White Knight Chronicles 2, and Laugh

White Knight Chronicles 2: a continuation of the first WKC, where archetype heroes wield giant suits of armor to fight magic card-wielding bad guys and round two of an ancient, devastating war. The overall plot hasn't changed, except this time there are more armors, some time travel, and a massive invasion on the horizon.

 

Despite its use of character archetypes people have seen many times before, the first White Knight Chronicles had a pleasant enough story, but one must wonder if that was simply because new things and characters were being introduced. Players who go into WKC2 while having played the first won't find a lot of new things to discover. There's just not a lot of new things in WKC2 to begin with.

 

The prologue-like first part of the game is spent in Faria, the country that was shoved way, way, WAY into the background during the first game. Whole new characters and game pieces appear, but once that sub-plot is over, it's time to go MMORPG.

 

No. Cut that. Just MMO. Massive-multiplayer online. No RPG, no role playing, just lotsa monsters, lotsa dungeon crawling, and I mean LOTS of dungeon crawling. LOTS of it to do before you get to the next minor ten-second scene telling you that, yet again, there's more to come until you reach a key part where a player knows, THIS IS A PLOT POINT YOU'VE TRANSVERSED FOUR LONG MONSTER-LADEN DUNGEONS TO GET TO. I'd say all the focus was on the gameplay and not the plot, which had one or two pieces put in to qualify for the RPG genre but not much else. And then, in a massive affront to plot lovers such as myself, the plot is 'munched'. How so?

 

1.) The only moment where a plot, a story comes into play, is where the two main female characters duke it out (verbally, anyway) over the male protagonist. Check that. Only one is duking it out, the other's just taking it, and this lasts exactly two scenes without the problem ever being tackled again or resolved. Or maybe there's a WKC3 on the way.

 

2.) Ooh! Shadowy villain that's been plotting behind the scenes all this time appears! He gets rid of the villain from the first game! ...Huh? The shadowy villain shows up in the protagonist's body? Why? What about the White Knight? Wait, the shadowy villain's leaving already? But he's the big shadowy villain that's been plotting for so long! He doesn't give a this-is-my-motivation speech like typical villains? But that's crucical to their introduction! What's his relation to the protagonist? Wait, wait, wait! Come back!

 

3.) For about half the game the main protagonist Leonard is out cold. What's the driving force behind the plot then? Or was there one at all to begin with? Was he ever necessary except to later pop up as a bad guy's body double? And on the subject of forgotten characters, why forget about a new main character right after her part of the story is over early in the game? What was the purpose of any of this? What about the villain from the first story who served as nothing but a fill-in role as the bad-guy-sitting-on-spiky-chair? Shouldn't there be more? Hey, wait!

 

'Munched'. Meaning the game doesn't feel quite incomplete, but only because your mind is in too much of a blank at the moment to realize that there just might be nothing there. Dungeon crawlers and grinders will love this game for all the customization a player can put to the gameplay, and for all the sheer time put into said gameplay, but those who look for a little plot...go play something else on your game shelf. 

 

I gaze upon the RPG in this game's genre and laugh. HA!