard. I care about "Spillblood".

So for those reasons, I can take Final Fantasy whatever number, off of my radar and Gamefly queue. No matter how good the game, I don't like squads. Probably what turned me off of Mass Effect.

Back to this game though and it's combat. Basically as in the video above, you have a queue. You can put anything in there and even create your own combos to put in there. After each action, or turn, you have to wait for a "meter" to fill up before performing another action. It's very boring and while I understand I'm low level, fighting a strong creature takes FOREVER. That's with 3 characters whacking at him too. And you can die and have to start over. And to go along with that, I think the game has the thing I hate most in any video game. RESPAWNING DEAD! Absolutely hate it and no game should have it. Well, not no games, but most games shouldn't have respawns. Man I hate them the most.

Anyway, I could go on more about the combat but I think I said enough. I will play it more today/tonight but don't expect my feelings to change. I played twice yesterday and almost posted after my first play, but decided to give it more time.

The Georama mode is a really neat touch and I would enjoy that as a separate game. However, it feels too much like an add-on and you have to earn money and stuff in the single player to pay for this extra mode. Sometimes there can be too much to do in games

I don't think anyone had this on their radar, but for Tommy, I hope this helps you look for something else. The good news for me is, if I send this back, I can get a game I'll be more interested in. Heavy Rain and Risen are next on my GameFly queue. I'll probably go with Risen since I want another RPG. Sadly, I bought an extra XBox controller to use for the PS3 and now I might not need it for a while

[jujimum]

Well, I played it more and started to get into it. Then I did some "side quests". I might be wrong, but the side quests are so out of place it isn't even fun. They almost feel like add-ons since you can play them online or solo. But there doesn't seem to be any where someone runs up to you and needs your help or you just happen upon a side quest. You have to "buy" (game earned money) the quests and then "activate them. It's really bad.

Add to this that you are timed and have to complete the quest in a certain amount of time and it really sucks. You are then graded on how fast/well you did. So dumb. I just did a quest that recommended I be Level 8. I'm Level 12. I could barely kill a group of "mosquitoes" and yet the end of the quest had me fighting 2 huge trolls. Just ridiculous and almost forced to have to play online with a group.

Anyway, I was going to keep it for a week but think I might send it back so I'm not tempted to play it.

[Jcon77]

I read the review for this one after you started talking about it, Sounds pretty lousy from the reviews I read and what you're saying here.

[jujimum]

It's not lousy. I think the main story might be good even though it's short (20-30 hours). So a rental wouldn't be bad. I just wouldn't expect a Fallout or Oblivion in terms of exploring and side quests. This one is supposed to be 100+ hours but that means 60 hours of side quest that you may or may not be able to play alone/offline. By the time you can play them alone, you might be ready to move on from the game.

The squad based system and the stupid sidequest implementation killed this one for me. I started to get used to the squad and was actually enjoying trying to make each of them unique (Longswordsman, short swordsman, archer, and mage). But the side quests was a huge disappointment. I don't think I was doing anything wrong but never cared to look it up to see if I was. The only exploring needed was to gather items. If you saw a patch of flowers with butterfly flying around it, you could "dig". Mountains and Trees would have an area that sparkled if you could search them.

I admit I didn't go too far, but early on it felt like all that item gathering was more for my GeoRama (online town).

I typically go for user reviews because some people aren't as picky as official reviewers. For instance, Divinity II received a 6.5 from OXM where I gave it around an 8. I'm not sure this game deserved as low of a score as it's getting, but it's definitely not for me.

I sent it back to Gamefly today even though the next game on my queue doesn't come out until February 23rd.