White Knight Chronicles International Edition

The combat is great, the back-end mechanics are solid, the graphics are nice, and the voice acting is more than fair. I'm probably a harder critic on games than anyone I know, but even I coudn't deny that this is a very good game.

White Knight Chronicles has several faulty elements, but the game is long (the original released in Japan a couple of years back was estimated at 100 hours – but it can be done in between 65 and 80) and the story is decently layered making for a nice bit of J-RPG gaming.

White Knight Chronicles International Edition has an excellent look and feel for the most part. Although it does have some quirks and annoying problems it manages to throw in enough unique elements into the JRPG genre to make this title somewhat unique.

The combat system is deep and manages to impress. The lack of classes is a downside, but luckily, the tactics and combat setup are able to overcome that – making it possible to create your own classes. The story pulls you along from the start and the cut-scenes are delicious. Enemies aren’t always unique or original, but the total package of small and humongous enemies gives you variety. The addition of multiplayer creates a whole lot more gameplay and fun. In that sense, it’s an important addition. Finally, it’s wonderful to become the White Knight while we wait for the next JRPG. It’s a bit rough around the edges, but definitely not a lousy game either.

White Knight Chronicles is a nice RPG. It brings an entertaining story, many hours of gameplay and a lot of possibilities to improve your squad.

White Knight Chronicles is a fine JRPG. The start is a little bit cliché, but when you’ve played a few hours, the game will get more and more interesting. The combat system is turnbased, but at another new way and it’s working pretty fine. The graphics aren’t the best anymore but they do deliver a lot of atmosphere and that also counts for the audio.

Looks like Level 5 have conjured up another RPG gem.

White Knight Chronicles is a very good game. What you get out of it really depends on what you’re going to put in. It’ll be over in a few days if you just plow through the story, but if you get into the meat of the game and start developing your town and binding new items together to take on those tricky online group quests and grind up your guild rank, this is going to suck up a lot of your time.

White Knight Chronicles has an excellent look and feel, and throws in enough unique twists on the JRPG genre to make this title something unique, but it is marked more by its missed opportunities and clichés than anything else.

White Knight Chronicles is an acceptable game. All components fit well into the gameplay and also the story keeps you going. Only the graphics are not up to date and could have been done better. Overall the White Knight persuades.

At the end of the day, White Knight Chronicles may not be the latest and greatest Final Fantasy game, however in terms of playability, it actually works in a strange sort of dated way.

White Knight Chronicles does something that recent traditional RPGs have not: it has played it safe and close to genre conventions. While taking a worthwhile risk in the combat system , Level 5 doesn't stray from the old magic of what makes RPGs some of the greatest games published.

White Knight Chronicles is a game that could have been so much more. Unfortunately, it seems Level 5 focused too much on the combat system and not enough on providing a challenge. That said, I would recommend renting before you buy, as the other elements just aren’t tight enough to make this an easy recommendation.

Disappointingly, White Knight Chronicles is a game that’s not too memorable in most respects, saved only by strong character customization and online play.

WKC isn't a bad game. It is a disjointed game. There are so many things included that none of them were able to get the attention they deserved.

Although it's easy to lose track of what's happening aurally in any game with an action element, the music in White Knight is consistently brilliant.

While much care was taken to create a complex story and extensive artwork to support it, repetitive combat mechanics, tedious level design and exclusionary side quests undermine story and aesthetics, resulting in an uneven RPG experience.

It's good to see Level 5 doing big RPGs again, and White Knight Chronicles is a solid first effort in what could be a new series.

White Knight Chronicles has got some neat graphics and lots of cool and fresh ideas. But the PS3 role-playing game suffers from a half-baked realization.

White Knight Chronicles is better than most people are giving it credit for, but it does come up short in some key areas. I think that folks looking for a huge RPG experience may want to rent this before buying.

White Knight Chronicles was a disappointment for me, especially coming from a quality developer like Level-5. Some of the studio’s trademark customization helps to give the game some legs, as does its hefty multiplayer component. However, for interesting combat, deep characters, and an engaging fantasy, I’d look elsewhere.

White Knight Chronicles is a game that isn’t quite the sum of its parts. The parts actually add up together pretty well on paper, but in reality the MMO and single player Japanese RPG styles don’t merge too well, and what you’re left with is a fun combat system with a cluttered HUD, generic storyline and design and a multiplayer component that is a side-component at best.

White Knight Chronicles is not a bad game at all, but it lacks of spirit because of its gameplay flaws and unimpressive combat system.

The online component was definitely more entertaining than the single-player game, but it also comes with its own set of setbacks that keep it from being as user-friendly as I would have hoped for. Still PS3 fans looking for a solid JRPG experience will not be disappointed as long as they know what they are getting into.

It’s totally super awesome. And stuff.

Thankfully, with their powers combined, the sister modes of the game conspire to lift it above its shortcomings and transform it into a worthwhile, if scatterbrained, experience.

White Knight Chronicles is definitely hit-or-miss at times, and while it finds itself occasionally hampered by a stale single-player campaign and wonky combat system, the overall experience brings just enough fresh content and online innovations to the table to make it a worthwhile purchase for hardcore JRPG fans.

Despite their relative strength, the disparate halves of White Knight Chronicles fail to gel in meaningful ways.

The long delay in reaching EU territories should have been spent by Level-5 to smooth the many edges of their production. Unfortunately this has not happened and the result is a pleasant JRPG, but far from the quality that Japanese developers have us accustomed to.

The world that Level 5 invites you to explore is predictable and typical in a way that feels almost irritating. Still the music is amazing and the battle system intense.

It is still a recommended game for Japanese RPG lover, but the strange gameplay and some of its aspects should make experienced players think twice this acquisition.

White Knight Chronicles: International Edition is a solid role playing game, and the battle system hardly even feels like it's turn based. All the item collecting parts really helps the offline part, but it's the village building and the online gaming that really makes the game fun.

White Knight Chronicles isn't the best JRPG of current consoles generation, especially because it does not have a great graphical impact or a very original story line. Anyway, thanks to a fair online play mode and a good gameplay that mixes MMORPG and classic role play games elements it's still a decent game.

This is very much the tried and true j-rpg formula we've experienced for the better part of a decade. Had it not been for the ability to experience the adventure with friends online there would be nothing unique about this package at all. That said, when experienced via the online features this is definitely a game worth checking out.

Level 5 has chosen to follow a tried and true formula, rather than risking anything radically different. We can safely say White Knight Chronicles will appeal more to JRPG fans than mainstream gamers.

White Knight Chronicles feels too old. That’s not without reason: the game appeared in Japan a year and a half before the European release. The end result isn’t worthy of the Level 5-name, even though the hardcore RPG-fanatic will gain some satisfaction from the gameplay.

Solid fun, and enough to generate interest in the already-confirmed sequel, but little else. [Apr 2010, p.106]

On the whole, it's a great-looking game with an impressive amount of territory to explore, and it's largely free of the suffocating pomposity that seems part and parcel of so many Japanese-influenced RPGs.

White Knight Chronicles is a decent attempt at making a hybrid RPG, creating something for offline and online players. However, the emphasis on both has made the game somewhat half-baked.

In making White Knight Chronicles, Level-5 created a vast, sprawling world, and then failed to fill it with anything original.

While Level 5 certainly has some must-have games in their dossier, White Knight Chronicles isn’t one of them. Its blend of JRPG and MMORPG mechanics may be innovative, but it isn’t very fun, and its plot isn’t good enough to outweigh the many glaring problems with its gameplay.

There’s a lot to like about White Knight Chronicles but there’s also a lot of problems with the title. For those who haven’t been following the game since its announcement you’re not losing much by skipping over this title for other, better, PS3 exclusives.

All in all, this is a mixed package and as I said at the beginning I found it hard to get into. It is an RPG that taken on its own merit is an interesting experiment of combining elements of MMORPG into a console game.

White Knight Chronicles is simply an enthusiastic game that falls short of what it could have been.

The monsters may look interesting, but slaying beasts is way too easy in this forgettable role-playing game.

Never quite delivered. [Mar 2010, p.74]

Though the game features several imaginative environments, the same can't be said for its pedestrian, trope-riddled story.

Given the short main game length, a lower price point seems like it would have been more appropriate. If you're on the fence, I'd recommend a rental first. This may not be what you're expecting.

White Knight Chronicles is a letdown, far away from the promises that Level 5 -the team behind Rogue Galaxy or Dragon Quest VIII, among many others- made at the very beginning of its development. The story's too simple and plain to be taken seriously, just like the battle system. It's a good game on technical terms, thought, with an interesting graphic engine and funny designs for the monsters we hunt during our adventure. It's a worthy buy for the followers of the genre, but for the rest, it's best to look -or wait- for other chances on the JRPG world.

White Knight Chronicles isn't a bad game; there's a decent amount of content on offer and some interesting innovations, but – and returning to this ongoing theme of expectation - it should have been something better.

Perhaps White Knight Chronicles is trying to accomplish too much and ends up spreading itself thin.

A capable j-rpg with some interesting ideas that would've benefited from a more even overall quality.

Despite having a good multiplayer component, this game never convinces as a game worth remembering due to it's many shortcomings.

Polly could use a new bow.

White Knight Chronicles may provide some joy for the JRPG faithful, but it feels tired, bland and uneven in almost all aspects.

It looks like your average JRPG, but it's more like a MMORPG. White Knight Chronicles is fun, but it lacks some spark and could have been much better.

Another piece from the endless line of Japanese RPGs which fails to fulfill the high expectations of its fans. [Issue#189]

You can go online and play with your mates, but it doesn’t do enough to be exciting or even pretty to look at. Diagnosis: take one dose of Final Fantasy XIII and start another of Valkyria Chronicles. [May 2010 p.79]

White Knight Chronicles RPG is far from being recommendable to all fans of the genre and only some with a certain predisposition will be able to like what the game has to offer.

Ultimately, White Knight Chronicles is a major disappointment for any fans that have played any of Level 5’s previous games, or for anyone looking for a top tier role-playing experience.

Simple characters and dated presentation tell a bland tale.

A boring waste. [Issue#190, p.74]

I hate to say it, but White Knight Chronicles is a huge letdown. Aside from some of the environments, everything in the game is merely average or, in some cases, below that. The broken, boring combat stands as the game's biggest problem, but I can't help but feel that even if it was more exciting, the game would still be sub par.

White Knight Chronicles is a disappointment. Besides the unimpressive visuals and poorly-told story, the game suffers from a flawed battle system and inconsistent gameplay rules.

Without the online part of things, this would be an utterly irredeemable experience, one that gets old well before you'd even realize nothing has actually happened. There are some interesting building blocks here, but they're better left for the sequel.

This foundation is shaky at best, so White Knight Chronicles needs some work.

While one or two of the many elements of White Knight Chronicles might provide some enjoyment, the overall experience stands as one of the most disappointing RPGs in years.

There's very little here to appeal to even the most traditionalist of Japanese RPG fans. [Apr 2010, p.70]

I'd love to say White Knight Chronicles was the RPG that we've all been waiting for. Unfortunately it's nothing like the RPG I've been waiting for since that first gameplay trailer.

So when Level 5 takes these cumbersome elements and drops them into a single game, we end up playing something that feels half-hearted.

White Knight Chronicles is competent and solid without ever being beautiful or, you'll find yourself realising with a scratch of the head 15 hours in, particularly enjoyable. [Apr 2010, p.99]

Pretty visuals and in-depth character evolution fail to gloss over the disappointment caused by a hackneyed story, an annoyingly flawed real-time battle system, and a shocking lack of difficulty.

There's every chance White Knight Chronicles will start to shine in co-op. As a single-player experience, however, which is surely the main reason for anyone to invest, it's distinctly average, suffering from problems that are genuinely a surprise considering the brains behind it. [Apr 2010, p.124]

When I'm in the market for an RPG, it's for a select few reasons: I'm looking for an epic story, rad loot, combat that stimulates the tactical chunks of my brain, and beautiful environments. White Knight Chronicles does none of these things well. To top it all off, the game inexplicably ends after less than 30 hours with most of the major plot points left wholly unresolved.

But while there’s plenty of stuff to do in the game, very little of it stands out enough to make it worth doing.