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I'm surprised someone is doing this. What I want to keep emphasizing is how abhorrently grindy this game is. They shut down the multiplayer so you can't go to someone else's Homestead thing online and buy rare materials you need to upgrade your equipment in order to not die. It's a really vicious cycle for something that had potential. Not to mention that when doing errands, especially online, you have to run around at the exact same speed for hours on end in huge areas where nothing is happening. Their overworld is similar to the one in Star Ocean 4 but at least in SO4 things were happening. By the way, Crow I need to PM you but you don't have Platinum. Can you email me at lunethex@hotmail.com? I want to be able to help you out when you start getting into the real meat of this game's item rates, if you stay that long  DrManiac posted:[e] I just realized that the avatar in this game is pretty much exactly the same as a souless pawn. Best way to describe this game's "avatar" is that you're a witness in your own game. Lunethex fucked around with this message at 23:55 on Dec 25, 2013 |
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Dec 25, 2013 23:52
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This is the only real way to LP this game. Look forward to seeing how things go. I have some commentary on things, but I'll wait til you reach those parts.
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Dec 26, 2013 07:50
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You -assumedly incorrectly- wrote Balandor as Blandor a couple times throughout the post. I only bring it up because of how appropriate the new name is for the ultra-generic fantasy city we've seen so far.
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Dec 26, 2013 23:31
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Ryushikaze posted:You -assumedly incorrectly- wrote Balandor as Blandor a couple times throughout the post. I only bring it up because of how appropriate the new name is for the ultra-generic fantasy city we've seen so far. Maybe my brain was trying to tell me something. Thanks for catching it. I have, sadly enough, added Balandor to my Microsoft Word's built in dictionary, so I'm probably not going to be making that mistake again. Also, Lunethex, I will try to get an email off to you tonight.
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Dec 27, 2013 00:10
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 It was that or ‘Booze Cruise,’ but since this chapter doesn’t involve a boat… You get the picture.  OVERWORLD MUSIC: “The Continent of Nadias” (Disc 1, Track 15) We open this chapter with a brief shot of our world map. Much like an actual ye olde travler’s map, it’s in a sort of sepia tone and looks to be hand drawn. I’ll post a composite image of the full map later on, but basically Nadias as a continent is vaguely crescent shaped . The Kingdom of Balandor encompasses pretty much everything you see on this screen up to the mountain range running down the right there. As you can probably tell by the straight line and cursor set up, the game is essentially divided into environment stages which we move between using the map as a fast transit hub. As we progress through the story more destinations will unlock, but right now we’ve only got one option: Balastor Plain. Once we clear Balastor Plain, we’ll be free to move on to Parma Village. But, first thing’s first…  CUTSCENE: In the Wild Now CUTSCENE / AERA MUSIC: “Balastor Plain” (Disc 1, Track 5) Leonard and Orren leave Balandor Castltown, arriving on Balastor Plain on their way to Parma.   Leonard: The village of Parma is due south of here, pretty simple. There’s not much to it, but it’s a nice enough place. Say, uh, you’re new to Balandor aren’t you? Orren: What was your first clue? Leonard: Then why don’t I show you the sights along the way? Sound good? Orren: Just as long as you keep walking, then fine. Leonard: Just keep a look out for monsters. We’re in the wild now. Orren: You haven’t heard a thing I’ve said to you in the last twenty minutes, have you? Leonard: I’m gonna be honest with you… I actually thought you were mute. This whole “you talking” thing is kind of weirding me out a little. Orren: Just… ugh. CUTSCENE: Leonard Explains How To Play The Game And so Leonard and Orren set out on their trek across Balastor Plain. Leonard volunteers to take point as he knows the way to Parma, while Orren hangs back, letting assessing where exactly would be the best spot on the back of Leonard’s head to bury his axe into should the time finally come… At this point in the game, even in New Game+ games, Leonard pauses things to go through a series of tutorials to explain the mechanics of the game’s battle system. I’ll cover all that in the gameplay update though, so as not to derail the story. The 5-second version of things? Have you played Final Fantasy XII? Okay, good, just picture that, but dumber. Literally. Now, Balastor Plain is ostensibly a wide open area full of spots to faff about in and explore. You can very easily run all over Balastor Plain and leveling up to like level 10 or so before you even set foot anywhere near Parma's end of the map. But right now in-game, however, the only thing you really can do is go towards Parma because all the points of “interest” (and I use that term very loosely) on the map are barricaded off at the moment so heading to Parma is our only real productive option. So let’s do that…  Leonard: Hey, was that guy a friend of your’s? Orren: Are you for real? Did he LOOK like he knew me? Leonard: Ah, fresh air.  Orren: …Nevermind.Seriously, what kind of person sees someone walk past a complete stranger in such a manner that it’s clear he doesn’t know them from Adam, and then asks them later if that person was a friend of theirs? I’ve owned Chia Pets with more situational awareness than Leonard possesses. And we're just getting started.  Leonard: It’s more or less a straight shot to Parma. Leonard: You’ll learn the way in no time.These are all examples of “Live Talk,” by the way. It’s an option you can turn on that lets your party members comment on things as you roam around whatever town or field you’re in. The entire party gets their say in things, not just your active three characters. Everyone except the Avatar of course. Because there is no goddamn way Level-5 would EVER let the Avatar say anything that isn’t simply combat walla. Since Leonard is our only speaking party member right now, we get to hear his ‘insightful’ commentary on things. Thus far it’s mostly consisted of him complaining about having to work for a change, how much of an rear end in a top hat Rapacci is for expecting him to do any work, and banal surface-level situational musings like “gee, there sure are a lot of people in town for the Princess’s birthday.” Pretty much everyone else who will eventually come to form our party has more interesting/funny/insightful things to say in their Live Talk bits. I’ll try to include as much plot or character-relevant bits of Live Talk that I can, where I can because even the sort of banal bits really help flesh out everyone’s characterization (even Leonard’s). Though it’s also around this point that I find myself wanting to go back to Balandor and check out how things are going between Valtos and Dalam and that whole peace treaty thing. I wonder what they’re discussing right now? It’s got to be infinitely more interesting than following this brickhead with his out-of-control rattail around as he beats up docile Wood Jawas and giant gently caress-off bees. I can just see them gathered around a table in Balandor Castle, Dalam having parked his giant horn chair right up against one end of it, Cyrus staring daggers at his Farian counterparts because he’s a racist jerk, Sarvain skulking in a corner plotting new and interesting ways to drown puppies, Cisna just standing there doing her best Avatar impression, not saying a word or being noticed by anyone, and Valtos coming up with new ways of working his dead wife into each new discussion of things like border and trade agreements.  Archduke Dalam: I find your terms agreeable, Your Grace. In exchange for lumber exports from our forests, we will accept first fishing rights to the waters south of Redhorn Isle.  King Valtos: Indeed. Why, my dear wife Floraine would be smiling right now knowing we’ve negotiated such a perfect peace treaty. She’s dead you know. It was ten painful years ago. My poor Cisna hasn’t gotten over it yet. Cisna: (Whatever, as soon as I’m queen, it’s back to war with these assholes anyway. I am totally breaking into the ‘Empire’ business.) Sarvain: (Augh, this is so boring. Should I just kill myself now, or would it be worth it to try to take a few of them with me before I go? Choices…) Oh thank Christ, we’re here.  CUTSCENE: Welcome to Parma CUTSCENE / AREA MUSIC: “Parma Village” (Disc 1, Track 6) Welcome to Parma, a rustic village known for its farming communities and its fine wines.  Leonard: Here we are. Welcome to Parma. Orren: (Not impressed.) Well this place looks positively jumping compared to Balandor, right?    Yulie: Hey! You’re on time for once!The pair are interrupted from their sightseeing by the appearance of a girl with, for some reason, purple hair, whom they apparently walked right by without even realizing it. The blocking in this game is absolutely ridiculous some times, creating moments like this where Leonard looks like an even bigger moron than he actually is by walking clean past a girl he has known since infancy. Anyway, this is Yulie. She’s actually who we were sent here to meet up with, only Leonard forgot to mention it. Because he’s slow.  Leonard: Yulie! Orren: Oh, wait, you actually knew her? Leonard: Yeah, she’s like my best friend. Why? Orren: Because we just like walked right by her and you didn’t even say anything. Leonard: Well, why didn’t YOU say anything then? Orren: Because I don’t know her!Christ, look at how short Leonard is compared to Orren. According to the game’s character creator, Orren is 6’1” tall, and Leonard barely comes up to his shoulder. I swear he is like 5’1” or something because he looks like he’s a full foot shorter than Orren. Again, this is more evidence of the game’s half-assedness, as they don’t even care to scale the Avatar properly some times. The Avatar’s size in cutscenes is all over the place. Sometimes Orren is the same height or slightly taller than Leonard and the other characters, other times he’s a freakin’ giant compared to them. They just don’t care, that’s all. Could you imagine playing Final Fantasy XIII and having, say, Hope change size based on how the design time felt like animating each particular cutscene? Or how about Mass Effect to use a more appropriate example. You can’t alter Shepard’s height in the ME games, but if you could, would you take the game seriously if you could provide visual evidence of him/her changing size compared to Garrus or Liara depending on the cutscene? Hell no.  Yulie: How’ve you been there, Leonard? Orren: Well, he survived the trip out here, so I’d say ‘pretty good.’ Yulie: Oh! You must be the new guy. Rapacci told me you were coming. Glad you could make it. Orren: My name’s Orren. …Howyoudoin’. Yulie: Oh you. I’d also be remiss if I didn’t point out Yulie’s odd attire. It’s half medieval peasant, half Japanese school girl. It’s this weird one-piece thing with a built-in leather miniskirt and separate sleeves. Also her boobs are about the size of her head and will jiggle under the ‘proper’ circumstances. Of all the things they half-rear end in this game only to take the time to get jiggle physics right. For god’s sake, Level-5. You were hand-picked by Hayao Miazaki to make a video game with his animation studio. A studio that has won loving Academy Awards and produced universally beloved works of animation and storytelling. …I’m starting to wonder why now.  Yulie: The wine’s all set to go. Follow me. Yulie heads off further into town, beckoning Leonard and Orren to follow.  Orren: Me gusta. Leonard: What? Orren: Shut up.Fun/Weird/Sad fact: it’s implied that the Avatar (male and female) has a thing for Yulie. It could just be Level-5’s incompetent facial animations as shown off in the above screencapture, although the two are placed in close proximity many times thorough the game. That up there at the very least is a look of bemused intrigue. I’ve heard that people have written Yulie/Avatar fanfiction, but I have not had the gumption to try and confirm this because it would shatter my view that this game didn’t have fans dedicated enough to it to actually write fanfiction about it. Unless you consider this LP fanfiction, in which case, come join me in Hell, it’s actually quite cozy, once you get used to it.  Leonard just stands there like a moron for a solid five minutes as Yulie and Orren head towards the beastwain on the opposite end of town.  And there it is in the distance…  CUTSCENE: The Beastwain  Orren: What, were a pair of Clydesdales too expensive or something? I mean, come on, horses exist in this world. Yulie: Rapacci’s trying to find a way to justify the markup we’re asking for the wine. Orren: What do you even feed that thing? Leonard: You must be kidding. Orren: We’ve firmly established that we’re not, unfortunately. Yulie: Don’t let his looks fool you. He’s a big old pussycat. Yulie: Now… Where…? Raus said he’d be here?…Who?  Leonard: Who?I just said that.   Yulie: Your driver. Raus is the only one who can get this fella to pull the wain. It won’t move a step, not without Raus’s say-so. Orren: How complicated can it be? All you need’s a whip, right? Yulie: You ever seen a cattle stampede? Orren: Touché. Okay, so where is this beast-whisperer at anyway? Yulie: Sit tight, I’ll see if I can find him. Yulie heads off to find the fabled Raus…  Leonard: But… Yulie!!!…A development that distresses our haplessly co-dependent  And so Leonard starts randomly running around town. Leonard: Um… Let’s go see if we can find this guy then. Orren: What? You don’t trust her? She said he’d be right back. Leonard: Yeah, but if we find him first, we can be on our way even quicker. Orren: Do you even know what this Raus guy looks like? Leonard: WINDMILL! Orren: Aw, screw it. I’m gonna go find Yulie. Try not to start a fire or anything… So Leonard starts asking random people around town if they’ve seen Raus. However, they’re not interested in talking to him.  …HOW THE HELL DID YOU GET HERE? AND WHY ARE YOU SUDDENLY A WOMAN?  It seems Yulie is having her own set of trouble trying to locate Raus. Something tells me that if you can’t find one guy in a literal one-street town, he’s probably not someone worth finding… Just a guess. Either that or Yulie is just as dumb as Leonard is. You know, I’m starting to question Rapacci’s parenting skills if the two children he’s raised to adulthood have an IQ between them roughly equal to room temperature. (And even then, Yulie has the lion share of it).  Leonard continues a time-honoured tradition of JRPG protagonists in his search for our wayward wagoner: randomly entering other people’s houses! Sadly, Raus wasn’t there.   Maybe he’s in the village chief’s house?  Eh…  Maybe he’s dead! …I wish he was dead.  Hey, these graves are all unmarked! …And they apparently have grapes on their tombstones here. Because they are that. loving. SERIOUS. About wine in Parma.  Leonard takes a moment to admire the view of Parma’s wine fields and try to remember what exactly he was doing just a second ago. Just off screen, Orren is pondering the benefits of pushing him off the cliff.  Back on the hunt.   We come to the horse pasture. Count yourself lucky that this is a sight and occasionally sound-only LP because this place STINKS!  In the back corner of the pasture, under the shade of the trees and surrounded by an impressive pile of empty wine bottles rests a lone Papituar. Papitaurs are diminutive little creatures with large rabbit ears on their heads and rabbit-like eyes. They all talk, unfailingly, in weird and annoying accents. Papitaurs are terrible. Every last one of them. Raus, however, is our introduction to Papitaur culture. He’s the probably the worst Papitaur character in the game in terms of his actions and characterization. Though really, Osmund, Rocco, and Amir are the only serviceable Papitaur characters. The rest of ’em are poo poo. Leonard: Hey! That’s racist! Orren: Shut up, white-guilt. Yep. This is our wagon driver. Orren: loving REALLY?! Leonard: Hey, he might be a real nice guy. He, of course, is fast asleep in a drunken haze.  CUTSCENE: Raus the Wagoneer  Raus: Zzz… You know, I have to hand it to the little poo poo, he’s polished off FIVE full bottles of wine and he’s only like 3’1”. He should be dead right now given the amount of alcohol he’s consumed; instead he’s just sleeping it off. Also ha-hah, Level-5, I’m so glad you were able to get the ‘huge beast, tiny tamer’ cliché out of the way so quickly. And it only takes you until the second time you pull out this trope in the game to actually make it half-way funny. Good work! </sarcasm> Raus: Zzz… Orren: Well, in all fairness, if I was born a Papitaur, I’d drink myself unconscious any chance I got too… Leonard, befuddled as usual, ponders waking our sleeping rabbit man. Raus: Zzz… Yulie catches sight of Raus, finally. She does the appropriate thing and rushes up to him and starts yelling at him for being an irresponsible drunk shitheel.    Yulie: Ah ha! Raus, you oaf!Faced with an angry, possibly murderously so, purple-haired teenage girl looming over him, Raus snaps awake and back to sobriety. Raus: Ohh, dear me! Did I doze off again? Orren: If that’s what you want to call it. Raus clutches his head, most likely both to calm his raging hangover, and out of fear for his continued safety…  I wasn’t joking about that whole ‘possibly murderous’ thing. She’s ready to snap his neck in this scene. Raus: [panicked whimpering] Yulie: This is where you were hiding? I told you not to be late! Orren: Should have told him not to get drunk either. Wriggling out of Yulie’s deathgrip, Raus runs and hides behind Leonard. Pick a better human shield, buddy. Raus: Please don’t be mad, Miss Yulie! I am so sorry.Raus whimpers like a bitch and continues cowering behind Leonard until Yulie and Orren kick his rear end back to the beastwain.  Somehow, four hours passes between then and now, and suddenly it’s sundown.  This lazy turd took THE REST OF THE AFTERNOON to climb into the driver’s seat. Either that or the world of White Knight Chronicles has the fastest day/night cycle in RPG history. …Or, it’s something you’re going to be witnessing a lot of as we go forward: a plot contrivance. IE: Something that happens simply because it needs to happen for the sake of the story. For example, it’s twilight right now because it needs to be twilight. Nevermind that it takes a minute tops to walk from where Raus was sitting back to the bestwain and seconds to climb aboard it and get it ready, which it already was when the trio went to go look for Raus. There is no logical explanation for why it is suddenly dark now, other than Leonard and Yulie indulged Raus as he took the rest of a long summer’s afternoon to stumble back into the driver’s seat of the wagon. Everyone in this picture sucks. Except for Orren, who I imagine was simply ignored throughout the whole ordeal. As usual.  Yulie: There, now you’re all set. Yulie: I don’t see why it took you FOUR HOURS, but eh, whatever. It’s Leonard’s rear end on the line, not mine. Leonard: Heh heh, yeah, that guy is so screw—wait.  Leonard looks to the sky and states the obvious. Leonard: Boy, it’s starting to get dark. We’d better haul cask. Yulie & Orren: You did NOT just say that… Yulie: Okay, Leonard, like I mentioned before, Raus here will be driving the beastwain.Because she knows the score, Yulie recaps what we’ve already figured out ages ago for Leonard. Because he’s dumb.  Raus: Eh heh. Hello. Happy to assist, Chief. By the way… If I happen to doze off… again, kindly wake me up before this beastie remembers I forgot to feed it breakfast and turns me into a late lunch! Leonard: Uhh… huh. Orren: You’re a real lovely… everything. Yulie: He’s kind of weird, but he gets the job done. Off we go!  Leonard: We? You’re coming too?Oh Leonard, your unwavering faith the female sex is truly something to be admired.   Yulie: Well, yeah! I wouldn’t miss this party for the world! What, you don’t want the extra help? Come on! We’re late as it is.   This is the delightful, self-confident trot of a woman who gives no fucks about what you think of her, and SPOILER ALERT, never will. Orren: I think I’m in love.I think you need to get your head out of your rear end. Orren: gently caress you, crow. Leonard: Uh, wait, did that just happen? CUTSCENE MUSIC: “New Allies” (Unreleased Track) Orren: Yep. OVERWORLD MUSIC: “The Continent of Nadias” (Disc 1, Track 15) Back on the World Map, we’ve once again got to clear Balastor Plain to get back to Balandor. This is the second-to-last time in the game that Balastor Plain will be plot-relevant in this game, by the way. We go back here once more in the second game, and then that's it.  CUTSCENE: Leonard Explains Combos We now have a full active party of three members. From this point on, you will always have three party members, unless it’s part of some special scripted battle.  Technically we’ve got four party members for this part. Raus is a guest character for the run back to Balandor Castle. I’ll explain why this is a terrible thing in the gameplay update, outside of the obvious terribleness of being saddled with Raus in general.  Leonard and co. run along the path back to Balandor Castle, when suddenly…  A change in aspect ratio portends the arrival of certain doom.  CUTSCENE: Sylvan Savage    Leonard suddenly calls the party to a halt, sensing that something’s wrong.   Leonard: Wait, something’s wrong.I just said that, shithead.  Yulie: What is it? Raus looks nervously at Leonard. Raus: Wh-what’s wrong, Chief? Leonard: You don’t hear that? Yulie: Hmm? Suddenly, the plain has become all too quiet.  A flock of birds, startled by something, takes flight into the darkening sky. The ground begins to shake with a steady THUMP. THUMP. THUMP.  Something begins to emerge from behind the bend ahead of them. Something big.  Something armed.  Something nasty.      Leonard: Dammit! It must have smelled the wine! Orren: Then give it a barrel and tell it to piss off, then. Raus: Oh no! What do we do Chief? Orren: Well like I said— Leonard: We fight! Orren: …Or that. CUTSCENE / BOSS MUSIC: “A Worthy Opponent Draws Near (Disc 1, Track 8)      BOSS FIGHT: Troll (with subtitle commentary) And here is not just our first boss, but also our first ‘giant’ enemy, a troll. Nearly every boss in this game has one of these silly, semi-poetic alliterative subtitles. For more on the mechanics of boss fights, check out the gameplay update one post down. Otherwise here’s the straight New Game video of the boss fight. Even if you’ve just run to and from Parma doing nothing but killing only the enemies that have gotten in your way between there and here, you should be about Level 3 by now, and that’s more than strong enough to handily work over this troll in less than 5 minutes with nothing more than the gear you started the game with. This is not a boss so much as it’s a tutorial, as you’ll see in the video/gameplay update. Ergo…  CUTSCENE: All Clear The bigger they are…  …  The harder the cliché is to finish…  So yeah, that’s one dead troll someone gets to come along and clean up. You just KNOW that some desperate and/or perverted scavenger is gonna come along and pry off that codpiece before anyone else gets their hands on it. …Not to mention there’s enough leather, iron, and fabric on that thing to equip like ten people adequately. Assuming you’re okay with what I can only assume is “troll stink” all over your new belt and jacket. Also, given the fact that is has managed to cloth and equip itself with some fairly complex pieces of fabric and metalwork, I’m pretty sure we’re all complicit in the murder of a sentient being now. A 20 foot-tall, green-skinned sentient being. This troll was somebody’s son who just wanted to get drunk on probably the troll equivalent to a can of cheap beer. But no, we had to get the nobles their wine, so it had to be defended with deadly force. That’s Leonard for you. His heroism thus far has consisted of murdering diminutive humanoid creatures and bees, failing to corral a drunkard that a teenage girl was capable of lifting off his feet on to a wagon in under four hours, and now murdering a massive humanoid by essentially stabbing at its kneecaps until it collapsed, and then stabbing its crotch until it died, Army of Darkness-style. WHITE KNIGHT CHRONICLES! The epic fantasy adventure!  Leonard: Whew. Yulie: Well, at least we survived. Yulie: And it looks like the wine is okay too. Orren: Let no one question our priorities, now. Raus: Nice going, Chief! I thought I’d napped my last nap for sure! Orren: Oh how you tease me… Leonard: Nah. The three of us can handle one little troll. It’s Rapacci I’m scared of. Leonard: I still think he’s going to murder me. Orren: Yeah, you keep thinking that. HE’s going to murder you… riiiight. Leonard: Let’s move! Now, doubletime to Balandor! At this rate we should make it back to the castle by…  CUTSCENE: The Late Arrival  loving midnight. You useless tits.  Leonard: Oh man. It’s way past dark. Orren: Just noticed that did ya, sport? Leonard: I told Rapacci we’d be back before sunset. I am dead.No comment. Actually, one comment: drink in the failure, folks. It starts with small things like failing to do his job properly and will eventually snowball into I-wish-I-were-making GBS threads-you-history-altering-scale-failure. Again, it’s a rare example of deft storytelling from the game, preparing you for the gently caress up that is Leonard with little things like this. Well done, White Knight Chronicles. Well done.  Yulie: Well, moaning about it isn’t going to speed us up.Yulie, of course, has no time for Leonard’s self-pitting bullshit. My admiration for her has done nothing but grow by leaps and bounds.   Raus: My sincerest apologies, Chief. Orren: Do us all a favor and remain silent from here out. If I wake up tomorrow morning and I still remember you exist, I’m hiking back to Parma and feeding you to this bovine brute. Raus: Oh dear… The …thing… roars wearily.  Leonard: Are you tired? We’re almost there, buddy. Leonard suddenly gets an idea. And of course, typical of Leonard and thinking, he has to come to a complete stop in order to process a full thought.  He rushes to the back of the wagon and starts pushing it up hill, contributing probably zero pounds of additional torque to the massive beast’s hauling power.  Orren: He knows he’s not actually helping… right? Yulie: Humour him. Yulie rushes in to help Leonard push the wagon. Orren hangs back a few steps, because, well, seriously guys, you’re not helping.  No, really, all you’re gonna do is wear yourselves out before you get anywhere near the castle. You know what? On second thought, you go for it. Push that cart. Push it like you’ve never pushed anything in your life. You’re making a difference. You’re accomplishing something. You can do it. Dickface.  And on this Sisyphusian image, we pan up to the night sky as the chapter draws thankfully to a close. Find out next time if Leonard makes it to the castle alive. Strap yourselves in, kids. The calm is over as of our next chapter.  What can I say other than “I just wanted to get paid?” I’m sure lots of people have used that justification for lots of things. I mean, that Yulie girl seemed like a decent person, but I was seriously I’d bit off a little too more than I could chew in Leonard. I’d decided about halfway up the hill to Balandor castle that I was just gonna take another bounty contract at the Adventurer’s Guild and be on my way to Greede or somewhere before any of them realized I was gone the next morning. It’s funny how fate works sometimes… 
 BALASTOR PLAIN  PARMA  THE CONTINENT OF NADIAS 
nine-gear crow fucked around with this message at 05:49 on Mar 18, 2015 |
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Dec 28, 2013 08:25
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 Now WITHOUT table-breaking images! Here we go with some actual gameplay for White Knight Chronicles. Like everyone familiar with this game in the thread has indicated already, it’s mostly terrible and grind-tacular.  Being out in the field controls a little different from being in a town. For instance, you can see that Leonard now has his sword and shield equipped You’ll also see in subsequent screenshots that Orren is now present on the field as well.  Enemies populate the area and are persistent presences, exactly like they are in Final Fantasy XII. All combat takes place in the field, so there’s no random battles or battle space like say Final Fantasy XIII. To initiate combat mode, simply close in on an enemy enough to auto-target it and press the X button on the DualShock 3. Doing that brings up the command bar. Dear god, the command bar. Let’s take a gander at the various parts of the battle menu, shall we. Just call me Professor Crow, because I’m about to learn your rear end some stuff. Remember that too-good-to-be-true announcement trailer I posted in the OP? How it was beautifully motion captured and filled with fluid, realistic character movements? Yeah, there’s none of that to be found in the finished product. You’ll see it better in the videos and some (  , maybe if you ask nicely though) in the Miscellaneous section, but this game is painfully stiff and awkward in motion. This here is your basic battle screen. This is what pops up when you enter combat mode.  In the upper right corner is your HP/MP and Status bar. HP and MP are represented both numerically, and by those two gems, blue for HP and green for MP. As your HP and MP go down, the gems will start to diminish. Status effects, both positive and negative will appear as icons just to the left of the HP gem. This panel shows all your current active party members.  Enemy status appears directly below the party status. It shows off the name of the enemy you are currently targeting, as well as a graphical representation of their HP. Enemies don’t get MP status in this game for whatever reason. Again, buff and debuff status effects will appear to the left of the enemy’s HP gem.  This thing here is the turn wheel. It’s White Knight Chronicles’s version of an Active Time Battle counter. The wheel is actually a bar that fills up in a clockwise pattern. When it makes a complete circle, your character can perform their next action. Certain factors affect the speed at which the wheel fills in, namely weapon types, characters’ agility stats, and general equipment weight. We’ll be seeing that in action soon enough though. Also note the sword icon with the red X and circle around it. This means the selected skill, in this case Leonard’s Lunging Strike, cannot be performed because he’s not in range of an enemy. Once he’s within an acceptable range the icon will disappear, telling you you can now use that skill. Normally there is an overlay denoting each ability's area of effect and range, a glowing red circle or box which appears around your character for each selected ability. Moving to a point where your target it within that circle or box will allow you to use that ability. You can turn this function on and off using the game's options menu. I have it turned off at the moment for the sake of appearances, as it's actually quite obtrusive when it's enabled.  Like so. Fun fact about the original White Knight Chronicles battle system: it was so slow and lovely that Level-5 completely reworked it for the sequel. They remade the first game on the second game’s engine and used it as a mulligan.  This is the Command Bar, the stupidest RPG battle interface ever designed. Like I noted in the last update, it’s three rows of seven potential skills for a total of 21 possible actions, in addition to a fourth bar for items, defense, changing equipment, changing targets and changing command sets. The command bar is controlled through the D-pad. Up and down rolls through each separate line of commands while left and right slides the cursor (the blue highlighted part there) along the skills in each particular line. Once the action wheel in the middle right of the screen is full, you press the X button and your character will perform the selected skill.  This is the fourth bar of the Command Bar, like I mentioned earlier. This bar lets you use consumable items from your character’s item bag, change their equipment on the fly (again though you can only change to equipment that the character has in their personal item bag at the moment). You can also manually pick a new battle target, which is kind of useless since you can do that using the L2 and R2 triggers. You can send your character into defense mode, and you can also change command sets. This last option is, ideally, a rather solid gameplay feature. Note how I said ‘ideally’. In practice, it’s just another mess. With five sets of 21 skills that means you have 105 potential skill slots at your disposal. This is great because you can tailor each skill set to suit a particular battle role, having one skill set for your physical attacks, another for offensive magic, another for healing and buff/debuff magic, and so on and so forth. But this being White Knight Chronicles, there has to be an element of tedium involved with it. So when you hit the Command Set button, instead of bringing up a menu that lets you pick the set you want to change to Final Fantasy XIII Paradigm Shift-style, it instead cycles through to the next skill set in your line up. That means you need to scroll back down to the Command Set button because it defaults to the first skill of your first command bar line every time, and do the process over again until you get to the skillset you want. It usually takes about five seconds per skill set too. The AI, however, won’t even bother switching between command sets because the AI is beyond stupid. You need to parachute into control over characters 2 and 3 and change their skill sets manually if you want them to use other skills.  Speaking of that, pressing the Select button opens up an action menu both in and out of combat. Usually its used to hop back and forth between characters, but you can also command your characters to do all sorts of funny little actions. This was usually used by players online without the benefit of a keyboard or microphone to emote to other players through physical gestures. Because the Avatar is essentially a mime, so Level-5 just went whole hog with the idea and gives you a full three pages-worth of actions to screw about with.  Pro ejemplo.  The Change Character option makes a cursor appear in the party status window, allowing you to select which character you want to hop into, excluding guest characters like Raus, of course. Though, honestly, why the hell would anyone want Raus to be a playable character? Also, for all the crap I give Leonard as a character, I’m going to be playing as him for like 80-90% of the time I have access to him because he’s such a middle of the road character. He’s good with a sword and shield and doesn’t really need to use any magic, which is a good thing because casting even simple magic spells takes forever and you can’t do anything while you’re casting, not even move. There’s a fourth option that opens up in this sub-menu after we make it passed the opening credits (...in Chapter IV  ), but I'll cover that when we get there. Continuing on with the tour. This is your Action Chip or AC bar. ACs are used in conjunction with certain powerful physical and magical attacks in addition to MP. Combos also use AC, but I’ll get to that in a moment. There’s one other thing that also consumes AC, but that’s spoilers for right now. At the start of the game you have space for 7 AC, though this will eventually scale up to a total of 15 AC in short order. AC is accumulated by attacking enemies or by being attacked by enemies, or through AC replenishing items called Charge Drinks.  I don’t know what the hell this thing is for. Actually, I do, but it’s not relevant to anything we’re doing at the moment. Patience, patience.  This is the minimap. It’s mini, and it’s a map. …What the hell else were you expecting me to say about it?  And lastly, this is the Live Log. This can be turned on and off at your leisure through the game’s settings. It’s a play-by-play for the game. The Live Log will tell you stuff like what skills are being used in battle and by who, how much damage they do, how much EXP you gain from defeating enemies, what items you get from enemies and chests and farm points, and in quests will also update you on mission-critical developments. This is also where the game’s text chat would pop up during the days when GeoNet was still online. You can customize the Live Log to be as verbose or as sparse as you want it to be as well as colour coding it base on conditions. Anyway, let’s get on with some exploring.  Littered around towns and fields like Balastor Plain are treasure chests like this one. You might have seen one of these in the background at Rapacci’s place. They’re all the same, red with gold lining. I have no idea why they have been scattered all over the planet to a level where they’re more ubiquitous than weeds, but here they are. Some chests have items in them, others have stuff like weapons and armour in them.  This one has a Chromium Pearl Lv. 1 in it. If this means anything to you at this point in the game, you have my sincerest sympathies. In the original game, there’s something more mundane in this first chest you encounter in the wilderness, but since this is a New Game+ run, there are higher level items loaded in to each chest. This Chromium Pearl is an upgrade item which can be used to upgrade our weapons and armour. This is but the event horizon of the black hole of grinding, farming, and spreadsheet insanity that is White Knight Chronicles’s item, upgrading and binding system. I will get into this nonsense in more detail at a more appropriate time, however.  Here's a quick fact about chest in this game: in the first game they were a plain brown colour, and tended to blend into the background of areas, leading to people apparently missing them. So Level-5 wildly over-corrected this problem by making every chest in the game fire truck red and gold increasing their original size. Because I guess Level-5 thought people who played the original version of first game were stupid. ...They weren’t wrong on that point, necessarily, but that’s an entirely different matter.  I’m just going to take a moment to introduce you to the enemies we find here on Balastor Plain. First off, these little guys are Polkans, small woodland creatures who apparently are actually made out of wood. They’re pretty much harmless. They carry wooden clubs are more than likely to actually fall over onto their back rather than actually connect with a swing of it. Polkans take critical hits from slash attacks, the ones with the curved arrow, that I’ve got highlighted here. They go down in a couple of hits, even for Lv. 1 players starting out and are actually docile. That’s right, they won’t engage you in battle, you have to seek them out and initiate combat, like Leonard is doing here. Leonard just straight up murdered a wood Jawa. Nice going shitface.  Second verse, same as the first. These little guys are Kibbles. They’re the slightly stronger cousins of the Polkans. They’re occasionally aggressive, particularly if you’re a lower level than they are and they’re a little bit stronger than Polkans too. They carry bone clubs and have these cool elongated tree trunk masks. I think they’re like Polkan priests or something. These guys are susceptible to impact attacks like Leonard’s Lunging Strke. Again, the kid just up and murders one of them for your benefit.  And, lastly, there’s these shitlords. Vespid-type enemies are the absolute worst. They are the single most aggressive and persistent enemies in the game. They will attack you no matter what your level, often rushing at you from the opposite end of the battlefield. While you can successfully run away from about 99% of all other enemies in the game, these pricks are the 1%. They will hound you from one end of the level to the next because they’re fast, aggressive, and have an absolutely huge field of vision, so you will never out run one of them that’s locked on to you. These guys are just the bland versions. In later areas, and even coming back here at higher levels, we’ll run into ones that do all of that garbage AND inflict status effects like daze, poison, and sleep. The only way to kill these jerks (quickly, anyway), rather appropriately, is by stabbing them with techs like Thrust.  Eat poo poo and die. Also, as you can see here, orange damage numbers indicate critical hits. Regular hits show up as white numbers and are often much lower than critical hit damage. You score critical hits by attacking enemies with the attack type they are weak against. There’s only three attack types, so if you don’t get a critical with one type, just try the other two and you’ll eventually tweak onto the right one and then it’s just a matter of remembering it, because all the pallet swap enemies of that type have the same critical hit type susceptibility.  This also leads us into another “what did they change from the first game?” moment. Or rather a “what did they add to the remake?” And the answer of course is the entire Critical Damage mechanic. That’s right, critical orange damage numbers hits did not exist in White Knight Chronicles International Edition. The vanilla first game did not break attacks down into sub types. Every attack style did more or less the same amount of damage. Many attacks didn't even need MP like they do in the remake. So right there, the remake/sequel has a slightly more complex battle system than the original did. Also, the game didn't break its magic icons down by element or healing type, what you see up there is pretty much your entire skill icon pallet. So there’s something else the second game has over its predecessor: it’s less visually confusing.   Killing enough enemies will eventually cause you to level up. Levelling up in battle automatically refills the levelling character’s HP and MP gauges. It’s also the only way to learn Skill Points or SP, which allows you to learn new skills under the Learn Skills option in the main menu. Levelling up starts out easy, but like everything else in the game, it has a difficulty curve in the shape of the Matterhorn. As your levels go up, the amount of EXP enemies give out decreases, quite precipitously, I might add. Whereas the next level requirements inversely increase, thereby guaranteeing hours and hour of grinding in order to properly level your characters to prepare for certain parts of the game. But I have a way around that…  Also, EXP is only shared between active party members. In order to level up, a character must be in the active party, just to grind out even more of your time. This actually becomes a hilarious game-breaking flaw in the second game, resulting in a boss battle that I would put down real money to say was the single most ragequit-inducing part of the sequel, and the battle that solidifies Leonard’s image as an impulsive human brainfart who ruins everything he involves himself in. But that’s more spoilers.  Also, before you enter battle, you can gauge how strong enemies are by checking out the icon beside their name. This yellow “=” icon means that the enemy is of equal strength to you at the moment. Stronger enemies will be denoted by ever-redder “^” icons. Strong enemies can kill you more easily, but they also net bigger EXP boons and more valuable items. Weaker enemies will be denoted by ever-greener “V” icons. These enemies are usually weak enough that you can kill them in one or two critical hits. They give less EXP and yield more common items. Enemies with a teal “/” icon are essentially non-threats. You are so strong compared to them that you could walk right past them naked and they would still only do 1 damage to you. Killing them literally nets you 1 EXP. Look for the Enemy Strength infographic in the Misc. section for more details.  One last thing to note before we move on. Pressing the L1 button brings up this little diagram in the center of the screen. As you can see, the four icons correspond to the four D-pad buttons. These are in-battle targeting instructions. Unlike the tactics you can set in the main menu, the AI will actually listen to these for the most part. The green icon with the crossed swords at the top is “Fight As You See Fit.” This tells the AI to just target the closest target to it and attack that, often times being whatever you’re currently engaged with. The teal icon with the three swords on the right it “Spread Out.” This tells the AI to… spread out. Hurr. This is good if you’re facing a lot of enemies because it means the AI might actually be moved by a stroke of temporary competence and actually engage these other enemies in order to take the pressure off of you as you focus on a single, often times stronger enemy. The blue icon on the bottom is “Hang Back.” This tells the AI to move away from all enemies on the field on not to engage under any circumstances. This is usually good if you’ve got a critically wounded 2nd or 3rd party member who you want to send out of the fray to heal, or if you just want to get the AI out of your hair because they’re going to screw up something you’re trying to do, like say get decent images of an enemy for a Let’s Play only for the AI to charge in and kill it.  And lastly, the red icon on the left is “Attack My Target.” This tells the AI to focus exclusively on whatever target you’re currently attack and help you wail on it until it’s dead. This is useful for boss fights and engagements with giant enemies, because it keeps the AI on a nice tight leash while you’re facing really deadly opponents. Because the less room the AI has to screw up, the better you will be for it. This feature as also one of the add-ons to the remake/sequel.  Okay, so here now we finally have a full battle party of three characters, each with their chosen weaponry. Leonard has a short sword and shield which is good for short-range in-your-face attacks, while the shield grants a boost to his natural defence. That’s not a whole lot to say about short swords. They’re the “default” weapon of the game. Pretty much every playable character we get in the game except for one has a short sword as their game 1 “default” weapon. However, if you pick up White Knight Chronicles II and start the game from game 2, your available party will have different default weaponry. For instance, Yulie’s default weapon in WKC II is a the bow and arrow. Short swords are also one of the weapons that are broken down into multiple sub-weapons, all still classified under short swords though. You can equip a short sword user with a sword, knife, hatchet, or cudgel, with each sub-weapon having its advantages and disadvantages, yet still playing like a normal sword in gameplay, because the game this game is just so .Short swords are one of the few weapons you can equip a shield with. For example, Leonard comes with a shield as part of his default equipment. There are a few long-range short sword skills, but they’re mostly all short-range stuff. There aren’t that many (if any, actually) cool support skills in the short sword skill line, although you do eventually get access to the “Twin Swords” ability at the end of the skill line which lets you summon an identical version of your equipped sword and do double the damage for a brief period of time. Short swords can also learn physical attacks with fire and wind elemental attributes to them. Now since I’ve been using Leonard for the majority of this part, so let’s go over Yulie and Orren’s equipment instead for a second.  First up is Yulie. She is equipped with a bow and arrow. She’s able to strike targets from long distances, but because she’s also limited in terms of attack types to stab and impact-style attacks. She’s only got one slash-style attack, the deceptively named “Angel’s Wing.” The bow is also a two-handed weapon, which means you can’t equip a shield with it, so no defence boost here. Also, it trades off damage for range. It can hit targets at any distance/height, but at light to moderate damage. However, the bow’s light weight means it also has the fastest cooldown rate of each available weapon type. Look at the image above there, Yulie’s attack hasn’t even landed its hit yet and the action wheel is already over halfway full for her next turn. Most archer Avatars you’d run into online were actually mages who used their bow as a backup weapon. The bow and arrow is also one of only two weapons that have elemental-based attack skills from all four elements: water, earth, fire, and air. Every other weapon only has skills from two elements. You can also see the blue, green and yellow icons on her action bar. These are “Healer’s Hymn,” “Spirit’s Hymn,” and “Angel’s Hymn” three high-level bow and arrow-exclusive techs usually unlocked near the end of the bow and arrow’s skill set. They are free healing spells. Healer’s Hymn restores HP without consuming MP, Spirit’s Hymn restores MP and only costs 1 Action Chip, and Angel’s Hymn revives fallen party members only using 1 AC as well. And these would all be great, if the AI of White Knight Chronicles wasn’t dumber than a sack full of remedial bricks. I keep harping on how Level-5 all but stole Final Fantasy XII’s battle system without also scooping up FFXII’s scalable, intuitive party AI too because it’s so painfully obvious across both games. Your party members in this game will not use techs beyond basic attack skills. They will only heal if you specifically set their tactical set up to “Heal First.” They will not cast buff spells unless you specifically prompt them too, and even then the spells they cast are often random and take like 40 seconds to complete, and are able to be interrupted by strong enemy attacks. They will not engage battle mode if they’re too far away from you. If they’re not in battle mode, they will not use any healing or support spells, meaning for instance if you decide to try and just run through an area full of enemies without fighting anything and you get stunned or put to sleep or something, they will just stand there and watch you shake like you’re having a seizure, or otherwise watch you get pummelled to death by all the enemies you were deftly trying to run away from. And they don’t utilize equipped skills that capitalize on enemy weaknesses. The party AI in White Knight Chronicles is so stupid I have seen players on forums having full on loving breakdowns over how they can’t get past certain boss battles because their party constantly gets them killed through sheer unintuitive stupidity. Welcome to White Knight Chronicles, where that soft, subtle ‘durr’ sound you hear while playing is not your PS3’s disc drive, it’s the game itself expressing its stupidity.  Now on to Orren. Orren wields a giant gently caress off  axe. Axes/hammers are the ultimate risk/reward weapon in White Knight Chronicles. Being two-handed weapons, they preclude wielding a shield, so you’re sacrificing a defence boost, and you’re taking on a heavy weight, meaning your attack speed is much slower than lighter weight weapons like swords or spears, but they do like twice the damage of short swords and three times the damage of the bow and arrow. …When they hit, of course. Axes/hammers have the lowest accuracy rating of each of the weapon types in the game.Axes are the other weapon that gets split into sub-weapons. There are three different sub-weapons which all do the same thing because again, : great axes, warhammers, and mauls.Axe-wielders are the tanks of the game, slow and awkward, but damage nightmares. They’re also the game’s go-to nerf’ers. You can see the two techs in the middle of Orren’s skill bar, “Arm Breaker” and “Armor Breaker,” which lower an enemy’s physical attack and physical defense stats temporarily. They were also the rarest weapon class you would encounter in the online portions of the game. The axe skill tree also has skills with innate earth and wind element attributes as well.  ORREN…  SMASH!  And that’s the end of that. You also might have noticed the pixelated trigger option over top of Orren’s AC bar. Good for you. I’ve blurred it out for a reason, a spoiler reason. It’s an ability that technically no one in the party should have at this point in the plot, so rather than ruin things, I’m just going to awkwardly blur it out and address it in full when we get to it. Mostly because I haven’t really decided how I’m going to spin it into the plot yet because it is a quasi-plot-based element of the second game, but since it’s tied to the Avatar it often goes overlooked because, again, . This is also the part of the game where Combos are explained. You can watch the full video to get the whole story, but I’ll sum it up here. You can create strings of attacks called Combos. Certain skills that you learn are only really useful as parts of combos. These are often skills that either knock enemies down or launch them into the air or whatnot. Combos can be saved on the Combo tab in the Equip Skills page and can be equipped onto the command bar anywhere you like. Depending on how complex they are, Combos take certain amounts of AC to pull off. Right now you’re limited to like 2 or 3-move combos, but eventually this scales up like 6 or 7-move combos as you clear more of the game and gain more AC and level up weapon-based skills. There’s no skill to pulling off Combos, just wait until the action wheel is full and hit the X button to continue the combo until it’s over. Combos can be seen as this game’s version of Limit Breaks, as you can only use them usually after you’ve taken or dealt enough damage to full up your AC bar, and they do stupid-high damage when pulled off successfully. They’re just rear end tedious, like everything else in this game.  Also, in the original version of the first game, if you opened up the main menu with Triangle, your guest party members got actual character profile pictures. You couldn't select them or alter their equipment, items, or skills, but at least you got a graphical depiction of them actually being in the party. In the remake and sequel, only their name appears in the main menu. So in this case we've actually LOST something from the original game.  Anyway, back to dumbass… I mean Leonard. You can also see at the bottom of our party list that Raus is also listed, only he doesn’t have an MP stat and has a yellow stripe running across his HP stat. Yep, Raus, giant obtuse wine wagon and all, is a guest party member for this portion of the game. Unlike some other guest party members we’ll be getting later in this game and the next, Raus is completely useless… just like he is in general. He’s got no attacks, and he’s torturously slow, is controlled by an independent AI, and, best of all, if he dies… GAME OVER! The only saving grace of the matter is that he's got a comparatively higher HP threshold than your party does (in the mid-80s, while your party will be in the 60s by this point). The only reason everyone has such wildly inflated HP numbers compared to him in these updates is that I'm breaking the game wide open with a Game Genie to show off its various now-broken features more easily. So, as you can surmise by all of that then, the second half of the trek through Balastor Plain is an escort mission, the first of many to come, though luckily our future guest party members will be a little less combat-averse and death-prone than Raus is. gently caress you, White Knight Chronicles. That said, one of the things they changed (because "improved" would be stretching it) between the first and second games is that in the White Knight Chronicles II engine, Raus will plod the wagon ahead independently of your party, whereas in the original version of game 1, the wagon didn't move unless you moved yourself, though it moved at a considerably quicker pace than it does here. Keeping pace with Raus’s wagon is an exercise in sheer madness. Instead, all you need to do is run ahead at your normal pace…  And murder every one of these pukestains before the wagon gets anywhere near them. All the other enemies on the field are docile/too far away from the path to even see the wagon anyway. Raus will start to complain if you ditch him, but it’s more tolerable than taking half an hour to babysit him all the way through to the boss fight. Oh, did I say ‘boss fight’? Like I said in the story update, we have to fight a troll before we can get back to Balandor, and as we enter the battle, this screen pops up. This tutorial explains the special mechanics of giant enemies. From here on out in certain areas, you will encounter giant enemies interspersed with regular enemies. They’re significantly stronger and take more time to defeat than regular enemies, but they’re often beatable no matter your level, and they drop rare items and have high EXP yields too. Giant enemies are segmented into targetable parts, often some combination of legs, arms, core, head and tail where applicable. As we’re lowly small humans, we barely come up to the troll’s knee, so we can only target its legs. Yulie can hit its upper body parts with her bow and arrow, but otherwise we’re not able to reach them with our attacks… yet. How we’re going to be able to do that is currently a mystery… which you can probably piece together rather easily. Anyway, when you do damage to a giant enemy’s legs, eventually a special target will appear over one or more of them with one of those three symbols you see above. Like the box says, each target corresponds to a particular attack type. Hitting the enemy again with the attack type suggested by the target (which also happens to be that enemy’s particular critical hit weakness) will cause the enemy to topple, temporarily rendering it immobile and allowing you to hit targets up to at least its core allowing you to deal increased damage to it.  This troll, for example, is vulnerable to stabbing attacks…  And goes down like a bitch because this is New Game+. (Battles in this game are particularly boring anyway thanks to the stupid AI and terrible user interface set up).  I also promised to talk about equipment wear and tear in this update because this is where it becomes relevant. Like you can see up there, all equipment now has a health bar that declines with continued usage. Weapons lose their effectiveness with every attack completed, while each piece of armour losses effectiveness with each hit the character takes. Stronger equipment (and upgraded equipment) takes longer to wear down. If left unchecked, weapons and armor will eventually break, effectively rendering them useless. Broken weapons deal like 1 damage, while broken armour has all the damage resistance of a piece of paper with the word ‘armour’ on it taped to your chest. Broken or damaged weapons can be repaired either at Logic Stones or armouries for varying sums of money, depending on how powerful the equipment and how much damage it has suffered. You can also buy weapon repair items which let you repair your items anywhere you want to. These are particularly useful in fields or on quests where repairing weapons at Logic Stones is impossible.  One last thing to highlight is scavenging. In certain places out in fields or in dungeons, you will come across parts of the scenery or landscape that are glowing with random sparkles, like this tree for example. You will auto-target it if you approach it and if you press the X button near it…  You’ll bend down and start digging around it like a madman.  And will often be rewarded with a number of items you can use to upgrade your equipment, assuming you have enough of them. Again, this is just another facet of the game’s grindy/farmy insanity. You can see here that Leonard acquired 2 Withered Branches and 2 Sturdy Branches from this tree. Whatever. You can farm items from trees, rocks, fossils, flowers, cracks in walls, busted crates, cracks in walls, the list goes on and on. Anywhere there’s a sparkle, you can gather more meaningless crap in the hopes of maybe, one day, though probably not, binding whatever item you’d set your sights on binding and experience the hollow victory of finally meeting the game’s insane requirements on it and maybe even finally equipping it one day. I hate this game’s item system. Also, another sad fact: in the original White Knight Chronicles, you had to farm each item individually from these spawn points. This meant having your character bend down and scratch around the spawn point up to five times in order to get everything out of it. Level-5 realized this was tedious and repetitive so they tweaked it so that your character bends down and searches for a longer time than in the first game, yet pulls out all the items that spawn point will ever give out in one go. Funny that that was the pressing issue they thought they absolutely needed to address from game 1 to game 2. And that’s all for Part 2.  INFOGRAPHICS!    
nine-gear crow fucked around with this message at 12:16 on Apr 14, 2015 |
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Dec 28, 2013 08:27
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Since you brought him up. Osmund and the entire race of bunny people are references to Dark Cloud, Osmund is a PC in the original Dark Cloud as a rabbit from the moon in a jumpsuit, a propeller backpack and an Uzi. All the Rabbit people are from the moon and technologically advanced, and the main plot of the moon part of the game is to build a giant robot so you can beat up a genie. Did I mention that Dark Cloud is AMAZING? Because Dark Cloud is loving amazing. He also appears in Dark Cloud 2 as an NPC, and I think he may appear in other Level-5 games. I actually had some mild fun with the games combat system, slow as anything in the vanilla game mind you, and you didn't mention a gigantic problem I brought up. If your enemy is targeting you for an attack (at least in the vanilla game) they will hit you even if you're across the map by the time their wind up is done. Another part of "Man this game could have been so good."
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Dec 28, 2013 10:04
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Onmi posted:Since you brought him up. Okay then, that explains why Osmund is the only badass Papitaur in this game. Also yeah, I should have highlighted that part, but I'll cover it later on, I guess. I have had that happen to me so many times, particularly when facing giant enemies. I will run out of their attack's effective range (as well as my own attack's effective range) and still get nailed by it for whatever reason because of the game's half-assed collision detection coding.
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Dec 28, 2013 10:18
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Also, I sort of like your personality for Cisna, because of spoilers but always did come across as the villain from my understanding of the story. I wont bring it up till we get there, but once we learn all the backstory I don't think Level-5s intent was what I took from it.
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Dec 28, 2013 10:36
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I stand by what I said about Leonard. He didn't do anything excessively stupid in the first update, unlike in this one. And Yulie seems nice enough. Although she seems to be experimenting with corset technology that is designed to fuse boobs together. quote:Doing that brings up the command bad. Freudian slip?
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Dec 28, 2013 10:38
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SSNeoman posted:I stand by what I said about Leonard. He didn't do anything excessively stupid in the first update, unlike in this one. Okay, point taken. And nice catch. I'll fix that.
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Dec 28, 2013 10:43
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Now that combat is covered, let's go more into what an absolute con-job the battles are. First we have the Tokyo Game Show Demo 2006: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEXvnoY-KoU To be honest, there was never even a chance for the final product to look this good. For example, the grab would have looked less natural had the enemy faced even a slightly different direction. I'm sure you can also see why Leonard's Hollywood like (not realistic) sword fighting wouldn't have worked any time there's a second enemy attacking him. Still, while the grab may have required the characters to in 99% of the cases first hop into the right position to get the angles to line up and the Hollywood fighting may only have looked natural in a 1 vs 1 situation, we still could have had both of them. Anyway, forward to TGS 2007 and Level-5 had to show us a lot more now. Obviously, they had nothing to show that looked anything like the 2006 demo, but the truth was not good enough. Presumable, they figured that the combos you can do occasionally when you've build enough AC was the most impressive looking and decided to pretend that they would be the main way of attacking instead of something you use about once every blue moon. Here's some examples of what we got from Gamespot: https://www.gamespot.com/videos/shirokishi-monogatari-video-feature-1/2300-6179764/ http://www.gamespot.com/videos/shirokishi-monogatari-gameplay-movie-1/2300-6179337/ They even went as far as having enemies attack multiple times and the playable characters block most of them to make combat look a little more like in the TGS Demo 2006. The deception worked until about a month or two before the game was released. At that point they gave the gaming sites demos that actually resembled the finished product and I was warned in time not to get this game.
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Dec 28, 2013 13:27
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quote:Also, given the fact that is has managed to cloth and equip itself with some fairly complex pieces of fabric and metalwork, I’m pretty sure we’re all complicit in the murder of a sentient being now. A 20 foot-tall, green-skinned sentient being. Really? making GBS threads on the main character because he's actually doing his job? Sure the game is terrible but you should probably save it for the actual terrible parts. Begrudging a rpg for having its main characters start out murdering harmless creatures is like begrudging a fps for having exploding barrels. quote:To be honest, there was never even a chance for the final product to look this good. For example, the grab would have looked less natural had the enemy faced even a slightly different direction. I'm sure you can also see why Leonard's Hollywood like (not realistic) sword fighting wouldn't have worked any time there's a second enemy attacking him. Still, while the grab may have required the characters to in 99% of the cases first hop into the right position to get the angles to line up and the Hollywood fighting may only have looked natural in a 1 vs 1 situation, we still could have had both of them. Note: Level-5 could have put in a variety of different grab animations based on the characters relative positions to one another, so of like how Valve does it in the Half Life 2 episodes. mikemil828 fucked around with this message at 17:19 on Dec 28, 2013 |
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Dec 28, 2013 17:05
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Wait. Leonard is the POV character? Can you like, choose whom the camera follows? Because I'm confused as to why your avatar isn't the POV character. The word "avatar" seems to imply that would be the case, no?
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Dec 28, 2013 18:47
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insanityv2 posted:Wait. Leonard is the POV character? Can you like, choose whom the camera follows? Leonard is the hero & main character so he's going to get priority. The character creation for the avatar is more like "create a party member." It's really weird. Crystalgate posted:First we have the Tokyo Game Show Demo 2006: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEXvnoY-KoU 
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Dec 28, 2013 18:52
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insanityv2 posted:Wait. Leonard is the POV character? Can you like, choose whom the camera follows? Lunethex posted:Leonard is the hero & main character so he's going to get priority. The character creation for the avatar is more like "create a party member." It's really weird. Pretty much this. In terms of gameplay, right for moment 1 of the game you can put any other character besides Leonard in the driver's seat. But yeah, in terms of the story, Leonard is the "hero" of White Knight Chronicles, a term that will lose all meaning as we continue. Like I've said a few times now, the Avatar is just there in the background. It's a character created entirely for the online portions of the game that is attached to the storyline so needlessly and inaptly that you can practically see the staples. In terms of the framing device of the LP, the Avatar is telling the story, the story he's telling just happens to be starring Leonard.
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Dec 28, 2013 19:32
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I think the most appropriate use of the avatar is to make him a male that looks as closely as possible like the avatar on the Ultima VI box art. Name him Avatar and give him post game equipment, provided that's possible. Then bench him, but summon him anytime you're up against a tough enemy.
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Dec 28, 2013 20:23
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Crystalgate posted:I think the most appropriate use of the avatar is to make him a male that looks as closely as possible like the avatar on the Ultima VI box art. Name him Avatar and give him post game equipment, provided that's possible. Then bench him, but summon him anytime you're up against a tough enemy. Either that or create a bald character named Aang, dress him in monk robes and then have him fight using only a staff and elemental magic.
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Dec 28, 2013 20:33
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Crystalgate posted:I think the most appropriate use of the avatar is to make him a male that looks as closely as possible like the avatar on the Ultima VI box art. Name him Avatar and give him post game equipment, provided that's possible. Then bench him, but summon him anytime you're up against a tough enemy. This was relatively easy when the servers were online. You could go grind Avatar/Guild levels and money online as soon as the Geonet became available (your quest options would be limited at the start, though), and buy gear from other players' towns, then you would have an Avatar that could handle the entire rest of the game with no trouble.
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Dec 28, 2013 21:42
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I recently played this game and it's sequel. gently caress me I have never hated myself more than that one boss fight crow mentioned in the update. This game was the cause of my first ever thrown controller. Also, word of advice? If you're playing along (what the gently caress is wrong with you) make the Avatar a mage. It will save your rear end so many times it's hard to count. Some of the spells are on par with the damage Axe wielders can inflict, and they have a ton of AoE attacks.
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Dec 28, 2013 22:07
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It's kind of funny to see some of the complaints about this game and then see Ni No Kuni (the game made by Level 5 and Studio Ghibli) mentioned. The companion AI in NNK is absolutely, utterly braindead. It's so horribly bad that very nearly every boss in the game is considerably easier to beat by letting your teammates die and just concentrating on attacking and defending with the main character. It has the same problems with spell use described here, too; it'll drain its mana dry against the easiest enemies in the game unless you set it to either "do nothing" or "don't use spells". You'd think they might have tried to improve some of that, but I guess not.
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Dec 28, 2013 23:39
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Zurai posted:It's kind of funny to see some of the complaints about this game and then see Ni No Kuni (the game made by Level 5 and Studio Ghibli) mentioned. The companion AI in NNK is absolutely, utterly braindead. It's so horribly bad that very nearly every boss in the game is considerably easier to beat by letting your teammates die and just concentrating on attacking and defending with the main character. It has the same problems with spell use described here, too; it'll drain its mana dry against the easiest enemies in the game unless you set it to either "do nothing" or "don't use spells". Fascinating. I own Ni no Kuni, but haven't gotten around to playing it yet. That is rather distressing to see that they haven't learned anything from White Knight Chronicles's failures. I wonder if any of their other post-Dark Cloud RPG-ish games suffer the same flaws. Hey, Omni, how smart was DC and DCII's party AI?
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Dec 28, 2013 23:48
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nine-gear crow posted:Fascinating. I own Ni no Kuni, but haven't gotten around to playing it yet. That is rather distressing to see that they haven't learned anything from White Knight Chronicles's failures. I wonder if any of their other post-Dark Cloud RPG-ish games suffer the same flaws. I can't speak for DCII, but one had no party that I remember, you took one character out at a time out to do whatever. It's been years upon years so I don't remember if you could even switch characters while still in a dungeon.
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Dec 28, 2013 23:54
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Dark Cloud 1+2 had no AI party members, unlike WKC or Ni No Kuni. They had characters that you could swap between, and who all used different weapons and accessories. Character switching was much more pronounced in Dark Cloud 1, with other characters having unique skills that were usable in dungeons (often required to access areas parts of dungeon floors).
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Dec 28, 2013 23:55
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Level 5's other really good game (Dragon Quest 8) also had no AI party members. It had a party, but you had full control over everyone's actions. And thank goodness for that, because that game would be way, way harder with party members who were incompetent. Seems like they should stay away from party AI.
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Dec 29, 2013 00:01
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I liked it better when Level 5 made either a straight turn based RPG (Dragon Quest VIII) or a hack in slash with RPG elements (Dark Cloud, Rogue Galaxy). I'm not a fan of this quasi-real time stuff found in FFXII, White Knight Chronicles, and Ni No Kuni. I think the only jRPG that got that style right was Xenoblade. I was suckered into buying the game on release due to initial trailers, PS3 RPG starvation and Level-5 hype but not even that much could get me to finish the game. That's quite a feat for myself.
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Dec 29, 2013 00:14
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Well it's funny you mention Xenoblade, because I went from WKC directly into The Last Story and Xenoblade Chronicles, and it felt like I had discovered Party AI Shangri-La. Let me be clear: the party AIs of Last Story and Xenoblade in the aggregate are nothing special or intuitive, particularly compared to Western AI-driven games like BioShock Infinite or The Last of Us. Yet compared to White Knight Chronicles (and FFXIII), I practically wept tears of joy to have a competent party at my back.
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Dec 29, 2013 00:27
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Zurai posted:Level 5's other really good game (Dragon Quest 8) also had no AI party members. It had a party, but you had full control over everyone's actions. And thank goodness for that, because that game would be way, way harder with party members who were incompetent. Dragon Quest VIII did let you set the party to be AI, though. And it was actually reasonably good there, to the point of being better than any player could be at times. Like, it could respond to stuff the instant it happens because when doing it manually you input everyone's move at the same time, but the AI doesn't decide until that person's turn.
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Dec 29, 2013 00:48
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Oh, man! WKC! This was my first purchase for the PS3 without playing a demo before, and the first PS3 purchase I actually got buyer's remorse. This is going to be a fun ride, not thanks to the game. 
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Dec 29, 2013 01:11
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Yulie's skirt is short enough to give panty-shots from her basic walking animation. We really will be needing to page Anita Sarkeesian at this rate. I was worried this LP was going to be a trainwreck when I read the long, overly detailed OP, and it is, but in the best way instead of the worst.
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Dec 29, 2013 04:41
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A good AI is nice, but I feel that relying on it to handle your companions is the wrong approach. Rather, I think that a game like this (and Ni NO Kuni as well) should be given an interface that makes it easy to order the AI around. That and on the fly change the general behavior. For example, let's say you manage to attract five enemies at once. You order the AI to spam high damage moves that cost a lot of MP or AC. You also make use of a hot-keyed order that tells one of your companions to cast some sort of emergency spell. Then after you've killed two or three enemies, you feel that threat is over and don't want to waste resources, so you order the AI to stick to cheap spells and 0 AC moves. All those things should be easy to do, I'm thinking of "hold one button down, press another" type of easy. Basically, make it easy for the player to tell the AI what to do instead of hoping that the AI will be smart enough to make decisions on it's own. The AI can take care of spamming the same move over and over. Heck, it could also take care of tasks like "heal if someone is significantly injured (70% Max HP or less left?) and spam 0 AC bow attacks otherwise." Then design battles so that they give you problems that are solvable this way. Maybe other people feel otherwise, but personally, if I'm playing an RPG, I want as much control as reasonable.
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Dec 29, 2013 15:09
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Dragonatrix posted:Dragon Quest VIII did let you set the party to be AI, though. And it was actually reasonably good there, to the point of being better than any player could be at times. Like, it could respond to stuff the instant it happens because when doing it manually you input everyone's move at the same time, but the AI doesn't decide until that person's turn. I remember only being able to beat the first Dhoulmagus fight letting the AI get healing duties because it would heal if I got hurt bad or attack if I didn't.
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Dec 29, 2013 15:59
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Crystalgate posted:A good AI is nice, but I feel that relying on it to handle your companions is the wrong approach. Rather, I think that a game like this (and Ni NO Kuni as well) should be given an interface that makes it easy to order the AI around. That and on the fly change the general behavior. For example, let's say you manage to attract five enemies at once. You order the AI to spam high damage moves that cost a lot of MP or AC. You also make use of a hot-keyed order that tells one of your companions to cast some sort of emergency spell. Then after you've killed two or three enemies, you feel that threat is over and don't want to waste resources, so you order the AI to stick to cheap spells and 0 AC moves. All those things should be easy to do, I'm thinking of "hold one button down, press another" type of easy. Here's the thing: This, and other games, actually have that system. But, with poor AI, it doesn't work. He just explained that there are different settings you can put your AI partners on, much like your "high damage move" or "cheap spells" idea. However, the AI is so bad, that it doesn't work right. You may think you're talking about something different, but what you're really saying here is that with a better AI, the system would work right. What do you think "general behavior" means, if not for the AI of your party members?
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Dec 29, 2013 16:44
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Captain Bravo posted:Here's the thing: This, and other games, actually have that system. But, with poor AI, it doesn't work. He just explained that there are different settings you can put your AI partners on, much like your "high damage move" or "cheap spells" idea. However, the AI is so bad, that it doesn't work right. You may think you're talking about something different, but what you're really saying here is that with a better AI, the system would work right. What do you think "general behavior" means, if not for the AI of your party members? If that makes any sense, what I want is an AI that obeys the player rather than one that's smart. The most obvious example is Final Fantasy XII, the AI there simple does what you told it to. It will obey your gambit setup even if doing so would be the most stupid thing ever. However, no White Knight Chronicle doesn't have what I mentioned. If you even can change the AI between cheap and expensive moves at all, you have to enter a menu for that. That's a far cry from what I suggested. It matters a lot because if a tactical option is a hassle to use, then it simple won't be used at all. I also don't think you can hot-key specific orders to your partners.
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Dec 29, 2013 18:02
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Wow, I thought the game was boring and bad, and I was playing the improved WKC2 version? Wow. I keep seeing Geonet mentioned especially as a way to make the game better, but having rented the game, that wasn't available without  . In fact, it impressed me how boring the DLC was for this game. Like, pay $3 to get 20% more experience, or $3 for 20% more Guild Points. A dollar to use a costume worn by one of the "official" characters (because obviously you're not) and $6 to change your appearance. $3 for a "Waiting Area?" That just kind of sums it all up.
marshmallow creep fucked around with this message at 18:42 on Dec 29, 2013 |
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Dec 29, 2013 18:23
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You know, I've never seen super smart party AI in any game I've ever played. Even Fallout 3 and Skyrim, where all the AI had to do was kill things it still hosed up hard at times (or go after a Deathclaw/Giant super under leveled carrying a basic hammer because one was within their six mile radius of rage). Actually, most games I can think of have lovely companion AI, it's got to be one of those things that just isn't as easy to set up as you would think.
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Dec 29, 2013 18:57
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Actually I was just thinking how this game would be much improved if it played like Dragon's Dogma. Because the pawns in Dragon's Dogma can be trained to do some pretty sophisticated things (though they can also be trained to be bone-chillingly dumb if their Arisen isn't paying attention.) Just let the player jump back and forth between the Avatar and everyone else in the party (since you wouldn't have the online pawn-exchange aspect of the game you could afford to make the "official" party members like playable Pawns) and just ditch the entire command menu thing for just straight up brawling. Keep the climbing aspects so you can get all SotC with the giant monsters when you don't want to bust out the spoiler thing we haven't gotten to yet.
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Dec 29, 2013 19:48
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Lazyfire posted:You know, I've never seen super smart party AI in any game I've ever played. Even Fallout 3 and Skyrim, where all the AI had to do was kill things it still hosed up hard at times (or go after a Deathclaw/Giant super under leveled carrying a basic hammer because one was within their six mile radius of rage). Actually, most games I can think of have lovely companion AI, it's got to be one of those things that just isn't as easy to set up as you would think. In Skyrim it doesn't matter that much if the AI is dumb, it's what the playable character does that really matters, the AI companions are mostly a bonus. However, in White Knight Chronicle, two third of your fighting force is in the hands of the AI. If you create a game that way, make sure the AI isn't put in situations where it needs to handle human level decision making to perform well, because that just won't happen. Design the game so that the AI is only put into problems that it can handle.
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Dec 29, 2013 20:10
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Oh, this game. It was hyped up so much and I fell for it like an idiot. I kind of enjoyed what it turned out to be in places, but it certainly wasn't what was advertised. It really is hilarious in cutscenes where the Avatar is basically invisible. Also I decided early on that one of the more serious characters would never wear trousers. I could never take him seriously saying all his things in his underpants. It pretty much ended up as a dressup simulator thing for me. Every time I reached a new town I was excited to see what new stuff I could wear. Once I found out that you could give everybody a unique cloak that was basically it for me taking it seriously.  And it was ok wandering around the enormous empty areas mindlessly beating up the wildlife. It's kind of dull but in a pretty inoffensive way. Just really bland I guess. Never bad enough to stop me playing and I'd usually be looking forward to seeing what was next. There's usually something interesting to look at, and that helps with how dull the actual gameplay is. Basically, you have to find ways to entertain yourself while playing this game, because it's not going to do it for you. The Knights are the best bit of this game. Just a shame they aren't in an actual good one.
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Dec 29, 2013 22:03
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McDragon posted:It pretty much ended up as a dressup simulator thing for me. Every time I reached a new town I was excited to see what new stuff I could wear. Once I found out that you could give everybody a unique cloak that was basically it for me taking it seriously. I was weird. I had all the characters in the outfits they joined the group in (if only so they don't all look the same except for faces). My Avatar, a hybrid Mage/Bow, was in the best light armor available at the time and everyone else was in their crappy starting armor. That might be why they died a lot. e: crow, is the mission multiplayer is still available, or is everything related to the MMO side gone? If it still works, I might be able to help out some.
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Dec 30, 2013 01:19
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