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Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch
Ni No Kuni is currently on sale for $15 on the Nintendo store, and I’m trying to figure out something to say about it that isn’t just a variation on “it’s magical and delightful.”
It’s... probably a seventy-hour JRPG, I think? I’m about forty hours in; and, based on the strategy guide, I’m guessing that I’m probably about 3/5 of the way through the game. I didn’t care about the story at first, but now I’m invested. It’s clearly intended for kids around the same age as the game’s protagonist (who is maybe ten years old?), but I’m not worried about getting bored of the game before I finish it.
The world map is gorgeous and reminds me of playing Final Fantasy VII for the first time. The towns are intricately detailed and full of life. You can tell that Level 5 and Studio Ghibli put a lot of love and attention into designing the world.
Um, what else...?
The combat system is much more complicated to describe than it is to actually play. You have three characters who can move freely across the battlefield while executing commands. You control one, and the others are controlled by AI. The AI is unfortunately not that smart, but almost none of the battles are actually that hard. The classic JRPG strategy of “just be five levels over where you probably need to be” works perfectly every time.
Each of your three characters can equip three familiars, which you can catch in the wild and train like pokémon. You’ll use your familiars to fight, but there isn’t any pressing need to balance your team or do research into individual strengths or weaknesses or anything like that. There’s also no pressure to catch new familiars, or even any way to check your progress if “catching them all” is your goal. The familiars are cute and fun to play with, and there’s no drawback to just using the ones you like. You can also feed them adorable little snacks if you want to.
I say the battle system isn’t that complicated, but it actually took me about five hours of gameplay to understand anything beyond “attack by hitting the enemy with your stick.” The game originally came out in 2011; and, true to that era, it tries to explain everything to you with copious amounts of text. You have a companion who’s a little like Fi in Skyward Sword in that he’ll interrupt gameplay to explain mechanics you could easily have figured out for yourself. He eventually backs off, though, which makes it much easier to experiment and thereby figure out what you’re supposed to be doing.
I guess Ni No Kuni also reminds me of Final Fantasy XII in that you have to sit through about two hours of exposition and pointless tutorial missions before you can actually start playing the game. I won’t lie, it is horribly fucking tedious and you just kind of have to sit there and deal with it.
The cel-shaded graphics are amazing and have not aged a day. The animation is spectacular. In particular, the way that the mantle of your main character’s cape moves is a technological marvel. You really do feel as though you’re walking around in a Studio Ghibli movie, and it’s incredible. The voice acting is lovely. The translation is brilliant. The score by Joe Hisaishi is everything you’d hope it would be.
I’m not saying that everything has to have a fandom, but I really do wonder why this game is relatively unknown. There were precious few JRPGs on the PS3, which was odd after the immense popularity of JRPGs on the PS2, so you’d think a super high-quality game like Ni No Kuni would have stood out. Then again, I myself never managed to get into it back when it was on PS3, so my guess is that Ni No Kuni's nostalgic JRPG elements help it work much better as a pokémon-style portable game on Nintendo Switch.
It’s... probably a seventy-hour JRPG, I think? I’m about forty hours in; and, based on the strategy guide, I’m guessing that I’m probably about 3/5 of the way through the game. I didn’t care about the story at first, but now I’m invested. It’s clearly intended for kids around the same age as the game’s protagonist (who is maybe ten years old?), but I’m not worried about getting bored of the game before I finish it.
The world map is gorgeous and reminds me of playing Final Fantasy VII for the first time. The towns are intricately detailed and full of life. You can tell that Level 5 and Studio Ghibli put a lot of love and attention into designing the world.
Um, what else...?
The combat system is much more complicated to describe than it is to actually play. You have three characters who can move freely across the battlefield while executing commands. You control one, and the others are controlled by AI. The AI is unfortunately not that smart, but almost none of the battles are actually that hard. The classic JRPG strategy of “just be five levels over where you probably need to be” works perfectly every time.
Each of your three characters can equip three familiars, which you can catch in the wild and train like pokémon. You’ll use your familiars to fight, but there isn’t any pressing need to balance your team or do research into individual strengths or weaknesses or anything like that. There’s also no pressure to catch new familiars, or even any way to check your progress if “catching them all” is your goal. The familiars are cute and fun to play with, and there’s no drawback to just using the ones you like. You can also feed them adorable little snacks if you want to.
I say the battle system isn’t that complicated, but it actually took me about five hours of gameplay to understand anything beyond “attack by hitting the enemy with your stick.” The game originally came out in 2011; and, true to that era, it tries to explain everything to you with copious amounts of text. You have a companion who’s a little like Fi in Skyward Sword in that he’ll interrupt gameplay to explain mechanics you could easily have figured out for yourself. He eventually backs off, though, which makes it much easier to experiment and thereby figure out what you’re supposed to be doing.
I guess Ni No Kuni also reminds me of Final Fantasy XII in that you have to sit through about two hours of exposition and pointless tutorial missions before you can actually start playing the game. I won’t lie, it is horribly fucking tedious and you just kind of have to sit there and deal with it.
The cel-shaded graphics are amazing and have not aged a day. The animation is spectacular. In particular, the way that the mantle of your main character’s cape moves is a technological marvel. You really do feel as though you’re walking around in a Studio Ghibli movie, and it’s incredible. The voice acting is lovely. The translation is brilliant. The score by Joe Hisaishi is everything you’d hope it would be.
I’m not saying that everything has to have a fandom, but I really do wonder why this game is relatively unknown. There were precious few JRPGs on the PS3, which was odd after the immense popularity of JRPGs on the PS2, so you’d think a super high-quality game like Ni No Kuni would have stood out. Then again, I myself never managed to get into it back when it was on PS3, so my guess is that Ni No Kuni's nostalgic JRPG elements help it work much better as a pokémon-style portable game on Nintendo Switch.