Ni No Kuni is a breath of fresh air in a shrinking market, with its wonderful graphics, awesome music and interest setting. That is not to say that the game doesn't have its share of flaws but lets dive in.
Characters: I personally did not care too much for the main Character Oliver because he gave me the feeling that solutions of most problems fell in his lap and he didn't really need to try to hard to succeed. A lot of people liked Oliver seeing him as a new approach of a main character but this kind of thing has been seen before(Harry potter). For myself Mr. Drippy, Lord High Lord of the Fairies was the soul of the game, he made me laugh and helped push the story forward and explains everything.
Music/sounds: The music of the game is wonderful, fully orchestrated. One of my favourites is "Fairy godmother" which gives me fond memories of anime like Azumanga Daioh and "Taking to the Skies" with its marching / flying feeling.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROfsPQAJW2Q&list=PLPKu-RAa2p_Jae1M3QdR12rE6METW3ZWI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-C2qbhCYgA&list=PLPKu-RAa2p_Jae1M3QdR12rE6METW3ZWI
Aesthetic / Graphics: The game gained art direction by Studio Ghibli & Level 5 and it shows though in the game, everything is so vibrant and wonderfully designed which reminded me a lot of Dragon Quest 8.
Battle System: Now here is where things start going wrong, the major problem of the game is that the AI is terrible. The game forces you to micromanage everything from healing, defending, and offence where often at times either your AI will try to blow though all their mana, just sit there instead of doing anything while often running down their familiars time so they are unusable.
Later in the game you get the option to "All Defend" and "All Attack" which tells your people to block, I think this comes pretty late in the game and could have been useful prior. It is pretty silly that the AI can't defend on their own while there is also no quick way to defend yourself. Often you have to take damage because pushing Square(all defend), O (cancel), left (hover over defend) and X (select) takes longer than the charge time of some boss skills.
I believe the game would of done a lot better being a turn based RPG, the game builds a lot on the mass amount of familiars, element and signs (sun, moon, planet etc) but they never really get much use out of them because often the best team for any situation is a large amount of defence and physical offence where you bash in the enemy taking as little damage as possible while not wasting MP. Another good change could have been would to scale familiar stats to the character's stats which would mean that lower level familiars would not be totally useless.
Story: The story for the most part is pretty linear but after obtaining the ship lets you adventure a bit. Without trying to give away too much most of the story focuses on defeating Shadar, the Dark Djinn which ends up having some nice plot twist but looking at the front cover of the box it says "Wrath of the white witch" which means that the witch should be the main antagonist but her story is never really fully fleshed out and even worse is just tossed at you in the last hour or so of the game.
The story does have its share of plot holes that just doesn't make much sense and the only way to get past some of it is just say "it's a game" but I think a few things in the story could have been a lot better done especially how well they designed the starting of the game.
The game is pretty slow at introducing stuff which is not too bad for the story component but for game-play component I think should have been given sooner such as the ability to capture familiars, being able to fast travel, the fourth party member and the All out command to name a few.
Overall I think the game is pretty good but it has its faults, I enjoyed playing it though but now that I am at the end I am a bit let down mostly due to the tacked on addition to the white witch story but I think my overall experience with the game was positive. If you enjoy fast pace battles, grinding, beautiful environments and some great music, I would suggest that you pick this up.
Characters: I personally did not care too much for the main Character Oliver because he gave me the feeling that solutions of most problems fell in his lap and he didn't really need to try to hard to succeed. A lot of people liked Oliver seeing him as a new approach of a main character but this kind of thing has been seen before(Harry potter). For myself Mr. Drippy, Lord High Lord of the Fairies was the soul of the game, he made me laugh and helped push the story forward and explains everything.
Music/sounds: The music of the game is wonderful, fully orchestrated. One of my favourites is "Fairy godmother" which gives me fond memories of anime like Azumanga Daioh and "Taking to the Skies" with its marching / flying feeling.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROfsPQAJW2Q&list=PLPKu-RAa2p_Jae1M3QdR12rE6METW3ZWI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-C2qbhCYgA&list=PLPKu-RAa2p_Jae1M3QdR12rE6METW3ZWI
Aesthetic / Graphics: The game gained art direction by Studio Ghibli & Level 5 and it shows though in the game, everything is so vibrant and wonderfully designed which reminded me a lot of Dragon Quest 8.
Battle System: Now here is where things start going wrong, the major problem of the game is that the AI is terrible. The game forces you to micromanage everything from healing, defending, and offence where often at times either your AI will try to blow though all their mana, just sit there instead of doing anything while often running down their familiars time so they are unusable.
Later in the game you get the option to "All Defend" and "All Attack" which tells your people to block, I think this comes pretty late in the game and could have been useful prior. It is pretty silly that the AI can't defend on their own while there is also no quick way to defend yourself. Often you have to take damage because pushing Square(all defend), O (cancel), left (hover over defend) and X (select) takes longer than the charge time of some boss skills.
I believe the game would of done a lot better being a turn based RPG, the game builds a lot on the mass amount of familiars, element and signs (sun, moon, planet etc) but they never really get much use out of them because often the best team for any situation is a large amount of defence and physical offence where you bash in the enemy taking as little damage as possible while not wasting MP. Another good change could have been would to scale familiar stats to the character's stats which would mean that lower level familiars would not be totally useless.
Story: The story for the most part is pretty linear but after obtaining the ship lets you adventure a bit. Without trying to give away too much most of the story focuses on defeating Shadar, the Dark Djinn which ends up having some nice plot twist but looking at the front cover of the box it says "Wrath of the white witch" which means that the witch should be the main antagonist but her story is never really fully fleshed out and even worse is just tossed at you in the last hour or so of the game.
The story does have its share of plot holes that just doesn't make much sense and the only way to get past some of it is just say "it's a game" but I think a few things in the story could have been a lot better done especially how well they designed the starting of the game.
The game is pretty slow at introducing stuff which is not too bad for the story component but for game-play component I think should have been given sooner such as the ability to capture familiars, being able to fast travel, the fourth party member and the All out command to name a few.
Overall I think the game is pretty good but it has its faults, I enjoyed playing it though but now that I am at the end I am a bit let down mostly due to the tacked on addition to the white witch story but I think my overall experience with the game was positive. If you enjoy fast pace battles, grinding, beautiful environments and some great music, I would suggest that you pick this up.
