s much as I've wanted to love NIS America in the past, oh, decade or so, I've found it extremely hard to do so. While Nippon Ichi developed Disgaea: Hour of Darkness, it was actually published by Atlus, so it's no wonder that its localization was top-notch. But it has seemed, time and time again, that every Nippon Ichi game that has seen release since has been nothing more than mediocre tripe at their best... and utterly abysmal at their worst.
The Witch and the Hundred Knight is NIS America's very latest PlayStation 3 outing and their first fully-3D game engine ever produced. Despite having a host of in-depth strategic elements, it's still a pretty straight forward action RPG, so it breaks the typical Nippon Ichi SRPG mould. The real question here is, is The Witch and the Hundred Knight any good? Read on.
The Witch and the Hundred Knight follows the story of the swamp witch Metallia, who wishes to cover the world in a never-ending swamp. As far as witches go, Metallia is brash, vulgar and cruel, even by witch standards. But, since she can't leave the confines of her foul domain, she searches out and conscripts the legendary Hundred Knight to take care of business for her while she presumably – okay, more or less literally – lazes about. Playing as the Hundred Knight, your objective is to activate pillars that expand Lia's swamp and progresses the story.
As far as action RPGs go, The Witch and the Hundred Knight is much deeper than your standard action RPG fare. Taking elements from rogue-likes such as The Guided Fate Paradox and Sorcery Saga: Curse of the Great Curry God and marrying them to a system not unlike Secret of Mana in many ways makes for a gameplay experience that's quite solid to say the least. On the rogue-like side of things, all experience and items are held until the current mission is complete or the Hundred Knight goes back home. The Witch and the Hundred Knight a bit of a risk/reward aspect; hanging in there longer and taking out as many enemies as possible will yield some great post-stage bonuses. However, Hundred Knight also has an energy stock called GigaCals that will deplete as he does various things—like moving. Auto healing will deplete them even faster, as is exploring darkened areas of the map. Without some grub to keep the GigaCals up, things can get pretty dicey, since at zero GigaCals, your health will take a dive. Certain items can obviously be used, but you can also eat you enemies when thier health has been reduced to a certain point. This fills your stomach with garbage though, so if you want to keep space free for items you've chanced upon, chowing down on your foes may not be the best strategy... but it works in a pinch.
On the Secret of Mana side, Hundred Knight can be equipped with multiple weapons, items and special abilities called Tochka, which not only helps in combat but are generally useful for solving some puzzles. Items and Tochka are displayed in a ring much like Secret of Mana, while up to five weapons can be equipped in sequence to each other. With weapons in specific, lining them up with sequential die markers – which range from one to five – will enable weapon combos for enhanced attacks. Finding weapons is a lot like Diablo in that there are multiple rarities from common to legendary that lets players upgrade to specific levels based on the scarcity of the weapon. Legendary weapons can be upgraded to level 99 while commons can only go to 10. All enemies have a weakness and strength to various weapon types, so getting a good mixture of weapon types with proper die sequences is essential to your success in combat.
The game's plot progresses in a mostly mission-based manner with specific targets requiring elimination to reveal the Pillars which need activation. Along the way, Fool's Pillars can be activated and used to perform a number of tasks, such as temporarily boosting specific stats with Grade points, recovering GigaCals, or heading back to Lia's abode. There are also villages that can be conquered to get some fresh new items for the low, low price of free, so long as you can overwhelm the owners of the houses and shops that you barge into unannounced. Lose and you also lose most of your health which then cuts heavily into your GigaCals. Another added collectable are the Anima, glowing orbs of energy that allow Hundred Knight to cross stuff off of his bucket list such as powering up weaponry, getting new Tochkas and more. Youc an even change the Hundred Knights overall power speed and defense balance with Facets that will also change his appearance. The short of the long of it is that there's a lot more to The Witch and the Hundred Knight than most acton RPGs have all week, and while it may come off every now and again as kind of slow – especially in specific areas that seem to go on forever – it's ultimately pretty fun.
The real meat and potatoes comes in the form of The Witch and the Hundred Knight's presentation though. After all, the plot, characters and overall atmosphere is what makes any roleplaying game great or awful and to that end, I was very split on the outset. Metallia isn't what you would call a likable character. She's needlessly cruel, and while it's possible to doubt, question or outright ignore her demands in specific places, I often didn't really want to help her succeed. Granted, Hundred Knight exists only because of her, so yeah, you do as you're told, but I felt pretty greasy about it, and what fun is that?
The good news is that this first impression gives way to a host of rather likeable characters that not only keep the plot moving, but also begs the player to see what's next. Some of the imagery and language in this game is pretty raunchy despite the slapdash bloom lighting over some pretty racy nudity or censorship that does little to mask the actual spoken words. If I write “c**ksucker”, there's no question what's there. And that's what the audio is like. Thankfully, the entire cast, for once, delivers their lines very well, and makes for a pretty entertaining time. The OST is also well composed with some surprising pieces that implement some of the most happy-go-lucky sounding music I've heard in a game about occult individuals with aspirations of turning the world into a rotting bog. Still, it's a wonder that this game managed a “T” rating and not a straight-up “M.
As said before, this is NIS' first fully-3D game engine, and the results are actually pretty solid, with some truly beautiful environments that are worth of pause. Of course, the character portraits are sharp and well-drawn, though not as well presented as those in, say, The Guided Fate Paradox. Still, they get the job done very well indeed.
The Witch and the Hundred Knight is the NIS game I've been waiting for a long time. It's fun, it's deep, and it has some serious beans. However, most importantly, longtime NIS fans who have endured a decade of mediocrity will finally get the game that they deserve.
