PwerlvlAmyUser Score
6.8Presentation - 7.5
Gameplay - 7.5
Value - 6.5
Witch is it? good or bad?
''Witch is it? good or bad''
The witch and the hundred knight 2 is an action role playing game developed by Nippon Ichi Software and published by NIS America. It is a sequel to PS3/PS4 release of The witch and the hundred knight.
The Witch and the Hundred Knight 2 tells the tale of Chelka, a witch who has possessed the body of Milm, younger sister of would-be anti-witch warrior Amalie. Like the first game you take control of one of the hundred knights,which is also created by Chelka herself. As a hundred knight you must use your skills and powers and team up with other witches in order to rid the world of the witch disease that has plagued the land.
In this game like stated above, you play as the hundred knights,doll like creatures who do the bidding of their ''masters''. The master in this game just so happens to be the witch named Chelka,a witch awakened by a failed experiment to cure Milm from her disease. With Chelka now in control of Milm, she uses her powers to awaken her beloved doll to do her bidding for her.
Throughout the game you will spend most of your time hack and slashing through hordes of enemies and leveling up your doll. Game play focuses mainly on the style of hack n slash and that manages to offer various ways to mix in multiple combos based off different skills and weaponry that you happen to unlock as you progress through the game.
Your basic combo is used by mashing the square button over and over,which allows you to do a basic 3-4 hit combo with very little variety. But the more you level up, the more skills you acquire that can help you balance out your fighting style according to type of play style you're aiming for. For instance,some players may want to use hammers,swords or staffs only as equipped weapons and this can effect how your combos are pulled off and how much damage they actually manage to pull off.
New skills acquired can be equipped to the face buttons of your ps4 controller,such a O,Square,Triangle and X, they can all be used in conjunction with the shoulder buttons+ the combination of any of the above buttons. Based on what skill you have selected, if you equip a slashing special move,you will do a strong slashing attack that almost acts like an AOE(area of effect) attack that hits all nearby enemies in one smooth swipe. This can be useful for bigger enemies who might have quite a bit more hp than you do at the time of the battle.
But before you start getting into mixing it up with new skills and figure out what combinations you're going to use, you still need to figure out what type of player you are. Are you someone who prefers magic and would rather stay back and shoot from afar or are you the type of person who wants to get up close and personal with a sword and hammer? the choice is up to you and that's where weapon choice comes into play here.
You get the choice of not only choosing one weapon,but multiple weapons. In this game multiple weapons can be equipped at any point in time,but also at the same time. The max amount of damage each weapon will do will stack on top of each other. For instance, if you carry a sword with 5 damage and a staff with 6 damage then your total damage moves to 11 damage. I chose to go with Sword,Hammer and Staff most of my journey so I could have all advantages during an boss fight,or just about any battle in the first place.
Having a staff equipped will allow you to send purple magic hurling at your opponent for a long distance. The purple magic also acts as a homing device which will follow your opponent for a short amount of time,chasing them down in order to hit them. This can be used in a good strategic situation where you might find yourself under leveled or under skilled for a boss battle. Sure it might take you a little longer to win the fight,but luckily the more you run around and stay out of danger, your health slowly regenerates over time and replenishes. Giving you a very slight advantage.
Like I mentioned above about various skills you get to use, while they're great and all,they come at a price of AP. You have a set amount of AP at your disposal and any use of a special skill will drain it over time,leaving you at most,being able to use 2-3 skills before you ultimately run out of your AP. But all is not lost, dont fret! for every regular attack you manage to pull off against any enemy, will slowly regenerate some of that lost AP too! so you shouldn't really go that long without enough AP to do your thing.
But what if you can't get close enough to an enemy to deal the necessary damage? well that's where item stock comes into play. Through each level enemies will drop specific items related to health or AP that will give you a bit of each. They will also be found in random hidden chests layed out throughout the section of the map, so keep your eyes open and make sure you inspect every section of a stage that you possibly can,you never know when one of those items just might save your life.
Throughout the game you will also be able to unlock multiple dolls to be able to use at any point in your battle by simply swapping and change them out seamlessly. All of them have their own uses and each one can make any unbeatable situation,that much easier than it previously was. For instance, the first doll you start off with is your very basic 3-4 punch combo default doll that does minimal damage and is better suited for 1 on 1 or even 2 on 1 battles. However, other dolls are more suited to weed out large crowds and wield large hammers that will take out any enemy in your immediate area in the blink of an eye. Its really all up to the style of play you wish to choose from.
While I generally enjoyed the overall game play that is offered in this game, I do have my fair share of gripes as well and it pertains to the cutscene use,dialogue and overall breakage of flow that the game seems to have a problem with. An example of this is one of my problems is early on in the game,there's far too much hand holding and way too much over explaining of every single mechanic and thing in the game. It starts to become very over baring and feels like the game is patronizing you.
After you get the long and lengthy cutscenes of dialogue and explanations, you're thrown in the level/map of the game to start doing your thing. You head off and start mowing down the enemies 1 by 1 and think to yourself ''all right this is awesome'',but then 2 minutes later, you're stuck in another lengthy cutscene,explaining to you everything you just did and what you should do next. Ok cool,thanks,I appreciate it.
After this happens, you forgive it and move on to keep playing and no sooner than killing 3 bad guys later and turning the next corner again, its ANOTHER cutscene with lengthy dialogue. The game early on really doesnt let you play,it guides you and hand holds you through the first 3hrs. That's unacceptable in my opinion. It might sound a bit nit picky,but it really pulls the entertainment out from it and it is more of a gut punch to the games overall fun factor at the end of the day.
There is also some issues with the camera, it can feel a bit wonky at times and stutter and move around when you do not want it to. I only mention this because at times when you're having a few camera issues,this will make you miss certain special attacks because your character isn't aligned perfectly with the enemy due to the camera position. A lot of times its not during any dangerous scenario,but the times that it does end up happening during a dangerous scenario,it can cause you to die unexpectedly and that can get rather annoying.
Graphically the game is cute. It just looks like an up-rezzed PS3 game,but I can't necessarily straight up call that a bad thing because the animation outside the cutscenes is very well done and also inside the cutscenes is all done very well too. Everything looks smooth and crisp and game runs without any noticeable lag. You can tell they handled this game with great care in this department and that's always great to see.
The voice acting is pretty spot on as well. While I did find some of the voices throughout the game rather obnoxious,I was able to look past that for the most part due to the quality of the voice acting presented. Everyone doing the voice worked seem and sounded like they were having fun and really getting into their role. It definitely made the game more enjoyable.
My overall thoughts after playing this game came away mixed. While I did enjoy the characters,the voice acting and overall what the game was going for in the game play department with the RPG elements and use of combination hack and slash style, it still left me with something to be desired.
The constantly breaks in game play that pulled me out of the action due to the game needing to explain that i get xp from killing enemies,that treasure chests give me rewards and camera issues experienced in the game,made me go from ''this could be a great game'' to just ''this is an ok game''.
So all in all,that's where the game left me personally, just an ''ok'' game. However if you were a fan of the first game, I could see you enjoying this immensely,but judging it just from itself as a stand alone game on that merit only, I'd have to recommend waiting for a price drop.
The Witch And The Hundred Knight 2 is out now on Playstation 4
https://www.gamenchickgaming.com/blog/the-witch-and-the-hundred-knight-2-review-ps4
