Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls! It’s me, The Great Doodini (aka David) from NIS America, and I’d like to perform a magic trick — I mean illusion — for you! For my first act, I’ll pull a Prinny from this hat! Oh wait, it looks like this one’s exploded already… Looks like that’s the end of that act.
Well, no worries, because I know someone who’s a lot more magical than I am, and today’s your lucky day because you get to hang out with her. Her name’s Metallia, and she puts the “witch” in The Witch and the Hundred Knight on PS3, which is out today at retail and as a digital download from PlayStation Store. This is NIS America’s first 3D action RPG, so I’m pretty pumped to tell you all about it!
In The Witch and the Hundred Knight, you play as the legendary Hundred Knight — a demon summoned by the swamp witch Metallia to help her spread all her neon green, swampy badness across the land. Why does she want that? Because even though Metallia’s a witchy woman with a lot of power, she somehow can’t travel beyond the edges of the noxious swamp she calls home. It’s up to you to help her take vengeance on the world, but the more you get to know her, the less of a good idea it seems…
All this vengeance-taking is predicated on you laying down the hammer, and the sword, and the spear… and a bunch of other weapons on any enemy that dares stand in your way. The Hundred Knight may be small, but he packs quite a punch when he can equip up to five different weapons at a time.
Certain enemies may have different immunities and weaknesses, so it’s best to diversify your weapons profile to maximize your damage. Plus, if you combine them in a certain order, you can get damage multipliers. On top of that, you’ve got Tochkas, which are the Hundred Knight’s own special magic skills. He can summon minions of his own, create traps, and perform a plethora of other dark magic to beat down enemies. And if that wasn’t enough, the Hundred Knight can switch between other “facets” at will. These act as classes. The Power Fortress facet, for example, acts as a tank, while the Noble Raptor can convert enemies into allies. Looks like the Hundred Knight has got a lot more up his demon sleeve than me and my exploding Prinny in a hat trick…
These are only some of the systems in the game — I haven’t even touched on Gigacals, which is the energy you need to do anything. The more running and fighting you do in a level, the more you burn through your Gigacals. You can recover Gigacals by eating food you find or getting an enemy’s health low enough and chomping down on them.
There’s also the ability to raid village houses for items and boosts, but then you risk having the villagers turn against you forever. And it wouldn’t be an NIS America game if you couldn’t enhance your weapons in the Bucket List!
What do you say, folks? Why not give a hand to Metallia and her assistant The Hundred Knight? You’ve seen the customizable weapon combos, magic skills, personality changes, and all sorts of systems. You ought to stick around and see what else they’ve got in store for you in this wickedly dark action RPG. Follow them down to the swamps and see what kind of show they’ve got for you! Metallia says it won’t hurt too much…
