White Knight Chronicles: International Edition for PlayStation 3 Reviews by Gamers

Level 5 is one of my favorite JRPG developers. Dark Cloud 1 and 2 had a certain spirit that really grabbed me and I loved the Georama system of those two titles. Well, with White Knight Chronicles you could really call it the spiritual successor to Dark Cloud and label it Dark Cloud 3. BUT, this title has a single player storyline with more going on then just " you need to rebuild towns ". But in classic Level 5 style, the storyline takes a serious backseat to everything else in the game. Really, what JRPG has a GREAT storyline anyway?

Beyond the storyline problems, I find nearly nothing worth complaining about. The online element is actually really well done. Being able to create your own town, hire residents, farm materials that others can take advantage of, and grow your town is incredibly fun and well managed. I've gone to bland towns and then walked into a town incredibly well designed with tons of buildings and residents and lakes and whatnot. A place you would love to enter again. Also, thanks to the level of the town, you can find yourself walking out of a Town with some advanced weaponry and armor thanks to the binding system and the ability to buy more rare materials from these town shops compared to the storyline towns.

Combat system works like Final Fantasy XII. Everything is real time and it utilizes the ATB system ( Active Time Battle ). Anyone who has played Final Fantasy 7 or 6 or 8 or whatever has used this system before. But, unlike FF instead of waiting for a bar to fill you wait for a circle on the screen to fill before you can activate your next attack. People call this slow, but it is a normal thing. Also, you can speed this process up with buffs, higher stats like agility, lighter armor on your character and other factors. Currently I wait about 2 seconds between spear attacks. The combo system is great. The graphics are great. And the soundtrack is prob. the best of an RPG this generation.

Overall, a solid JRPG.

This game had the potential and hype to start with. But it's epically terrible!

We fans have been waiting for this game for years. A MMO and JRPG mixture that we expected to be the next great game of 10'. The game starts off with a cool concept where you are a boy (Lenard), who gets an ability to call this awesome creature/robot known as the White Knight. The story itself is told very harsh manor, it doesn't grip you at all. It makes you feel rather empty and uninvolved. They just do a overall bad job on telling the story. Story itself has a few good plot twists, but nothing to make you think that the game overall is a master piece or even decent (sad to say). The game doesn't engage you for the entire thing, including the ending. The end of the game was very unsatisfying, and just like IGN says, it's a horrible cliff hanger. They gave this game no thought, or at least it seems.

Now for the gaming details, the game looks bad. From the pictures and renderings they presented for the longest time, you would think that the model work and effects would look great. But that is far from the truth, even the environments look like utter garbage. This just doesn't look like a next generation game. The voices don't even come close to the characters model.

The game battle system, you gain skills and you pretty much add them to your in-game options screen. It's a nifty idea, but I've gotten this even though IGN's rating of it, which is in the 5's. They say you spend most of your time in the battle system "waiting" and that is so correct. It's like "Last Remnant" to an extreme, you almost forget you're playing the game at times! Unlike Last Remnant, in White Knight distance plays no role. They can attack you from behind a mountain, huge tree or a mile-away and with their short range attacks. But you can't. The free roaming in the game is useless, just stay close and never move. Works better!

Multiplayer mode is pretty solid.

Rent, do NOT buy!

OVERALL = 4.5/10.0