Endless Bag of Games

It has been a while since we got opportunity to gather around the gaming table, but still we managed quite quickly to continue our Dragon Age: The Shield of Ferelden Campaign. Today’s session was third time we played Dragon Age so the pause took its toll because we have to go through some of the rules. The session was over quite quickly so we had time for a round of Small World. Anyway, here is the recap of the session.

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Now in Gherlon Thaigh, our heroes continue their journey finding a way out from the Deep Roads to deliver a message what has been happening beyond the great Shield. Only few moments ago, Garat had lead the heroes to the entrance of Gherlon Thaigh where they had fought against few darkspawn lingering around. Not wasting any time, they headed deeper to the thaigh and vanished among the ruined buildings…

It really seemed that the thaigh itself was infested with darkspawn as Lintarn scouted ahead. She even managed saw that their encampment included few kennels for blight wolves. It was clear, that these darkspawn had been sophisticated enough to pull few raids on the surface, which was a most worrying sign. “At least no more deep crawlers..” Garat grunted.

As they ventured deeper to find out the route to the surface, they found out that the main road of the thaigh was still in use. There was a big cart and a maltreated Bronko tied to do all the heavy work. As they discovered what was the carriage in the cart they were shocked; each sack was full of human carcasses. “Probably farmers… according their looks” Jorn said not wanting to believe what he had just seen. “We have to move, quickly”.

“I believe there is our way out” Garat said quietly pointing out supposedly the main building of the thaigh. The vast building was at the top of long steep stairs. “Let’s go…”. They knew, that once they started climbing, they were out in the open and quite easily to be seen. Which was exactly what happened next. A low booming echo started rumbling in the thaigh notifying they had been seen. “Run!” Jorn commanded, and run they did. At the top of the stairs, two genlocks caught them by surprise and the dwarf got fatally wounded and he had to be left behind. So they ran, ran until they run out of breath, up and up the stairs to inside the building and up and up until and they found themself in icy caverns… They knew they had found their way out…

Few days beneath the surface had been pleasant in terms of sheer temperature. Outside they were freezing once again. At least they were safe for now, so they finally made effort to rest. They were surprised to learn, that they weren’t actually far from the Shield so they made effort to arrive there as soon as possible.

And there it was; The Shield, a massive fortification built on solid rock ranging almost the whole wide range of the Frostback mountains. From here, the Ferelden truly began. A soldier named Janus was more than surprised when Jorn told him that they were coming from village Cantagan, since the mountain range is blocked during the winter. “I’ll take you to captain Frallak, you can tell him what you have gone through. I must warn you, he is not very fond of bad news though so take care”. The captain was slightly overweighed middle-aged man with beady eyes. “Yes, welcome, I hear you have gone through quite an errand passing the mountain range during these times and I hear you have news to tell me so spit it out.”

As Jorn told them about the restless Avvars, blight wolves the deep roads and the doom of Garat, Frallak became worried. “Then the situation is more dire than I believed…” he said eyes tired. “King Sarilan does not believe the rumors what has been happening here. They say that we have men more than enough to deal with few Avvar-wilds. Still.. they do not have a slightest idea. The situation here is better than it is in the North where the Avvars harass even the Shield itself occasionally and to hear rumors about those foul creatures… Ugh.. I think, I’m going to have a headache.” he finished and took a deep breath. “Master Urvak from the Grey Wardens is coming here during the next few weeks, to inspect the situation here at the wall, you can present the new directly to him if you please, but for now you have to just wait. You can stay here and be a temporary part of the guards until they reach here…”

They waited and the next few weeks were long and tiresome. The wall itself was not treated well, and it was clear that it required heavy repairs here and there. Jorn, Lintarn, Larridan and Awellen waited and did obediently every small tasks what they were told to do. Eventually, master Urvak arrived and they got their audience with him. Our heroes told them what they knew…

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The Cast of Characters:

Jorn Saavorwel: A noble from Denerim. Jorn is on a journey to prove himself – and his father – his worth. Jorn’s father is a notable bann in Denerim.

Awallen (Fenwyn): A cast out Dalish elf woman with bad temper. She is travelling to learn some self-discipline.

Larridan Alawei: Apostate elven healer learned with the arts of magic. Larridan wants to be acknowledged and wants to work real hard in order to achieve it. The fact he race is what it is, makes it difficult.

Lintarn: Lintarn has lived a tough life in Denerim, suffering from racism and the fact of being a woman. After a mysterious incident, she was forced to fled the city and has been travelling ever since.

Garat: A dwarven scout who had left the life in Orzammar behind him. Knows the Frostbacks very well.

Tal Irongrip: A warrior-merchant who travels from Fereldern to Orzammar seeking riches.

Mavervo: The head of the village Cantagan. Middle-aged man with already grey beard and big gut.

Master Urvak: Influential Grey Warden in the south.

Captain Frallak: One of the captains at the Shield. His responsibility is the southern part of the shield.

White Knight Chronicles International, an anticipated game by Level-5, is another light RPG to spend hours with. You’ll be seeing flying colossal airships, see birds that can project holographs from their eyes, you’ll be saving some princesses and see some giant “giant-robot” style of knight sequences. The game has sense of humor and is not too serious. Just what to expect from Level 5, and that is not a bad thing.

The graphics in the White Knight Chronicles (further known as WKC) are beautiful and clean and they work quite well during the play. It is nice to see, that the majority of the cut-scenes have been done with the game-engine. It is not perfect, but overall results are good. Every character is well designed and instead of being a grey mass of npc’s they each have a personality which just completes the work. The visuals especially come in to play when dealing with WKCs giant knights and monsters. The size of the monsters and quality of the graphics just continue to amaze me time after time.

A big part of any RPG is the music. The music in WKC is ok, it delivers what it is supposed to and the voice acting is good. The unfortunate part is that you can actually see that the English voice has dubbed so that you can sometimes see people talking without mouths moving. Only few times, but still it vexes me. In overall the sounds are good, the knight in the armor does sound like it and the wind, birds, and monsters are all played in detail.

The game in general does look like Final Fantasy 12, but it actually differs in many ways. During fights, you’ll be seeing action circle that is filling up before you can take some action. The speed of the circle depends on the characters abilities. Players will be using skill points to learn skills (magical or weapon skills) and place the skills to the action bar where the player can execute them from. The real highlight of the game is the WKC Combo system, where players can freely create their own combos by combining learned skills and magic ranging from range to slashing in mid-air combos. A simple thing, but most enjoyable! Like in most RPGs, leveling earns the characters skill points that can unlock new moves according to player tastes. You can specialize and unlock the majority of the moves in a particular discipline quite early in the game, allowing you to start experimenting with combos as soon as possible. The joy of unlocking new abilities will make you spend some time with the game, especially when you go online.

Players are able to enhance their equipment when they have enough proper materials for it. Naturally those materials are gained from killing some monsters and around the world. There isn’t a dire need to enhance the items if you want to complete the game, but the possibility to make game more enjoyable, if preferred, is nice addition indeed.

If the story mode isn’t enough, which hopefully it isn’t, WKC offer you quite offering online play opportunities. There are several “rooms” to join. Each room contain up to 20 players, they can freely group up to finish “quest” (purchase from NPC in the story mode) to level up their Guild Rank. The higher to rank, more quest are available with some unique equipment.

As a summary one could say that WKC is a good game with a good presentation. The online mode and excellent combat system makes it enjoyable, but the story (it is chronicles) so far does not make it an “epic game”. The game actually is a prologue for the later games, and yes you might already have heard rumors about WKC2. It is a good solid game to enjoy about. It’s not perfect, but still most enjoyable. A must if you have liked the previous Level-5 games