White Knight Chronicles (PlayStation 3)

White Knight Chronicles gets a lot of things right. The environments are beautiful and lush, and the combat that takes place within them is intuitive and fun. Plus, growing character abilities, learning new skills, and applying them in combat is a snap -- much easier than in many other Japanese role-playing games. And the concept behind online play is solid; it takes the massively multiplayer online role-playing game notion that questing with several friends can be fun and makes it an option should players grow tired of going it alone.

Unfortunately, it also gets a number of things wrong. Though entertaining at first, the combat eventually grows repetitive, in large part because few of your enemies put up much of a fight. There’s rarely a feeling of risk; mowing them down becomes monotonous. And the dungeons, while usually easy on the eyes, can prove too big, making finding your way out an exercise in frustration. Last, online play could have been better integrated. It feels tacked on, as though it has no bearing on the rest of the game. Pity, since it could have played a major role.

Online interaction: When playing online in groups of two to four, players can enter pre-set text messages, create their own text messages, or use voice chat to communicate with their human allies. This opens to the door to potentially unsuitable language and the sharing of personal information. Common Sense Media does not recommends online play for pre-teens.