@shuyin: I wouldn’t say more style then allcurrent gen combined but it is deffenitely awesome.

My bet is this will be the next RPG of the year.

Indeed, I was referring to both the character design and the art design overall.
I don’t think the game is necessarily imitative. But the concept artist clearly drew a lot of inspiration from Final Fantasy and other medieval fantasy games.

It’s not an “ugly” game, and there are certainly a few interesting concepts (the turtle city *is* pretty cool). But compare the look of this game to something like Valkyria Chronicles or Okami and you’ll understand what I mean. Compared to those games, White Knight looks flat, derivative, and plain. As an older gamer, I just don’t have the time or patience anymore for games that don’t impress me on all fronts–especially aesthetics.

The transforming main character happens a lot more in anime than in video games — I can only think of a few RPGs where the main characters have a built in god mode (here’s to you, KnightBlazer!).

If you meant character design, i agree. The characters are the typical japanese anime-inspired characters. They have no traits of a specific design style, like Nomura characters, Akira Toryiama charaters etc.

However, if you meant art direction, and that’s what i think you meant, you’re clearly mistaken. How can you say it has no visual flair or personality? The city on the back of the giant turtle alone, has more style and personality than all other current-gen released games combined.

@aesquire

Well, you´re the first one that I see that claims that… The style seems medieval-inspired like many other games (definitely not like FF XIII, which has a futuristic setting), but I think it has enough style on its own to differenciate from others.

It´s also very different from the “washed out” (less bright) and different design style (characters-wise mostly) look of Lost Oddysey and it has a more traditional look than Infinite Undiscovery (more medieval). And I can´t recall any other JRPG that had the main character turning into a big knight… But well, this is just my opinion of course.

By the way, I don´t think that Laexerias called you a b*tch… Unless I´m mistaken, he used it as an expression to comment on the look of the game. If he had refered to you, he would have wrote it after your nickname (or not writing your nickname at all).