The Witch and the Hundred Knight: Revival Edition, is an action JRPG originally for the PlayStation 3. It was ported to the PlayStation 4 with higher resolution (1080p vs 720p), improved frame-rate, a new dungeon and most importantly, the removal of a game-breaking bug that would cause the game to randomly crash without warning. The most unique aspect of the game has to be the storytelling. The game isn’t shy of making fun of using course language, or mimicking the typical idealistic stories of JRPGs. It breaks the fourth wall and carries with it a lot of humor and charm. Thus it will often have unexpected events that’ll pleasantly surprise you. Although some of its humor misses the mark and can be somewhat offensive.
The gameplay is a hack and slash from a top down perspective, similar to Diablo. However, there is only one attack button but you can equip up to five weapons to chain together a five-hit combo. Different weapons have different ranges and speed, with enemies being resistant or weak to certain ones. You can using the triggers to pre-organised weapon sets on the fly in order to adapt to enemy weaknesses.
The vast majority of the new, more powerful, equipment are gained through defeating enemies or from chests in the dungeons. Organizing weapons within a set in a specific order will provide damage bonuses up to 2x the damage output. The Hundred Knight is also able to dodge. Dodging at the last moment allows time to slow down and the Knight to whack the enemy to oblivion. There’s a button for special attacks, shielding to reduce damage, and uniquely, using the touch-pad to use items or summon tohkas to assist you.
While exploring, there is a GigaCals meter. If the meter runs out, your health will rapidly decrease and once you die, you’ll randomly lose an item that you had found as well as losing experience points. Thus every dungeon is on a timer and is a balancing act. When you explore new areas, the meter drops faster, but if you have already explored that part of the map, its decrements are slower. Spread through each dungeon is checkpoints, known as Pillars, which doubles as fast travel points within the dungeon. It allows you to also apply bonuses or safely warp out of the dungeon whilst keeping all the items and experience that you have found.
Defeating the enemies roaming the dungeons will net you experience points that are only applied upon exiting the dungeon. Thus, it might be better to leave and level up before tackling the dungeon boss, especially since you cannot save in a dungeon (which made the PS3 version’s bug all the more brutal). The Hundred Knight has a stamina bar that is used when attack, dashing, dodging, or recovering health. You will need to watch out because if the bar depletes, then the Hundred Knight will become unusable for a short period of time.
Tying into defeating enemies are grade points which gives you varying levels of rewards. There are a total of ten tiers each time you enter a dungeon. All of these systems linked to dungeon exploring leads to an addictive cycle of dungeon crawling, getting better loot, equip said loot, then return to dungeon crawling. The story is told in a visual novel style, with English or Japanese voice-overs. It follows the Swamp Witch, Metallia. She summons the legendary Hundred Knight, who is supposed to be the most powerful familiar in existence. Despite its small stature and weak look, it is actually quite strong and during the period that the player controls the Hundred Knight, they will decimate everything before them.
The story has Metallia trying to expand the territory of her swamp. She cannot survive outside of her swap and so gets Hundred Knight to reveal pillars in the world to extend her territory. There are other witches in the world too which are more of your typical “good” witch, although no one is as they appear. A lot of characters are unlikable in the beginning, including Metallia. However, Metallia undergoes significant amounts of character development over the course of the game. She goes from an uncaring ungrateful person to someone with hidden depths, especially once her background comes to light. She keeps her foul mouth though.
The story unfortunately meanders a lot. The game takes around 50-60 hours to complete and over the course of it, there are too many distractions. From finding a particular object to heal someone to exploring another piece of the land, the ultimate objective always changes. There are a lot of scenes that you feel are not essential and serves to confuse thing furthers. There are three endings and two of them aren’t that great as they end too abruptly. The true ending is difficult in terms of difficulty spikes but is a solid ending that emphasizes the relationships between the characters.
While the game is fun in the beginning, eventually the maps get too big and boring. It takes an hour or so to complete 100% of each new map and there just isn’t enough to do to make that worthwhile. This ends up making the game have vast stretches of little story before you get a meatier cutscene. The other thing is the pointless difficulty spikes. The game puts one in during the second chapter. While it is not a massive one, it forces you to learn the system and try not to smash your way through. You’ll have to bait enemies and organize your weapon sets to properly target an enemy’s weakness. The worst difficulty spike comes in if you want to go for the true ending and it serves nothing but drag the game on and on.
Bosses become harder and cheaper by the halfway point of the game, to the point where it ends up being unfun. When the bosses do not leave an opening, or become cheap with constant attacks or ranged attacks, it drags the whole battle where you can only kite them. You can grind if you want or you can fall back on cheesing the boss with the super move of the Hundred Knight. Either way, it’s not great design. These boss battles also exacerbate the poor camera angles.
The Tower of Illusion is the additional dungeon added to the PS4 version. The tower boasts 200 floors but each floor is comprised of one to three floors so it can be very tedious to go through in on ego. It’s not only a place to grind and defeat enemies, it is a side story, using characters fro a parallel world. You can play it in tandem with the main story and it is actually a great place to grind and level, which helps reduce the monotony of the notorious difficulty spikes in the later chapters.
Overall, if you are interested in the game, then The Witch and the Hundred Knight: Revival Edition is the version to get. The removal of the crashing bug alone makes it more desirable. In terms of the game itself, it is a decent game. There are plenty of times where you’ll find yourself thinking that the game is dragging things out way too much but it ends up being a rewarding time and on the whole, it was enjoyable and fun.
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