New features for White Knight in Europe

By Keza MacDonald Published 24 September, 2009

Voice chat, new online mode, more.

Level-5 was talking up White Knight Chronicles for European and American release today at the Tokyo Game Show, showing new features and demonstrating how far the game's online features have come since the original Japanese release at the end of last year - just as well, as we felt the game's multiplayer needed some work when we reviewed it.

In addition to the co-op hunting and gathering submissions that featured in the original release, White Knight Chronicles will launch with the Georama mode that was added to the Japanese title in February in a patch.

Reminiscent of Level-5's earlier title Dark Cloud 2, Georama mode allows you to create your own, completely customisable town to use as an online lobby and base of operations. Using a huge selection of landscaping and building tools, you can create something unique – there are even tiny coloured blocks that Japanese users have been using to create imaginative pixel art.

NPCs from the single-player game can be recruited to live in your online town, and will affect the resources you can gather there as well as your town's stats. NPCs also allow you to launch online co-op missions from your town rather than selecting them from a menu.

American and European players will be able to visit each others' towns, but the Japanese servers are being kept separate for now. (They'd only confuse us with their moon language and reverse griefing anyway).

Yoshiaki Kusuda, the game's director, also announced that voice chat was being added specifically for European and American audiences, and would be added to the Japanese release via a patch.

Also new for the international release is the 'live talk' system from Rogue Galaxy. NPC characters in your party will partake in context-sensitive banter and conversation as you wander around.

Disappointingly, Kusuda confirmed that the single-player Japanese voice-overs won't be available in the Western release. Happily, though, a final trailer demonstrated that the English version is well up to standard.

No firm Western date was announced, but Kusuda thanked us for our understanding: “We're trying our very best to bring White Knight Chronicles to Western audiences – please be patient for just a little longer!”

Picture of Keza.

About Keza MacDonald

Read more articles from Keza by visiting the Keza MacDonald archive page.

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Comments (7) Latest comment 2 years ago

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  • Goodfella #1 2 years ago

    All I actually care about is a release date. When will Japanese devs ever bother to make simultaneous English versions of their games, more specifically their RPG's?

    Is it because they wait to see how it does at retail/reviews and THEN do an English translation? If so what's the excuse with the FF games, they are guaranteed big sales worldwide!

  • mkreku #2 2 years ago

    I think it's OK to delay it when they're using their home country as one big beta test first :p

  • menage #3 2 years ago

    I was excited by this at first, but this is taking way too long and the characters really look too PS2 'dollish" too me. Still love the huge turtle though.

  • Raziel #4 2 years ago

    Played this for a minute or 2 at Gamescom.
    Didn't look very special and I died rather quickly since I didn't understand the battle system, yet, but it certainly looks like a pretty good game overall.
    Knowing all the added features makes the wait a bit easier, but online is useless if I can't find friends to play it with.

  • Toothball #5 2 years ago

    Oh, I quite like it when they keep the Japanese speaking in games.

  • Darren #6 2 years ago

    Hopefully they'll fix the screen tearing in the Japanese version that I've seen in gameplay videos as none of the PS2 Level 5 games had it (or is that because I played them on a PS3?).

    Whatever, I'd still like the game but the excitement factor has dropped somewhat since I saw those early previews back in 2007, mostly due to the disappointing reviews the Japanese version got.

  • mungolikebeans #7 2 years ago

    Picked up a copy in Tokyo last month. It's a great game.