Zero Punctuation: Ni No Kuni: Wrath Of The White Witch

Brad Gardner

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04whim said:
Now I've always said "Gibli" instead of "Jibli". Am I saying it wrong?
It is a hard G there is no j sound in Japanese language.

edit: I was wrong there is j sound. I'll be honest I only learned half the japanese alphabete I didn't remember that most of the letters have a second consident.
 

JarinArenos

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Brad Gardner said:
04whim said:
Now I've always said "Gibli" instead of "Jibli". Am I saying it wrong?
It is a hard G there is no j sound in Japanese language.
Although the Italian/Arabic word is pronounced with a very hard ɡ, the Japanese pronunciation of the studio's name is with a soft g
Official word. Also, while there is no "j" sound. There is, however, a "Ji" sound. There is also a "Ja" "Ju" "Je" and "Jo". Misapplication of phoneme knowledge FTW!
 

OuendanCyrus

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Treaos Serrare said:
OuendanCyrus said:
I've been pretty much been playing only NNK the past week or so and I think I'm only 70% through the game. There's not a lot of grinding required as I thought to have believed going into the game, the art style is fantastic but there's a bit too much talking in some scenes and far too much hand-holding throughout the majority of the game. (You know what to do, right? The TAKE HEART SPELL!) Oh yeah, and Oliver's tolerable as a character but he's still just a little creep.
Are we playing entirely different games? you need to grind like holy fuck for exp and for money(since even the basic potions cost several hundred bucks out the gate) the only creepy thing about oliver is how he is always so chipper and polite despite the situation at hand where any other rational person would be enraged.


On a separate note entirely, drippy can go fuck himself, little yellow bastard can spit up health and mana orbs at will but does he do so when I'm in the middle of a boss fight with no mana or health items left and a sliver of HP between me and a game over screen? NOPE!
I'm not saying you don't have to grind in this game, I'm saying that there wasn't as much grinding as I thought there would be, I went into this game expecting to stay in one area for at least 3 or 4 hours doing battles before being able to tackle the boss, however, I've been doing all sidequests and bounty hunts as soon as I get them, and doing multiple battles to tame monsters, I cleared dungeons just fine.
 

nohorsetown

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He's right about the hand-holding, the terrible AI, and the slow rate of mechanic unlocks. Still, the game is charming and beautiful. The super-expensive version came with a fancy-pants "Wizard's Compendium" companion book, which adds to the appeal and immersion - too bad I couldn't afford it; my kid would love the hell out of that book, as much or more as she loves the game.

For a "kid's game", it's (eventually) complex enough for a general JRPG audience, and fairly hard if played on "normal". I haven't had to grind, but my daughter has (not that she minds - she likes collecting and leveling up a million familiars). It's basically Pokemon, but smarter, prettier, and.. let's just say better in every way (except it has no multiplayer). Like Shin Megami Tensei, except appropriate for kids and, well, yeah, it's not as good as Shin Megami Tensei. (It's actually nothing like Shin Megami Tensei - not sure where I was going with that.)

Anyway, if you know a kid between, I dunno.. age 7-12 or something?.. who likes/would like Pokemon or whatever the new "collect all the animal friends" craze is: they'd like this a lot more, they probably won't mind the flaws, and holy hell it's a kid-friendly product that's actually classy, for once. Well, mostly classy - some of the characters are poorly-constructed stereotypes, but almost any game (and especially one aimed at kids) is gonna be guilty of that.
 

demalo

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Lovely Mixture said:
Ukomba said:
Do developers really not know how popular older styles are? FF6,7,8, Chrono Trigger, and FF10 had some of the best RPG combat systems. The Gibli Art style would have lent it's self well to a more retro, FF6/Chrono Trigger style game. They had a nice blend of simplicity, and action. It seems like everything is now either MMORPG style combat or Zelda style action. I'm not a fan of Kiting at the best of times, and 9 times out of 10 it isn't about player skill at all, you're just taking advantage of bad AI, terrain exploits, glitches, or bad pathing.
As evidenced by many things produced in Japan, unfortunately it appears that their audiences favor style over substance (keep in mind I say this whilst being a very big anime buff, also Dark Souls is my favorite game).

In layman's terms, kids favor graphics so the gameplay doesn't get much work, and the publisher/developer feel the retro style is too risky.
Ah, Dark Souls, an extremely substantial game draped in style!

FF6 (III for those Americans that haven't kept up with the #s) was an awesome game that I would love to see a remake for. Add some content if you want, but the game needs a face lift. Now I'm not saying that it hasn't held up well over the years, it's still a beautiful game, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't like to have some style injected into it. Keep the story, mechanics, etc, but just look at improving the look. And in a good way, keep the board rooms out of this decision.
 

xdiesp

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Why are we complaining that a game is long, isn't our purpose to be playing it? Or are you only satisfied when you get to the end of it, as to say the reward is not the game itself... And this thing about RPGs being repetitive: are you aware that you are criticizing fantasy games that take your through magical landscapes as being repetitive and shallow, but never aknowledge that modern FPSs are about shooting the same guy for years?
 

EmperorSubcutaneous

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Yay, it's the "Yahtzee references a bunch of movies I've actually seen" video. The worst thing about Tales from Earthsea is that it's infinitely better than the horrendous Sci-Fi channel miniseries based on the same books. What is it about those books that makes them unfilmable? I love them so much. It breaks my heart.

Anyway, this game is more evidence that most RPGs aren't for me. I love a good story and interesting art style, but why do they all have to be so unnecessarily padded? Seems like the majority of content in the majority of RPGs is filler. I just hate it. (Except MMOs which are unapologetically nothing but filler, so I just run with it and enjoy them for what they are rather than waiting for the good parts.)
 

Tohron

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Your description of real-time combat with turn-based elements brings back memories from X3 - solo combat can be fun, but you avoid fleet fights like the plague lest you have to navigate through 2-3 menus multiple times just to give orders to all your ships.
 

GloatingSwine

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Assassin Xaero said:
Wait, what? The "tutorial" on this game is 17 hours, too? Like Final Fantasy XIII? But XIII gets hate for having a "20 hour tutorial", but this game gets love because it is "so long" (seriously, that is about all I've heard about the game, that it is really long). Why is one ok but the other isn't? Oh wait, that's right, other is Final Fantasy so it must get hate.
I suspect that the period over which NNK introduces its gameplay mechanics isn't also a period where you're walking in a straight line for 20 hours.


On the other hand, this is also a Thing that JRPGs have been doing for some time now, being so paranoid that the player won't get the mechanics that they drip feed them into the game over a catastrophically long time, making the actual game just not very interesting.

FFXIII did that horribly because it drip fed mechanics and limited you to a two man party in a game where the main player interaction was about shifting between different class balances on the fly (and in the tougher fights you have to do that more frequently than you would make decisions in older installments).
 

gyrobot_v1legacy

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Lovely Mixture said:
Ukomba said:
Do developers really not know how popular older styles are? FF6,7,8, Chrono Trigger, and FF10 had some of the best RPG combat systems. The Gibli Art style would have lent it's self well to a more retro, FF6/Chrono Trigger style game. They had a nice blend of simplicity, and action. It seems like everything is now either MMORPG style combat or Zelda style action. I'm not a fan of Kiting at the best of times, and 9 times out of 10 it isn't about player skill at all, you're just taking advantage of bad AI, terrain exploits, glitches, or bad pathing.
As evidenced by many things produced in Japan, unfortunately it appears that their audiences favor style over substance (keep in mind I say this whilst being a very big anime buff, also Dark Souls is my favorite game).

In layman's terms, kids favor graphics so the gameplay doesn't get much work, and the publisher/developer feel the retro style is too risky.
Too bad they don't put it in the right direction which is to make it a dark fantasy with sex, violence and smashing down the good guys so hard it makes the Starks story look like a tale of triumph
 

klaynexas3

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Dec 30, 2009
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Am I the only one that does not like Spirited Away? I didn't like the little girl, as all that I could think about her was that she annoyed me. And then all these random things keep happening that make little or no sense and hardly seem to connect to the over all story. There's the random spirit eating thing she lets in that has relevence for all of ten minutes, then there's the dragon guy that's also a river spirit, then there's a giant baby that gets turned into a rat, the dragon gets hurt for some reason, and above all else apparently everyone falls in love with the little girl the moment she leaves and returns. Honestly, can someone explain why it's a good movie? I've seen one other Studio Gibli film and I liked it well enough. It was the one about the cats in the cat world. It wasn't fantastic or anything but most of it felt pretty coherent and it was just a fun sort of world. I just get the same feeling watching Spirited Away that I do while watching Labyrinth, except at least the latter had David Bowie in it.

Also, I'm saddened that he did a game from Japan that wasn't Fire Emblem this week, because that means he probably won't hit Fire Emblem. Granted, he'd probably not like it, but that'd be the fun part of it, his anger towards it.
 

Lovely Mixture

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Ukomba said:
Lovely Mixture said:
Ukomba said:
Do developers really not know how popular older styles are? FF6,7,8, Chrono Trigger, and FF10 had some of the best RPG combat systems. The Gibli Art style would have lent it's self well to a more retro, FF6/Chrono Trigger style game. They had a nice blend of simplicity, and action. It seems like everything is now either MMORPG style combat or Zelda style action. I'm not a fan of Kiting at the best of times, and 9 times out of 10 it isn't about player skill at all, you're just taking advantage of bad AI, terrain exploits, glitches, or bad pathing.
As evidenced by many things produced in Japan, unfortunately it appears that their audiences favor style over substance (keep in mind I say this whilst being a very big anime buff, also Dark Souls is my favorite game).

In layman's terms, kids favor graphics so the gameplay doesn't get much work, and the publisher/developer feel the retro style is too risky.
Oh there are certainly places for those styles. I'm a big fan of Dark Souls, I enjoyed Dragon Age 1, Kingdom Hearts is one of the best games of all time imo.

Except they keep re-packaging their retro games. How many version of FF1 are there now? They re-released Chrono Trigger on the DS with added content, so they aren't un-aware of the popularity. Anyways, I have no problem with FF13 graphics. If anything, the could put more money into those graphics if they recycled older, proven combat systems rather than developing new ones.
You misunderstand, I didn't mean to say Dark Souls was in line with that "style over substance" mentality nor was all anime. I'm just saying that Japanese media tends to go that way.

gyrobot said:
Lovely Mixture said:
Ukomba said:
Do developers really not know how popular older styles are? FF6,7,8, Chrono Trigger, and FF10 had some of the best RPG combat systems. The Gibli Art style would have lent it's self well to a more retro, FF6/Chrono Trigger style game. They had a nice blend of simplicity, and action. It seems like everything is now either MMORPG style combat or Zelda style action. I'm not a fan of Kiting at the best of times, and 9 times out of 10 it isn't about player skill at all, you're just taking advantage of bad AI, terrain exploits, glitches, or bad pathing.
As evidenced by many things produced in Japan, unfortunately it appears that their audiences favor style over substance (keep in mind I say this whilst being a very big anime buff, also Dark Souls is my favorite game).

In layman's terms, kids favor graphics so the gameplay doesn't get much work, and the publisher/developer feel the retro style is too risky.
Too bad they don't put it in the right direction which is to make it a dark fantasy with sex, violence and smashing down the good guys so hard it makes the Starks story look like a tale of triumph
I feel it's an issue of balance.
Either it's all too soft and fancy or it's all too dark.
Berserk and Dark Souls do it right. Tolkien essentially did it right. Haven't tried Fire and Ice yet.
 

mjc0961

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Nov 30, 2009
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I just can't get on with Studio Debatable Pronunciation's art style. That combined with not really needing a long JPRG in my backlog right now was enough for me to pass this one up.

xdiesp said:
Why are we complaining that a game is long, isn't our purpose to be playing it? Or are you only satisfied when you get to the end of it, as to say the reward is not the game itself... And this thing about RPGs being repetitive: are you aware that you are criticizing fantasy games that take your through magical landscapes as being repetitive and shallow, but never aknowledge that modern FPSs are about shooting the same guy for years?
Is this your first Zero Punctuation episode...? I would highly suggest you go through the archives and watch some of the episodes about modern FPS games. HINT: He hates that all modern FPS games are the so much of the same that he created a new, demeaning genre name for them to separate them from shooters that aren't about yet another modern military fighting Arabs and/or Russians.
 

Brad Gardner

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JarinArenos said:
Brad Gardner said:
04whim said:
Now I've always said "Gibli" instead of "Jibli". Am I saying it wrong?
It is a hard G there is no j sound in Japanese language.
Although the Italian/Arabic word is pronounced with a very hard ɡ, the Japanese pronunciation of the studio's name is with a soft g
Official word. Also, while there is no "j" sound. There is, however, a "Ji" sound. There is also a "Ja" "Ju" "Je" and "Jo". Misapplication of phoneme knowledge FTW!
Must be one of the letter with the ` or whatever. I have to appologize for spreading false info
 

Sheo_Dagana

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Damn, Yahtzee's always funny but it's been a while since I've laughed out loud for a good majority of the review. Probably because I have this game, and while I enjoy it, the faults it has are quite glaring.

Keep up the good work, Mr. Croshaw.
 

Smertnik

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While I do somewhat dislike turn based combat I have to admit that it would have suited the game more. As it is, coordinating attacks with multiple characters is pretty much impossible, partly due to the bad AI (I already started to turn off ability usage to prevent them from burning all the mana during the first encounter).
 

SonOfMethuselah

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irishda said:
No one else is gonna mention he talked about the left stick but pointed at the right one?
Probably did it on purpose. It wouldn't be the first time.

OT: Don't have it, have very little interest. I do like my JRPGs, but I've got too much on my plate already without another one. And I'm not really into anime at all (though I did just finish an interesting anime-based weekend, so that may change soon), so the name Ghibli means absolutely nothing to me.

Still, entertaining as always, Mr. Croshaw. I'm actually kind of surprise you gave it as much praise as you did.
 

Darth_Payn

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xdiesp said:
Why are we complaining that a game is long, isn't our purpose to be playing it? Or are you only satisfied when you get to the end of it, as to say the reward is not the game itself... And this thing about RPGs being repetitive: are you aware that you are criticizing fantasy games that take your through magical landscapes as being repetitive and shallow, but never aknowledge that modern FPSs are about shooting the same guy for years?
He's complaining about the EXTREME linearity of a Role Playing Game, in which you PLAY a ROLE that involves making choices as to how to proceed in the GAME. Also, it's the pacing that's the problem because it doles out features little by little instead of giving you all your toys at once, letting you out to its world, and saying "GO NUTS".