Friday, June 5, 2009

White Knight Chronicles - hands on

From a company that brought us Professor Layton and Rogue Galaxy, Level 5's upcoming PS3 game White Knight Chronicles was giving me high hopes. What I found was a disappointing game.

For the record, I just jumped into an abandoned station where I'm already wandering around the environment looking for enemies to fight...and I did. Slowly.

First off, you have all your attacks laid out before you in these little rectangular buttons, which you can select by pressing left and right on the d-pad. Once you select one, you can attack an enemy. I don't know if it was just me, but attacks felt like they had a 1-2 second delay before executing. To add to the waiting time, after every attack you must wait for the circular guage to refill again before issuing another delayed attack.

In any case, battles have now become more sluggish than it needs to be. I had to idle my time running around in place, just to wait until my meter's full before getting my attack in. While this might be fine for people that have the time, I certainly don't.

I'm sorry, Level 5, but if the gameplay doesn't capture my attention, then it's not meant to be.

1 comment:

Xeneth said...

So this was a REALLY interesting read for me... Not that I'm in the market for a copy of White Knight Chronicles, (still no PS3!) But because it sounds like Level 5 has been playing a lot of MMOs...

Now, I don't think that's a bad or good thing really, just really telling because if this is true, and they're basing their new combat system on parts of the genre that brought us the "global cooldown" to ease lag, that would explain a lot. You've always struck me as a Console gamer, and these days I'm playing more PC games where the kind of plodding combat you're talking about is a bit more common.

That said, sounds like this departure from their action heavy take on the RPG may fall flat if it doesn't have some SERIOUS story chops... Thanks for the eyes on point sir!