Opinions on White Knight Chronicles...

[dave4shmups]

I haven't played this new RPG, but it's gotten poor review from game review websites, like IGN and Game Spot. Still, I LOVE Level-5, so I have to wonder about the low scores.

[ZOM]

I'm not in the position to say much about this since I just got it yesterday and the only bit I played was the very first town & field area, but I loved every bit from what I played; exploring the large fields is great fun and the combat system reminds me a bit of FFXII (minus the gambits), which I liked.
It's very on the easy side once you know how things works but there are ways to still keep it somewhat challenging I think.
Also, what I've seen from the game felt very charming albeit very cliche, but that's a plus in my book. I suggest to give the game a try and screw the reviews(as always), some of them even moan about the fields being to big and that exploration is involved in it - funny thing seeing it's the same twats moaning about FFXIII being too linear.

Just don't expect too much from it and you'll be pleasantly surprised.

EDIT: tried to fix my sucky grammar

[Square King]

In general, if it's a Japanese RPG and it doesn't look like an anime, it should be relatively decent. So far:

Lost Odyssey: A winner for me but it had some awful reviews.
Eternal Sonata: I was pretty meh on it initially, but it's quirky enough to go through once. I've had it for years and still haven't beaten it...lost interest.

I'd take a chance on White Knight Chronicles.

[Cthulhu]

I actually beat the game in Japanese. I thought I posted about it here but I could be mistaken. I'd sum up the game as being "good but not great" - maybe a 7.5/10. The game plays very much like a single-player MMO, if that makes any sense. Think FF-12-ish combat where you tell people to enter attack mode and they keep attacking once every X seconds and you can use special attacks when the cooldown periods for them are over. It works pretty well for the most part; the thing about the combat that I didn't like was that the advanced techniques for a lot of the weapons were really unimpressive (both in terms of looks and effects). Some of the areas you go through are REALLY large; there aren't too many enemy types so you'll fight the same things a lot (which is a little disappointing but somewhat expected).

The storyline is a little cliched but the characters are fun enough that I didn't really care. The ending is largely non-existent - it's a lead-in to WKC 2, which shouldn't be surprising as this game was announced as the first part of a trilogy anyways. The environments range from nice-but-blase to woah-this-is-awesome; visually the areas and the CG scenes are amazing, the characters vary in quality. Most of the monsters look really nice, especially the bosses. The bosses are usually pretty fun to fight, but some of the ones that look like they should be really tough are actually somewhat easy (and yes, as expected, a few that look weak are considerably stronger).

One component of the game that looked pretty good but I never got into was the online questing. I generally don't like playing with strangers online (yeah, I'm old like that) so I never got interested. Some people really enjoyed it from what I've read, and the game seems to have quite a few quests you can go on.

Overall, I'd say the game is worth the money if you like JRPGs and you're willing to forgive some of the faults. It's not a short game by itself and if you are interested in the online stuff the playtime should shoot up even more. I'm a little biased in saying this, since I'm somewhat of a Level 5 fan and I'd like to see them get more funding though, so keep that in mind.