REVIEW: The Witch and the Hundred Knight

Weapons each have a few different properties you will want to look at when deciding what combination is best for you. Like I said before, you can equip up to five different weapons at a time. These will each have properties like slash, blunt and magic. Each weapon also has a die that appears as a circle with up to five dots in it. This indicates which slot you should equip a weapon into. For example, if a weapon has a die with one dot, it will go in Slot 1; if it has two, it will go in Slot 2. The reason you want to do this is that it will make your attack rate faster. You can equip any weapon in any slot, but your attack rate will suffer.

Another key factor when looking at weapons is the rarity. While a common weapon will only level up to 10, a legendary weapon will level up all the way to 100. Armor is a much simpler affair: you can equip two pieces of armor and two accessories. Each will offer somewhat different properties—while some may protect you better from slash attacks or poison, others may offer better blunt protection or sleep resistance.

Metallia’s house in the swamp serves as the game’s hub. From here, you can upgrade your weapons, equipment facets and many other services. Some services will require a bit of Anima, or souls, dropped by the monsters you defeat. Facets are basically new helmets for the knight. You can kind of treat them like jobs. For example, the Wonder Knight facet is very balanced, whereas the the Power Fortress facet has greater defense against physical attacks but is weak against magic. You can equip one main facet and two sub-facets, which can be changed any time on the map by holding R1 and pressing the Circle button. The main facet will gain 100% EXP upon completing a map, whereas the sub-facets will only receive 30%. For the most part, I found the standard facet worked the best, but you will need to level and use the others from time to time.

Two problems I have with this game are that some stages, especially those later on in the game, feel a bit tedious, and the game actually feels a bit too long overall. Also, having stages with random teleporters while your GIGAcals are constantly being drained is a bit of a pain. There are some very harsh difficulty spikes that will require you to do a bit of grinding. While I am OK with a bit of grinding, others will find it a chore.

Overall, I have to say playing The Witch and Hundred Knight was a pretty decent experience. The localization work done by NIS America is top-notch, as always. The story is great and engrossing and will keep you playing, even through some of the more tedious areas of the game. While there are some gameplay issues, overall, most of the time, the combat is fast-paced and fun. For the price tag of $49.99 (USD/CAD), you’ll get right around 40 hours of content if you grind to a level that makes combat fairly easy. You could probably polish this one off in around 35 hours if you rushed.