The Witch and the Hundred Knight

It's always difficult to rate niche games like The Witch and the Hundred Knight, and this one moreso because it takes a certain degree of patience to mentally work into the game before it becomes enjoyable as a twist on a dark fairy tale. But I enjoyed myself and found the combat engaging enough to be confident that niche JRPG fans will get a kick out of it.

The Witch and the Hundred Knight is a great buy for fans of top-down J-RPG’s.

An authentic JRPG full of charm, unique characters and well crafted gameplay mechanics. A bit odd, too.

This is a great example of what NIS can do focusing a little bit more on action. It is, indeed, a good game, even though we think there's some aspect that need polishing or further development.

Pleasantly absorbing. [Issue#243, p.62]

As far as hack and slash titles go, The Witch and the Hundred Knight makes a horrible first impression – the story presentation is vulgar and the gameplay is initially lacking. But it’s a game that truly builds and builds into a freakishly beautiful abomination, should you give it enough time.

The vile, scheming, cursing Metallia might be too intense a main character for some, and the combat is more serviceable than outstanding, but Nippon Ichi fans who’ve felt a lack of innovation in some of the twisted Japanese developer’s more recent fare should find a refreshing change of pace here.

It lacks focus, and rather than building upon itself, it's something that only the most dedicated players can appreciate.

An interesting experiment, but it lacks balancing and up-to-date graphics.

The Witch and the Hundred Knight is a good take on the action RPG genre but the narrative goes too far just for the sake of shocking players and ends up being too invasive, strangling down a gameplay with too many features to take care of.

The designers decided that convoluted RPG mechanics and 40 hours of artificially bloated content is what the action RPG genre needs. [05/2014, p.68]

The Witch & The Hundred Knight is one of a kind, it's a title which tries to do something different in the very tight and narrow hack'n slash style. Nippon Ichi has made the choice of an hybrid gameplay, more tactical than you think and it can be a true strength. But the lack of rhythm in the narration and a very annoying camera, among other faults, make it just a little more than average.

Somewhere in between there's a really good game hidden away. It's just a shame that it only showed itself ever so often, only to vanish again for hours.

With multiple endings and a list of items and weapons that would even make Disgaea veterans raise their eyebrows, there is a lot of content to experience here. However, while the story and characters succeed in drawing the player into the world, the game play does very little to keep them there.

Funny and with some nice character design, but there's not enough interesting gameplay to support the nice visuals and the humour.

There are a lot of interesting gameplay ideas to experiment with, which makes the fact that so many of them are barely explained in-game incredibly frustrating.

If you enjoy crazy stories that constantly top themselves and deep action-RPG conventions that others find frustrating, you'll enjoy The Witch and the Hundred Knight. But with a lot of small adjustments, it really could have been a great gateway into the world of complicated isometric titles.

Nothing more and nothing less than an ordinary jrpg. Really far, in terms of quality and fun, from the latest games created by Nippon Ichi.

It’s hard to fully recommend a game when so much of it is waved aside with “you’ll get used to it,” but once you fall into The Witch and the Hundred Knight‘s peculiar tempo, it’s not a bad way to dominate the world.

Ordinary. That is pretty much the best way to describe this, it isn’t a bad game, but neither is it one that will live with you, you will play it, have moments of enjoyment and moments of annoyance, then at the end of the day, you will forget about it. It could have been so much more, but it just isn’t going to make any new fans of the genre, that is for certain.

A promising effort, delivering an engaging gameplay experience and an expansive world. While it's hampered by overlong cutscenes and bland characters, it will satisfy fans of the genre, and maybe make a few more.

The Witch and the Hundred Knight has a concept that I dig: an action RPG layered high with the extra nuances the folks at NIS are known for. Sadly, very few of this puzzle’s many pieces are terribly well crafted, and they never truly fit together.

Hardcore NIS fans are going to pick up The Witch and the Hundred Knight anyway, but everyone else would do well to keep their distance.

It's ironic that we get such a lengthy tutorial to start, and then we still have dozens of questions as the game progresses. Then you've got a horrid main character, only mildly intriguing combat mechanics (which could've been very intriguing had they been correctly described and implemented), and a story that, despite its merits, remains juvenile.

It's never enough to help you forget the game's warts. [June 2014, p.85]

There’s a good amount of content (around thirty to forty hours at least) to The Witch and the Hundred Knight – it’s just a shame that it never really comes together.

It's bursting with ideas, but it doesn't really know what to do with them — and for that reason, unless you really like reading and switching weapons, it's probably not worth your time.

Look past the faults and you may find some fun, but you’ll need patience to get there.

The dark, twisted story is something that has a lot of potential, and the music is great. However, odd design choices like obscuring the action and cluttered menus that don’t mesh together well, along with pretty uninteresting characters makes it hard to do so.

A hardcore NIS experience for only the hardcore fan. Bad story pacing and tedious combat make this a bore for the laymen fan who is not already drawn in by NIS's humor and charm.

If any one element of The Witch and The Hundred Knight had been truly great, you could look over some of its warts, but without any strong focus its just a bog standard action RPG that's artificially attempted to be made interesting with tons of superfluous gameplay mechanics tacked on.

The game is still fluid enough to keep my attention and the NISA writing charm hasn’t yet worn off. It’s not as solid as their tactical stuff, but for a discounted price it’s worth a look. Helping this bitchy witch get some unjustified payback is still a great way to let off some steam.

The Witch and the Hundred Knight saves its fun elements until long after the opening. By then you'll probably be long done with this game, which tells a semi-acceptable story extremely badly and regularly frustrates with its gameplay.

The game is an ambitious experiment in fusing two close genres, but instead of creating some ferocious chimera of an RPG, all Nippon Ichi has succeeded in doing is spawning a sad Frankenstein of a game that doesn’t belong here or there.

Metallia's antics coupled with the dull gameplay was just too much to take. Even if it does get better later on, the hours I sunk into the game's unsatisfying mechanics and nasty storyline left me cold. NIS has many good titles in their library, but this isn't one of them.

From a player's perspective, feels sadly misjudged. [Issue#147, p.123]

In the end, The Witch and the Hundred Knight is a failed experiment made more noticeable due to its heartlessly joyless story.

The terrible characters and pointless events are likely going to sour the mood for many players.

This game is muddled systemically and its storyline is generally offensive to humanity.

This is entertainment of the tawdriest variety, and while a game has no obligation to be significant, it'd be nice if it wasn't so mindless.

It’s great to see the creators of Disgaea trying something new but this charmless, needlessly confusing, action role-player is a failure on almost every level.

It's hard to imagine just what the developers were thinking when creating The Witch and the Hundred Knight. Metallia is so immediately distasteful that most players will be turned off in the first hour, and players who stick it out longer will likely grow bored and annoyed.