Level-5 Wants to Surpass White Knight Series

White Knight Chronicles developer Level-5 announced that is has been working on a PlayStation 4 game for some time. The tease came from Level-5 president Akihiro Hino who also said that it will be fully revealed at E3 2015. Level-5 is a popular developer of JRPGs, whose most recent output has been Yo-Kai Watch for Nintendo 3DS which has seen immense success. The developer has also created various cult classics such as Dark Cloud, Dark Cloud II, Professor Layton, and Ni No Kuni. Less well known is its White Knight Chronicles series, which had mixed reception throughout the series. White Knight Chronicles and White Knight Chronicles II were released exclusively on the PlayStation 3, with a prequel on PSP that never got localized for North America. The PSP title was also developed by Matrix Software, who worked on Final Fantasy III for the Nintendo DS.

It was actually during a White Knight Chronicles live stream that this small announcement was made. Hino commented that he desired to create a game that surpasses the White Knight Chronicles series. This is puzzling since he was involved in Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch, a PlayStation 3 game that was universally praised. White Knight Chronicles never got universal praise and didn’t sell millions of copies either, so it is surprising that Hino feels as if he needs to create something that surpasses it. White Knight Chronicles II will be available for free for Japanese PlayStation PLus subscribers, although the online functionality was shut down on June 13, 2013.

Currently Level 5 is working on Wonder Flick, a chibi style JRPG for PS4, PS3, Vita, Xbox One, Wii U, and Android. The game boasts the ability to have the console version interact with a smartphone, although this appears only to be for the PlayStation 4 version. Speculation is that they could be bringing back an old IP, such as Rogue Galaxy.