Disc arrived today. The cover is nice. The White Knight from the first game is placed further towards the back, which meshes much better with the WKCII header, as well as the incredible amount of other stuff on the box. We now have.. Two ps3 only logos. One Sony logo, a blu-ray, and two psn blurbs, as well as the PEGI/ESRB rating.
The Knight's cape has seen some wear since the last time.
Other than that, it's the normal "ps3 exclusive" method for install. It's about 5Gb, takes some 10 minutes to complete, in absolute silence.
On the title-screen, a traditional instrument of indeterminable geographical origin plays a slow tune. And that's probably the only place other than the title screen I'm going to escape the English voice-over, since it's only an instrumental.
Other than that - it's not.. entirely easy to pick out what sort of influences we really have here. The music is some sort of mish-mash between Christian chorals, medieval european music and the Japanese re-imagining of traditional folk-music with fuzz-guitar and electrical flute. They don't end up in Kitaro-land, and I can't really explain what it is. It is not "generic JRPG sound", even though it's far too cute and colourful to be anything else.
That's basically all I have to say about the art-direction and the setting as well.
When you start a new game, you're allowed through the character-customisation, where you choose between approximately 600 variants of gay wood-elves and underage anime girls. Then you can add facial moles, different angles to the eyes, different squint on each eye, etc.
I end up with a variant of the main character in Shenmue. I try again, and end up with another variant of the main character in Shenmue. Hmm.. I'm adding some hair and a beard to get closer to a Wolverine wannabe. It almost works, but when you begin the game, they've put you in some cotton coat that reach you to the knees. And you're called "the new guy". Wolverine looks pissed, which is his default expression.
The same templates and character designs are used for everyone else in the world as well, in the real-time cutscenes. But it doesn't look half bad. Hand-animation does work best for fantasy-animals and exaggerated sword-slashes, though, so we'll see.
For now, I'm starting a new game where the first game begins. Which is in Balandor, and I'm fetching something for the angry but very, very tiny Orc you work for. We're about to make our entrance in the royal court, and we are going to make a good impression when we do.
On our way out of town, a monk with a mean eye stares at our crazy outfits like it's heralding the beginning of a grand prophecy or something.
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