If you’re a fan of Level-5’s previous works, cult classic RPGs like Dark Chronicle and Rogue Galaxy, then we’ve no doubt that the wait for the celebrated Japanese studio’s first game for the new generation of console hardware must’ve been agonising. It was released in Japan way back in December 2008, taking well over a year to finally reach these shores. We know, we’ve been waiting for it too.

You can but dream Leonard, you can but dream

But even more painfully drawn out than the wait for White Knight Chronicles European release is White Knight Chronicles itself. We’ve played some slow games in our time, RPGs especially, but never have we had such an acute sense that a game was deliberately stalling for time – dragging every single little piece of itself out as much as possible in a vain attempt to disguise the fact that, to be perfectly blunt, it has very little of any real substance to offer. Yes, after all that waiting, White Knight Chronicles is a big disappointment.

While most of Level-5’s other games are, without doubt, rooted deeply in the traditions of Japanese RPGs, each has brought its own unique twists into the genre, building in substantial layers of depth and meshing them tightly with the storytelling, exploration, adventure and combat on which good RPGs thrive. By comparison, White Knight Chronicles just feels lazy, almost cynical sometimes.

There are sections, for example, where you’re in a city and you have to find someone or something in order to help you progress with your main quest. This in itself is very formulaic, especially when the person you need to find is the governor, so that he can grant you a pass through the Southern gate of the city. Why do you need a pass? There is no reason. Unless you count “to slow you up so you don’t finish the game in about four hours” as a reason. But we’re ranting off topic a little there. In some of these cities you’ll know who and what you’re looking for in advance and will just be able to follow a marker to where he, she or it is. Bit boring, yes, but it keeps things moving along. Usually though your ‘briefing’ will consist of little more than a member of your party saying, “How’re we going to find it?” and another one saying, “We’ll just have to ask around.”

The action in cut-scenes can feel a bit amateur dramatics

And so the process of going up to the residents of the city one-by-one and pressing X begins. Is this the kind of fact-finding mission we’d rightfully expect from a 21st century RPG? Are there multiple choice conversations to give us a sense that we’re doing the digging for ourselves? Does anyone actually give you any clue as to who you might want to speak to next? No, no and no. As if the last 20 years never happened, only one person in the entire city is useful to you (i.e. the one you’re actually bloody looking for). Everyone else will just act is if by pressing X, you activated the one and only choice of conversation that is ever open to you, namely “Hello there. Please tell me something mind-numbingly inane about yourself.”

… continued