REVIEW: Witch and the Hundred Knight 2


Title	Witch and the Hundred Knight 2
Developer	NIS
Publisher	NIS America
Release Date	March 27th, 2018
Genre	Action RPG
Platform	PlayStation 4
Age Rating	Teen
Official Website

It’s time once and again to visit the world of The Hundred Knight in Witch and the Hundred Knight 2. I enjoyed the first game in the series despite it having some gameplay issues and use of crude and offbeat humor. I was really hoping this game would deliver the same level of dark humor but with better gameplay. Let’s see if that was the case!

The story follows a young girl named Amalie. She lives a quiet life in a small village with her younger sister Milm. The two of them lost their parents in a witch attack, and Amalie swears to protect Milm no matter what. One day while the two were exploring, Milm suddenly disappeared. When she was found she had contracted the horrible witch disease. This incurable disease make its victim become a witch when the third eye on their forehead opens. Amalie joins the ranks of the Holy Valkyries in order to find a cure for Milm, but this will lead her down a path she could’ve never imagined!

The story here is really pretty cookie cutter in a lot of respects and very predictable. The cast is very unlikable just like in the first game, but honestly by the end of the game a few of them had actually grown on me. I think the story dragged on too long and there are certainly some issues here, but by the time I got the game’s good ending I felt like these characters had grown and it left me with a good message that sometimes starting over isn’t a bad thing. The main cast’s English dub is actually pretty good. The voices fit the characters well and you will get a chuckle out of one raven’s voice in particular at times. The supporting characters in the dub are just hilariously terrible. You have some that sound like they’re from the deepest part of Texas were cowboys roam the ranges, to folks that should be sipping tea holding their pinky up. Its so bad, its actually good! The game is fully voiced in Japanese as well if you wanna go that route, but the english dub, flawed as it is, has a certain charm to it.

The music in the game is really nicely done. I’m not sure if the folks that do the Disgaea soundtracks worked on this or not, but it certainly sounds like it. Lots of whimsical tunes for lighter moment and upbeat battle tunes that have you humming them for hours. You can even customize the soundtrack of each level to your liking back at the world hub.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpu4RGikWto&list=PLS0CPVfrPETvF8Nezuow_QEuPoA_7rnRF&index=2

The basic gameplay hasn’t changed much since the last game. Its still a top down Hack ‘n Slash Action RPG. I will cover the biggest changes to the new game and if you would like something a little more in depth, you can check out my review of the first game. Just like the first game you will start each area with 100 GigaCalories. These will drop each second you are on the stage, but they do not deplete quickly from just wandering around. You will lose GigaCalories faster if you are sprinting or if you take damage the calories will go down faster but your HP will regenerate faster. This may sound really restrictive but I can assure you that isn’t the case. Once you complete a 5 hit combo you can press L1 for a Depletura attack. If this attack slays the target in one hit you will absorb some GigaCalories and some AP for special moves. These are really easy to pull off most of the time, so refilling your gauge is not a big issue, and if you have trouble in boss battles you can always restore some with items and certain special abilities.

The Facets return for this entry as well. Facets are basically jobs that grant the player bonuses with certain weapons and some sweet skills depending on which one you are using. For example, Power Fortress will give you a perk to hammers and powerful defense skills, Shinobi Assassin has one hit kill moves but leaves you open in mobs and Wonder Knight is your default and has the most balanced skills. Unlike the last game these will not gain EXP individually, but you will have to level up each with skill points you earn from leveling up. This is so much better than last time when the Facet used the most would get the brunt of the EXP leaving the others behind. This would make you have to repeat stages just to get the others up to par. You can equip up to three Facets at a time and this allows you to make the Hundred Knight fit anyone’s playstyle.

Equipment is handled differently this time around as well. You still equip five different weapons in order to have a variety of different attacks to slay your foes. This time around however there is no die system. You can equip weapons in order you would like and so far as I can tell it has no effect on the speed of the attacks. This is a big improvement since it allows you to focus on your attack attributes rather than worrying about if the best weapon will be too slow to be used. You can upgrade any weapon you like back at your base with castle atelier. This will require some mana, which you receive from defeating enemies and some materials also obtained from slaying your foes. Some weapons will upgrade further than others. A weapon’s max upgrade level depends on its rank and rarity. Common weapons can only be upgraded to level 15, but a legendary one can go all the way up to level 100. Weapon ranks really just show how powerful a weapon is. A rank 1 weapon will gain only a few points of attack per level while a level 10 one will gain a lot. Building up low level weapons isn’t a total bust, however, since they can used as materials for better weapons with a huge mana gain.

The last thing I would like to discuss is the Witch Petition. This works a lot like the Senate in Disgaea with none of the bureaucracy (we need this in real life)! Here you can spend mana to do several useful things. These include raising and lowering enemy levels, acquiring Tochka skills, or even converting mana to cash or vice versa. The raising and lowering enemy levels was a fantastic idea. It made grinding for better gear a snap since you could raise them up, get the goods you needed and lower them back down. Not having to hunt down the Tochka skills was a big plus in my book as well.

I enjoyed my time with Witch and the Hundred Knight 2. I thought the changes to combat did make it a little too simple and going through certain areas dragged on and became a little boring. This was offset however by the fun upgrade system for the weapons. I was always wanting to hunt down something bigger and more bad ass to slay the hordes of monsters. This was very satisfying when I got that awesome drop and took it back to the atelier and buffed it to the moon. It was a great feeling to go back and lay waste to wave after wave of baddies. If the stages had a bit more variety I would’ve scored this one higher, since I think that would’ve really made it stand out. The story is a mixed bag. It’s very predictable, but I really grew to like some of the cast by the end of the game even if they were terrible assholes to start with. This one took me about 35 hours to finish and I got the true ending. If you were a fan of the first game then you should pick this one up for sure, you will find a lot to love here for the $59.99 pricetag. If you disliked the tone or gameplay of the first game then there’s nothing here that is going to change your mind.