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

Fappy

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Definitely one of your better episodes of late. Though, I am surprised you made no comment of Mr. Drippy's absurd accent.
 

gyroc1

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My kneejerk reaction to Yahtzee reviewing this:

I'm capable of enduring grindfests, but I haven't played a JRPG in a while, nor has that JRPG been made in the last 5 years. Hope my enduring the Wizard Edition disaster was worth it.
 

Warachia

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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?
There is such a thing as too much, by your logic a 6 hour movie would be the best movie of all time.

A really long game that takes a long time to finish is not as good to me as a game with tons of replay value, let's look at a game like devil may cry 3, it has great combat, is not very long, and has a ton of replay value in the form of unlockables, and you get to keep everything you have to help you in your next playthrough to unlock everything, most JRPG's on the other hand, give you nothing when you start over, change nothing as you play through the game, and you have to do all of that grinding all over again to progress through. Good JRPG's at least have something to work for, like Fire Emblem with it's support system, you have to play through the game multiple times if you want to see how everyone interacts with each other.

Also, pointing out the problems in other things does NOT give anything a free pass, if it's repetitive, it's repetitive, plain and simple, you are simply avoiding the issues at hand.


Captcha: have fun
 

Tony2077

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hmm do i want to watch this video. will it be a i don't like this game and will be a jackass about it type deal
 

Ima Lemming

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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.
The Wikipedia page on kana [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kana], words like "majin" and "kanji", and the four years I spent in Japanese classes say otherwise.

As for "gee-blee" or "jee-blee", it's "jee-blee". If you're wary of Studio Ghibli's Wikipedia page because anyone can edit it, pull up an image of their logo and cross-reference the Japanese name with a katakana table [http://www.learnjapanesefree.com/katakana.html]. If it was pronounced "gee-blee", it would be written with that character that looks like a cross with a second horizontal bar followed by a ", not the one that sort of looks like a tilted smiley face followed by a ". Okay, there's two characters that look like smiley faces, but I don't think anyone's going to argue it's pronounced "dzoo-blee"
 

RyQ_TMC

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Lovely Mixture said:
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.
Take the classic tale of a princess imprisoned in a tower until a handsome prince comes by and rescues her.

When you read a story where the prince catches dysentery on his way and dies, and the princess dies alone and unloved, you think it's refreshing and admire how it tears down established tropes.

The second time it happens, you're still satisfied, but slightly disturbed that the plot twist is exactly the same and therefore doesn't twist the plot much.

The third time it happens, you've been able to tell it will happen 50 pages ago, when the princess was first mentioned.

The fourth time it happens, you wish the author stopped "tearing down the established tropes" and wrote a fucking happy ending for once.

The fifth time it happens, you wonder why you keep reading something this predictable.

The sixth time it happens, you realize you're reading A Song of Ice & Fire.


Now don't get me wrong, the series is well-written, has rather good characters and neat worldbuilding. I've read all the books and will read the next one, too. But it uses more "Dark Ages" stereotypes than 19th-century French philosophers and demonstrates an obsession with making everything darker and more cynical that just makes the series just as predictable as dime novel high fantasy romps.

I find the Kingkiller Chronicle much better rounded in that respect. It uses the established tropes and only attacks a few of them now and then, which makes it all the more effective. It has its downsides, but overall I think it hits the sweet spot between "high" and "dark" fantasy that you're looking for.
 

TheUnbeholden

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RJ Dalton said:
Anyway, what I find odd about this is that everybody's complaining about the combat. I never actually had a problem with it.
Well some people have low standards.
 

Brad Gardner

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Jun 5, 2012
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Ima Lemming 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.
The Wikipedia page on kana [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kana], words like "majin" and "kanji", and the four years I spent in Japanese classes say otherwise.

As for "gee-blee" or "jee-blee", it's "jee-blee". If you're wary of Studio Ghibli's Wikipedia page because anyone can edit it, pull up an image of their logo and cross-reference the Japanese name with a katakana table [http://www.learnjapanesefree.com/katakana.html]. If it was pronounced "gee-blee", it would be written with that character that looks like a cross with a second horizontal bar followed by a ", not the one that sort of looks like a tilted smiley face followed by a ". Okay, there's two characters that look like smiley faces, but I don't think anyone's going to argue it's pronounced "dzoo-blee"
If you read further down when i was corrected the first time I already said I was wrong and appologized for spreading false info too quickly without rechecking my facts.

After posting I remembered the standard phrase Daijobuu for are you ok.

Also Japan calls itself Nihan to the guy who called me an idiot because Japan starts with a J. I know I'm wrong and should hang myself for being wrong and should never say anything unless I have perfect knowledge about everything in the whole world.

Next time people keep reading the fucking thread to see if someone was corrected alread and has replied. Normally I wold think people would only read the first 3 post and then read the last 3 and ignore the middle.

Whatever just leave me alone. I hate I get the fucking you got someone who told you were wrong emails all the fucking time. I'm never going to post on this thing again.
 

Theopenmindedgamer

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Jun 18, 2012
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I disagreed with his comments on the battle system. I found it to be really enjoyable. It's a nice change from standard turn base combat.
 

head desk tricycle

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Aug 14, 2010
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"But it's these hideous hybrid systems that modern JRPGs tend to have that piss in my radiators, because you end up with the worst qualities of both."
It's because of Secret Of Mana, a game that was inexplicably popular even though it was mediocre all around, in addition to having a terrible combat gimmick (it wasn't polished, it didn't make sense, it didn't look or sound good, it wasn't well written). And to make things worse, it's a sequel to a really excellent game, an action RPG for the original Game Boy that used a Zelda-type engine.
 

YodaUnleashed

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Jun 11, 2010
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Aside from Yahtzee's little jabs at Studio Ghibli (all done in good humour I hope, as saccharine they are definitely not) I agree with most of his criticisms of Ni No Kuni (to a point). I don't find the combat as disastrous as he's making it out to be but yes having a button specifically assigned for 'defend' as opposed to messily scrolling through the options would make it more fluid and satisfying and less annoying. It was also extremely lame that they only taught you the 'defend all' command a good 12-15 hours into the game; yeah, pretty damn stupid and your teammates AI doesn't help at the worst of times. However I actually enjoy having to know the 'rock papers scissors' formula and the other complexities to the combat as it makes it that much more challenging and satisfying to defeat enemies and I'm finding there to be less grinding than I expected (though still some). These relatively few quibbles aside I love more or less all the rest of the game from the story, art style and most of the characters (though they could do with some more fleshing out and a better English voice actor for Oliver, but I guess he isn't terrible, just ok). Other than perhaps the excess amount of hand-holding that does go on and the reams of text (both of which you point out) which can grow tiresome even though it is often well written and even funny at times, Ni No Kuni is a very fun and charming romp that I look forward to completing.
 

Vicioussama

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Lovely Mixture said:
The game was developed by both of them I'm sure they had a hand in the story even if it wasn't the direct script, regardless, Yahtzee is just giving us his observations.
From what I can tell it wasn't really any of their input so much, but it's possible they had some suggestions here and there.
 

LXicon

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04whim said:
Now I've always said "Gibli" instead of "Jibli". Am I saying it wrong?
soft g in japanese : http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f3/Ghibli.ogg