WKC is a fun and charming JRPG.
I found this game to be charming and fun with an interesting and well presented story and great gameplay ideas but it certain things stop it from being a truly memorable title.
The story is about how the Kingdom of Balandor are celebrating something and you'll see a fancy parade with huge,exotic creatures and joyous humans and humanoid creatures all happy in the streets until forces from an army named 'Magi' show up and they try to kidnap the princess of Balandor(her name is Cisna).The reason they want to kidnap Cisna is because she has an ability which allows her to free 5 supernatural warriors from a magic seal.These supernatural warriors are very tall and powerful knights which can destroy entire armies and whoever gains access to them will be unstoppable.
A young man named Leonard tries to protect the princess and the both of them attempt to escape but Magi eventually capture Cisna.Leonard gains the ability to transform into one of those supernatural knights and he goes to rescue Cisna with the help of some friends or people who have reason to help Leonard.
Leonard and the group will be up against the whole Magi army and even though he has the ability to transform into one of these supernaturl knights,some of the Magi leaders do too.
SPOILER BELOW
10 000 years before the events in the story,two powerful empires named 'Yshrenian' and 'Athwani' fought a war against eachother.The Yshrenian scientists and scholars created the knights so they could be used to defeat Athwani.Much of Athwani's army were slaughtered by these knights and the knights were unstoppable but the Athwani's scholars created a magic seal to seal these knights away.Until the present time in the story,those knights had remained sealed away but Cisna has the ability to free them from their seal because she is the reincarnation of an Athwani queen.
END OF SPOILER
I must admit I found Leonard to be a generic and annoying character because he tries to act assertive but he has no interesting backstory and his personality is generic.
Yulie is a young woman with short purple hair who is a friend of Leonard since childhood.She has a crush on Leonard and she tries to act sweet but her personality feels a bit forced and fake.
Eldore is the most interesting playable character,he is an older male who served as a knight(not one of the supernatural knights)for the Athwani queen over 10 000 years ago but after she died he traveled forward through time to find her reincarnation.
Kara is a female character who adds a bit of diversity to the group although she's not particularly interesting.
Caesar is the adopted son of the ruler of a beautiful city named 'Greede'.He can transform into a knight too.He is the charming,'ladies man' type of character.He kinda helped brighten up the mood.
You'll also create a character,who will join the party of characters,but he/she will be silent during the story segments.
Cisna(who is an NPC)she is beautiful and has painful memories of her mother being assassinated which will be shown to you and create some emotional story moments and...
SPOILER
Her father will get killed near the start of the story when Magi attack the kingdom.
END OF SPOILER
As for the game's villains,I didn't care much for them and have already forgotten their names.
The story can be emotional at times(some of the emotional moments are shown with duller colors to make those moments feel more delicate and like a past memory).There was only one plot twist that actually shocked me but the story is good and interesting because of the history of the world and creativity such as time travel elements and the concept of reincarnation about for how the supernatural knights were used.The story has romance in it and even though it's not a powerful love story I like when RPGs have a love story.
As for the gameplay,the enemies are very easy in the first half of the game but in the second half of the game the enemies toughen up quite a bit and can kill you quite easily if you're not careful.I'm somebody who's beaten JRPGs that people regard as hard such as Valkyria Chronicles and Lost Odyssey(I actually thought Valkyria Chronicles is easy)but even I faced the game over screen a few times when I played WKC even though my characters had good armor and weapons.I will admit I didn't do much level grinding but doing lots of leveling up makes most RPGs easy.
The combat is a mix between turn based and real time.The characters and enemies take turns attacking but you can move your characters around 3D environments in real-time to reduce the damage they receive from enemy attacks.You control only one character and the AI will control the other party members.Often you'll be fighting against massive creatues that stomp the ground quite a bit and you'll want to move your character away from them when they do(you'll still receive damage but not as much and it will avoid your character being knocked to the ground and making their next turn slower).However,some of the massive enemies have lots of HP and there's many of these types of enemies and unless you transform into a knight it will take a long time to kill them and it's annoying.Sometimes you won't have enough AC to transform into a knight and will need to build up AC during battle until you can transform again.
When you level up you can spend points to learn new attacks/abilities or to upgrade your abilities.Different attacks are more/less effective on different enemies.You can learn healing spells,spells that revive a single or multiple KOed characters,spells that cure poison status on one or multiple characters and spells that give your characters temporary stat boosts.
There's also various skills(types of attacks you can do)that you can learn to do for various weapons such as a more basic sword(I forgot it's actual name),a longer sword,axe,bow etc.It's worthwhile upgrading the skills for each weapon because sometimes different weapon types will be the strongest available weapons to buy at certain times and plus the skills available to learn with each weapon type include HP and strength upgrades.
You can also create your own action bars,which is helpful so you don't have to scroll through attack/skill/magic menus when you're in battle.You can choose which attacks and spells you want on your action bars.
You can create your own combo attacks(you can select attack skills that you've learned and put them into a combo attack)and you can adjust the length of the combo(because certain attack skills use up a certain amount of AC and you'll need AC to perform combos or to transform into a knight).
The combat felt a bit stiff at first but later in the game when you level up your speed stats the combat feels smoother and faster.
Some of the boss battles are epic because summoning a knight once or twice won't be enough to defeat it and they can do a lot of damage to your party and you'll need to keep your party members alive until you can summon a knight again(the knight will take damage for your party members as well as inflicting a lot of damage but your knight has a certain amount of HP and each turn consumes MP and once it's out of MP it will transform back into the character.
The AI for your other party members is good during battle,they will heal your character and themselves when needed although it's annoying when they run off by themselves and attack a group of strong enemies head on.Also,sometimes when you want to run past enemies some of your party members will keep fighting the enemies.
The game in some ways has an old school JRPG feel because it has towns to explore and the towns in WKC are quite big and detailed and some of them are charming.There's lots of sidequests to do.Sometimes it can be hard to find the place where you'll need to go next because the towns are so big and even though there's a marker that points you to where you need to go next it only shows if you're close to the place you need to go and like I've said,the towns can be very big and have many regions.
The battle system can be a bit glitchy though as enemies will be able to land successful attacks on your party members through a door/wall.
The story is also very short for a JRPG,I beat it in under 30 hours and this is when I had the game on pause for a few hours or when I spent a few hours lost and trying to find where I needed to go.
There is online play and it allows you to create your own towns and have people visit them or you can visit other people's towns and you can do party quests together.I played the online mode with friends on my PSN list and it's quite fun to do quests with people you know or to create your own town(perhaps one near a beautiful lake and surrounded by mountains)and the towns you create will have NPCs too and it's interesting to visit other people's towns to see their town design.
The stores from the online towns have some good weapon/armor upgrades which you use for the single player story and when you level up online you'll be able to keep the extra stats you've gained for the single player story too.
As for the graphics,like I've mentioned the towns are quite detailed and look charming with a nice use of colors and are filled with lots of people.You'll see paved areas,homes,green gardens,water fountains,beautiful architecture for buildings and castles,transport systems and people with red,purple,yellow,brown,black hair and besides humans inhabiting the towns there's also humanoid rabbit earred people and I like the scene when it showed the people in the town celebrating together and those giant,4 legged creatures walking through the town and being used as a form of transport.
I like the detail in the environments,such as how the grass is a different length in different places and grows in patches,how the landscape has rock formations on top of it and there's different species of flowers and there's trees that can get in your way and you will see fences,mountains in the background,beautiful lakes,bridges etc.
For variation,there's some nice desert environments that have canyons,and the towns in the desert will have things such as palm trees.There's places with beautiful waterfalls too.
Even though some of the towns are beautiful/charming,some regions of towns have a nice,darker atmosphere,if they are near industrial places.
However,during the cutscenes,the characters have a skin tone that makes their faces and hair look like plastic.
The game has some lovely cinematics,and I loved seeing life like footage of giant flying creatures being used to carry people long distances or to high places(the people ride on a little room that's attached to the flying creature as if the creature is a blimp)and when they fly high in the air you'll get a beautiful view of the landscape below and see clouds and the lovely desert canyon formations with little towns on them.
I also like the cinematic that showed the city that's on the back of a creature that looks like a giant turtle and you'll see the creature walking with an entire city on it's back!
The voice acting for most of the characters is decent but one of the main villains has a ridiculously comical and annoying voice and the dark knight villain character doesn't sound that threatening(despite the voice actors attempt to make him sound chilling and scary).Yulie's voice is cute and the voice acting represents the personalities of the main characters quite well,although they don't have much personality and there's no memorable dialogue.
For the first half of the game,I thought the music for this game was only decent but in the second half of the game I heard a beautiful soundtrack when I was in the city of Greede and the music in the second half of the game suited the emotional situation of the story or was relaxing and peaceful when you came to the place with the grass and waterfall.
Overall,IMO WKC is a good/great game but not superb or memorable.It's story is interesting and creative and it's well presented,,it's gameplay can be fun if you like exploring towns and lots of sidequests and can appreciate it's online features but it's combat system takes a bit to get used to.