What the hell has happened to Level 5?

Gah, sorry about only posting once last week, I've been working a ton and it's kind of left my creative batteries drained. I should be able to post 3 times this week, I'll see if I can do more to pick up the slack. Anyways, this is something I've been thinking about for a little while now, but Level 5 seems to be yet another great company that thrived in the PS2 era and inexplicably has pretty much lost it's magic in the PS3 era. I mean seriously, in the PS2 era, they were rpg superstars, they made several of my favorite rpgs on that system-Dark Cloud 2 (the original was decent enough, but 2 was a massive improvement), Dragon Quest VII (my favorite in the whole series) and Rogue Galaxy, which is one of my my favorite rpgs of all time (I should probably do that list sometime, maybe later this week if I can). Not to mention a little puzzle series on the DS called Professor Layton which is generally considered one of its best franchises.

So it was no wonder when the PS3 was about to launch, one of the most hotly anticipated titles was White Knight Chronicles from Level 5. It looked epic, with you being able to turn into a giant knight in order to fight giant demons. Of course, aside from the fact that it took freaking forever to actually come out (you were seeing footage of this game before the PS3 actually launched, it finally came out in North America just last year), it was pretty mediocre. Ok, no huge deal, Dark Cloud was fairly mediocre IMHO, but 2 was a massive improvement and remains a favorite to this day, they should have no issue making a decent sequel right? Well no as it turns out. White Knight Chronicles II was released earlier this month and the reviews are just as bad if not worse than for the first one. I've said several times this year that we seem to have a serious lack of solid console rpgs so for a great rpg company like this to be making big missteps is worrying. Granted, maybe all they need to do is realize that the whole concept isn't working, just drop it and move on to the next thing. Hopefully they have not lost their touch, because their next game due out here is a collaboration between themselves and the legendary Studio Ghibli.



No obviously the game looks incredible, and is already getting praise like "the most beautiful game I've ever played" thrown at it. So hopefully this is Level 5 getting their act together, because I don't think I will take it very well if a collaboration between these two awesome studios doesn't turn out well.

-Ok that's it for today, I should definitely be posting again tomorrow with thoughts on X-Men: Destiny (probably not a review, but Wednesday is a possibility for that). Until then, here's your TRAILER OF THE WEEK: Man on a Ledge