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Ni No Kuni Review is here! ITS GOOD NEWS!



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0
 02.13.2013 7:28pm


Seelas
I want to go back.



I'm nearing what appears to be the end of the game, and unfortunately the luster has worn off in a pretty bad way. I was quite smitten with it toward the beginning, and the art and soundtrack continued to impress all the way through. But this game really doesn't come together to form a satisfying package. Without spoiling too much of the story, I think "trainwreck" would be an adequate way to describe it, as it
Spoiler: Move your mouse over the container to reveal.
spends about 30 hours sending me on mundane, gamey gated objectives and then condenses the payoff of Shadar, the White Witch, and the Nazcaan civilization into the last two hours - in the form of magical expository flowers, no less
. The premise is endearing but the game really doesn't know what to do with it. And it didn't help that it took every possible opportunity to pad the game length by making some key character brokenhearted, or
Spoiler: Move your mouse over the container to reveal.
possessed by a Nightmare.
Every character and story arc was just buckling under the weight of Level-5's obsessively fetch-questy game design.

I also have to say that this a pretty bad implementation of the Pokemon system. Partly I'm just not a fan of real-time RPGs; you lose so much control and tactical viability by moving away from a turn-based system and I'm not sure what you gain. Wrestling with my party members to do what I wanted was a full-time job; I'd constantly go into All-Out Attack and see Esther sending her psyduck to whack the enemy for 1 damage a turn when she had a much harder-hitting familiar waiting in the wings. Targeting also seemed wacky; it seems like I can't switch targets after selecting them for the first time unless I also switch familiars first? And there are a number of glaring UI issues that hindered me constantly. Why doesn't the party menu display my allies' MP by default? It shouldn't be such a chore to know whether I can expect to have heals coming my way, and I wiped on bosses a few times simply because I didn't realize my teammates were OOM and couldn't back me up. And why can't I switch directly to an ally's familiar, instead of first switching to the ally, and then switching to their familiar?

The leveling curve was also really not transparent at all, since evolving your familiars set them back to level 1. I'm not sure why this was necessary. Pokemon Blue did a more straightforward successful implementation of this almost 15 years ago. I definitely hit a hard cap where I evolved too many of my familiars at once and just couldn't progress past the next boss until I spent some time grinding.

It's weird. I assumed that I would love this game, because all of the negative reviews seemed to just be based on the boring observation that it was a JRPG. I love JRPGs; I replayed friggin Xenogears just this year and still had a blast, and that's about as regressive as they come. But I think this game falls pretty flat even as JRPGs go. They were telling better, more coherent stories back in the 20th century, and they played better as well. I appreciate the level of artistic polish Studio Ghibli gave it, but it was pretty clear where their influence stopped.




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0
 02.14.2013 8:35am


Feanor
Dominator



Seelas said:

I'd constantly go into All-Out Attack and see Esther sending her psyduck to whack the enemy for 1 damage a turn when she had a much harder-hitting familiar waiting in the wings. Targeting also seemed wacky; it seems like I can't switch targets after selecting them for the first time unless I also switch familiars first? And there are a number of glaring UI issues that hindered me constantly. Why doesn't the party menu display my allies' MP by default? It shouldn't be such a chore to know whether I can expect to have heals coming my way, and I wiped on bosses a few times simply because I didn't realize my teammates were OOM and couldn't back me up. And why can't I switch directly to an ally's familiar, instead of first switching to the ally, and then switching to their familiar?

Yeah, I've noted all these issues too. I do wish you could prescribe more detailed tactics to your allies as well, in a Tales sort of way.

On the Pokemon front, I'm also not sure there are enough unique / worthwhile Familiar abilities to really make many of the creatures viable in battle. In Pokemon abilities, hard-hitting status effects, particular type weaknesses, all made many Pokemon useful in battle if levelled and used correctly. In Ni no Kuni it feels like only 1/5 Familiars are useful. I love the designs but I'm starting to think there's little point in trying to capture many creatures because, actually, they're not useful and I don't have the time right now to be a total completionist.

Having said all that, I do still love this game. It's sneaky, but I feel like I forgive Ni no Kuni a lot just because it looks and feels so kiddy. If it were all grimdark in style I think I'd be cursing all the fetch quests and repetitive entry level stuff that goes on here. But as it is.... I'm still pretty smitten; for now anyway.




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0
 02.25.2013 7:03pm
 (Edited on 02.28.2013 at 2:26am)

Spidey
So Sigh Ety



Just started the game. I got my first familiar and am about to enter the castle. AMAZING WORLD, great story, really absorbs you right in!

Maybe I missed something easy, but is there a way to both walk and change the menu at the same time, or does this game suffer from kingdom hearts syndrome where you have to physically let go of the control stick and move to the dpad to change the menu? I already died twice because i had to stop moving when I had to cast a healing spell...




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0
 03.04.2013 1:03am


Zubis
Registered Member



Gotta say I'm in agreement with Seelas. I'm just after beating the game after putting 65 hours into it, and the luster did wear off. It's a great game; I've put more time into it than almost any other RPG in the last 5 or 6 years, but ultimately I do feel it's a little over-rated.

The good

  • An exceptionally beautiful looking game and world. I think I spent hours just flying around the world later on in the game, it's that beautiful. I've long been an opponent of world maps, but I realise now that my dislike of them had to do with their quality. Ni No's has the best I've ever seen.
  • Excellent voice acting. Drippy's my bro.

The bad

  • Endless menus. Trying to go from a) the Item menu to b) the Main battle menu to c) hitting Defend in the one second warning you get from certain boss moves is frankly bullshit. All Out Defense does help later on in the game, but it's not perfect.
  • The AI is a little poor, mainly when your AI characters run out of MP. They can't top themselves up with items automatically, which by itself isn't too bad, but see my next point.
  • Poorly implemented UI. For one, why the hell can't you see your party's MP? Every time I want to see if my healer is out of MP I have to switch to that character. Another issue is that your world map doesn't list the names of some locations, so trying to find "The Spinet" or other areas can take ages.
  • The rock-paper-scissors combat aspects are utterly useless. It takes far less energy to just level up for a half hour and plough through bosses then it does to think about if Star enemies are weak to Planet etc.
  • The plot is a little rushed and ham-fisted near the end. I enjoyed it though; it reminded me a great deal of Skies of Arcadia near the end.


Overall I recommend it, but don't go into it thinking this will change JRPGs for the next 10 years.




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