From left to right: Chelka, the Hundred Knight, Amalie
The Witch and the Hundred Knight 2 is an Action RPG for Nippon Ichi for the PlayStation 4. It was released in Japan in February 2017 and internationally a year later. It is the sequel to The Witch and the Hundred Knight.
The world of Kevala has been ravaged by a terrible disease known as the Witch Disease. Whenever women contract this disease, they gain a third eye on their forehead, immense magical abilities, and a lack of morality, using their powers to terrorize the countryside. When a young girl named Amalie finds out her sister Milm has the disease, she tries to join the anti-witch organization Weiss Ritter to find a cure. However, when Milm undergoes surgery to remove her third eye, her witch powers awaken, transforming her into the witch Chelka, who brings to life Milm's favorite Hundred Knight doll and vows to become the most powerful witch in the world. Now Amalie must find a way to rise in the ranks to find a cure for Milm while keeping Chelka out of trouble.
The player once again takes control of the Hundred Knight. The game is played from a top-down perspective and battles are fought in hack-and-slash style with some Roguelike elements mixed in. However, several changes have been made to the formula. The original game's stages have been replaced with a labyrinth-like overworld. As players progress through the game, different paths open up for those willing to explore. Many aspects of the original game, such as the Facets, have also been reworked and balanced.
This game provides examples of:
- Anti-Frustration Features: Nippon Ichi, having learned a lot from the previous game, reworked several aspects into the sequel.
- The Magic Dice system, which required players to have weapons be ordered in specific sequence to get bonus damage, has been removed. Bonus damage is now applied to each successive hit of a weapon combo automatically, removing the annoying RNG aspect of the previous system.
- Each Facet now has its own set of passive bonuses and special attacks that make use of the AP bar. This allows the AP bar to be used for more than just powerful versions of the standard attack and Witch Time and allows each Facet to be more unique.
- While specific items will give more EXP than others, any item in the player's inventory can be used to level up their weapons and armor. In the original game, weapons, outside of using them in battle, and armor could only be leveled up with Fool's Rocks.
- While the steps to devour an enemy are a little more complicated this time aroundnote , doing so no longer fills the stomach with garbage, preventing the Hundred Knight from losing precious stomach space.
- The map is no longer covered in the purple fog that quickly drained the Hundred Knight's stamina, which, combined with the somewhat less restrictive devouring mechanic, makes stamina management much more manageable.
- Art Evolution: Nippon Ichi have clearly learned a lot from the first game, which was their Video Game 3D Leap, and it shows. Characters models are more detailed and better animated and the colors are much more vibrant.
- Butt-Monkey: Amalie has some truly bad luck. Her sister is infected by the Witch Disease, turning her into the very unruly Chelka who makes life as hard as possible for her, and is not very respected within Weiss Ritter except by Gabrielle. A later reputation boost upon claiming to be the one to defeat Isabel actually makes things worse, as she ends up thrown into far more dangerous situations than she can handle, only being able to manage thanks to the Hundred Knight's aid.
- Canon Welding: Outside of the presence of a Hundred Knight, there seemed to be no connection to the first game. That changed with the ending when it was revealed that the original Kevala was destroyed by Niike, the destroyer god from the first game.
- Combination Attack: The Trick Screamer can summon two special Tochka teams: place an bomb-omb right on top of the taunting clown for a pipe bomb, or have the magical cannon fortress fire living bladed boomerangs instead.
- Corrupt Church: To be fair, the facts that Hexensyndrome causes a simultaneous eruption of insanity and magical power, and two witches are currently running around killing and/or brainwashing everyone they can get their hands on, means that the church has passed the Godzilla Threshold and will resort to slaughtering little girls with Hexensyndrome and making monsters just to keep up against demon-class entities, and make little effort in hiding these cruel practices. However, it quickly veers off into true corruption when Theodore gloats that he can't bring himself to care for mass-produced copies of an entire civilization that are reliving their last 333 years before everything explodes. In fact, nothing matters to him anymore because nothing he does will prevent the world from exploding and then resetting every 333 years. Even their souls don't matter to him because his tests have proven that attempting to preserve someone in the 'save slot' will just create yet another clone of the same person without damaging the 'original'. Therefore, he plans on usurping God to create a World of Silence, effectively halting everything ever.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Despite having much more experience and having easily defeated all those who faced her, Isabel is devastated when she get stomped by a mere manania like the Hundred Knight. She later gets stomped even harder by Chelka, who doesn't even break a sweat against Isabel. Ironically, Chelka ends up on the receiving end of this herself when she removes Isabel's eye, resulting in the witch transforming into a feral Venefica. At first she is eager to test her might against what she views as a worthy adversary, only for the transformed Isabel to shrug off everything she throws at her and easily revert her back into Milm.
- Eyes Do Not Belong There: Those infected with the Witch Disease possess a large third eye on their forehead. Once that eye opens, the infected transforms into a witch.
- Fantasy Counterpart Religion: The game blatantly follows Hinduism, using a number of Hindu things such as karma and the third eye, among many other things, with the villain taking on Shiva's role in destroying the world and creating it anew. At the end, however, biblical themes show up, such as the villain claiming he's God, not Shiva, the four archangels, and claiming that language itself is evil.
- Genius Loci: The entire planet is possessed by a clingy witch's spirit who will kill anyone that wants to leave.
- A Glitch in the Matrix: There is a network of caverns that technically should be in the witch's domain, but are effectively a blind spot despite the sheer wealth of mana accumulated there. This is how Theodore saved his progress past every reset, and ultimately where Chelka plots and stockpiles to kill the witch imprisoning her.
- Hello, [Insert Name Here]: Like the first game, the player can name the Hundred Knight whatever they want. This time, though, he comes with Hunny as a default name.
- Jekyll & Hyde: Milm and Chelka. Milm is sweet and innocent, but whenever she falls asleep, she awakens as the much nastier Chelka.
- Living Toys: Unlike the first game, the Hundred Knight was originally a doll that Amalie gave to Milm for good luck. Chelka animated the doll when she had manifested.
- Multiple Endings: As with the original, there's a True, Normal, and Bad ending. And also like the original, the "Bad" ending is the Golden Ending.
- Murder-Suicide: Amalie originally planned to end her own life after killing the witch her sister had become, until she learns that Milm's personality still lives.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The entire tragedy that takes place after Isabel is beaten and captured basically circles back to being Amalie's fault. She initially plans to report the capture of the weakened Isabel to her superiors, but Chelka convinces her to allow her to keep Isabel prisoner for some experiments, with the aim of it being to use her research to give herself a new body. Wanting to have Milm back, Amalie allows this and pretends to know nothing about Isabel's disappearance. However, not only does Chelka torture Isabel, she reveals that she never planned on leaving Milm's body at all. This leads to a series of events that has Chelka removing Isabel's eye at the WR headquarters, causing her to transform into a Venefica and go on a rampage. Not only is Milm endangered here once Venefica Isabel kidnaps her, but the poisons emitted from her new body cause numerous deaths as she makes her escape. Things only get worse for Amalie from here on out.
- Non-Linear Sequel: The game takes place in a completely different setting than the first game with none of the characters from the previous game returning except for a new Hundred Knight, who is a possessed doll instead of a bird-creature summoned into the world.
- Parental Abandonment: Amalie and Milm's parents were both killed by a witch three years before the game's beginning.
- Pint-Sized Powerhouse:
- The Hundred Knight, once again. He may be short and just freshly summoned, but he's able to take on many powerful and more experienced foes.
- Chelka. She has the body of a ten-year-old girl and a bratty attitude to match, but more experienced witches can barely keep up with her nearly limitless magic.
- Zophie: She may look young, but she carries her coffin-like mallet like it's nothing.
- Red Is Heroic: The Hundred Knight gets a nice red scarf this time around and is more willing to follow the much nicer Amalie than Chelka.
- Restraining Bolt: Every time Chelka hurts Amalie directly, Milm gains enough power to instinctively regain control.
- Save Scumming: The Avidya Caverns are an anomaly that manages to be preserved every time the world resets itself. Theodore, the first human to find these caves in each of his iterations, stored all his personal data and used it to further his research and set himself up as a prophet. Even weirder, he can preserve anything and anyone he wants, but the world will still create copies of beings who were preserved, making preservation of more than a few conspirators too risky.
- Shown Their Work: The overreaching plot features surprisingly detailed insight into a miniaturized version of the Hinduism gods and cycle of reincarnation, potential flaws and consequences when you add supernatural magic and witches into the mix, and an antithesis; how a Christian would react to realizing they live in a Hinduist world.
- Undying Loyalty: While the Hundred Knight was animated by Chelka and will follow her orders, he's ultimately loyal to Amalie and is willing to turn against Chelka if Amalie is in danger.
- With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Unfortunately, witches in this series are not misunderstood or persecuted; the overload of mana causes freshly awakened witches to go homicidally insane. Chelka in particular is relatively well-adjusted for an awakened witch, but she has split-personality disorder and blew up two hospitals. Even worse is their Venefica form; when an awakened witch's eye is damaged, they mutate into a feral monster with even more magical power that could destroy the world.
