Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch Review
A
Journalistic Review by DefiantParrot
*Warning: Contains Spoilers*
02/12/2018
Developer: Level-5
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| Adventure Time! Wait.... |
Platform: Playstation 3
Genre: Japanese Role-Playing Game
Release: January 22, 2013
Y’know
I consider myself to be somewhat knowledgeable of video games. I have
experience with platformers, third-person shooters, Beat ‘em Ups, Action games,
Western RPG’s and more. But that last part right there has stuck with me for
quite a while. Whether it’s Elder
Scrolls, anything really from BioWare and I simply cannot praise The Witcher 3 enough, the point is I
have played and loved many western RPG’s.
JRPG’s on the other hand, aren’t really something I’m
familiar with. I couldn’t get into the Final
Fantasy series and I never had an opportunity to try many others save for
the DS port of Chrono Trigger. So I
decided to try my hand at one and see if I can enjoy it and recommend it to
someone else in my predicament, after some searching I happened upon one that
no matter where I looked received nothing but praise, whether it’s critics or
fans this game appears to be universally loved, and with its sequels hitting
shelves very shortly I figured it’s the perfect time to give this game a shot.
So this is Ni no
Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch
So Level-5 is a developer I know by reputation they’ve
made several games in almost twenty years some of them even I have heard of.
The Dark Cloud series, Professor Layton, even White Knight Chronicles which was their
only other game I had been familiar with before this… we’ll get to it
eventually
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| About time these guys came across my desk |
So this game is actually an enhanced version of a DS game
called Ni no Kuni: Dominion of the Dark
Djinn which was only released in Japan.
So I’m not going to lie, the J in the JRPG was what made
me nervous about this game, I have nothing against Japan as a whole fine
people, fine country etc. but they can be… quite odd sometimes
But anyway I’m getting ahead of myself here, the game
begins with a young lad named Oliver living in the town of Motorville which I
swear looks like it’s from 1950 Michigan. One day Oliver and his friend Phil
are excited to see that the car they’ve been working on (a glorified go kart
from the looks of it) is ready for use.
 |
| Groceries! How every great game begins |
After taking his mom some groceries he sneaks out of the
house to go join his friend for some late night car crashing.
So then Oliver’s mom a woman so kind and polite I was
literally watching the time waiting to see how long it would take for her to
die, gives her life to save her son.
“That’s a new record!” I thought to myself before
realizing I was supposed to feel sad and invested in a woman I think I knew for
all of ten pissing minutes!
After this horrifying moment of his life, Oliver finds
that his childhood toy has come to life and begun speaking to him, in a welsh
accent no less. About prophecies, magic, another world, and how he is the
chosen one to save the world from evil.
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| The Lord High Lord of the Fairies! |
So this is the point where the young lad would be put
into a padded room to chew on his tongue for the rest of his life, but since
this is a video game it begins a journey of magic, friendship and a lot of
weird shit.
So I want to get this out of the way first. This game is
flipping gorgeous! The game is so bright and colorful it made me think I was
watching a Studio Ghibli film, and then I realized Studio Ghibli had a hand in
this game and my fucking pants flew off in excitement.
The visuals ae an absolute delight but that’s not all the
music in the game is quite nice as well, soothing and relaxing when it needs to
be, toe tapping and enjoyable,
and ass pants shitting I shouldn’t be in this cave when
the time calls for it.
So anyway Oliver and his new friend Drippy the welsh
speaking ‘Lord High Lord of the Fairies’ travel to his world and immediately
set forth for the city of Ding Dong Dell a name that actually made me laugh out
loud when I first heard it.
But the adventure here and story as a whole… is pretty
good actually I make my jokes of course and I was getting Neverending Story flash backs for some reason but I had a lot of
fun with this game.
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| That... is Fucking Terrifying |
I explored the Deep Dark Wood meeting a talking tree
(Great Deku Tree Joke) I flew around on my friendly dragon ,sailed the ocean seas
avoiding creepy monsters.
Drippy’s world is
vast and there’s more to just do than the story but again I’m getting ahead of
myself.
Now one of the things I was worried about in this game
was the combat, it’s a big part of these games so how was I going to do with
this?
Ni no Kuni takes the two forms of JRPG combat turn based,
and real time combat and combines them. Oliver and his friends can run around
the battle area all they want and it’s good for avoiding some attacks but you
still select your actions, attack, spells etc from your selection.
Now the only way Oliver and his allies will attack or do
anything is selecting it from the selection wheel, and that includes blocking.
You have to time your blocks with your enemy’s moves and attack when they’re
open the combat is deep and admittedly confusing.
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| There's always alot of things going on at once |
However what I can say to you is I got used to it, it
takes a while to master and they keep adding new things to it that it can get
overwhelming sometimes but once you’ve got it down, you’ll be able to hold your
own really well and do some really badass things.
For JRPG fans this probably sounds very familiar, but as
someone who doesn’t really play these types of games I was impressed by how
deep the combat was once I began getting good at it.
The other big part of combat are Familiars, Oliver and
his friends can summon creatures to fight for them, how does this work?
Pokemon.
Like no seriously that’s pretty much what it is, you get
a couple early on, but soon you’ll be able to randomly capture any creature you
fight, you give them names, train with them and even evol- err sorry
metamorphose them with stones…. They’re fucking Pokemon.
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| This is Bob... Hi Bob |
But that’s not a bad thing just like my adventures in
Kanto and Johto I had a blast searching for all these familiar and strange
creatures to add to my team.
Enemies appear on the map as well, so it’s easier to find
the ones you want so that you can make the team you desire.
So the story was fine, the combat was good, and the
familiars were a lot of fun. But we all know any RPG is made by its characters
so how were they?
Oliver is a fine protagonist, I was afraid I would get
annoyed with the kid and while he does behave like a goody-toes shoes a little
bit I never had an issue with this kid.
He’s driven by a desire to set his mistakes right and to
work through the grief of losing a parent something many of us (me especially)
can understand.
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| Each party member brings their own familiar |
Esther is the first party member you get and she is… well
the typical girl, she’s a good healer and always wants to do the right thing
and doesn’t get along well with the third party member, nothing I haven’t
really seen before.
As for the third party member Swaine is a grown man
following a bunch of kids… while a tad uncomfortable at first (probably just
me) I grew to like him. He’s not just following you around for his own purposes
after a while, he’s with you because you’re children and he wants to keep you
safe.
There’s also a fourth party member you can switch out
for, but he’s added to your group so late in the game I wonder why they
bothered, by that point the rest of us were leveled up and ready to tackle the
endgame.
And that negative will now lead into the things about Ni
no Kuni I didn’t like.
The voice acting in the game is done really well, by
everybody Drippy, King Tom (Meowjesty) and the villain Shadar are really good.
But that’s when there’s actually voice acting many of the dialogue in this game
is done through textboxes. Now whether this was by design or part of the
problem with bringing this over from the DS I’m not sure.
But I loved listening to this characters so much I got
annoyed at the boring boxes, I had the same complaint with the Kingdom Hearts games, if you want text
that’s fine, if you want voice acting great but don’t do both, it’s a pet peeve
of mine.
Another minor issue is the crafting. No not the crafting
itself, or how it works or how it takes you a while to get the ability to craft
its how hard it is to see what you can craft.
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| Rape Face #1 |
You have the option to follow any formula you have or to
mix and match your ingredients to see what happens, but if you’re trying to
choose what you want to mix it’s a pain in the ass to see what you have.
A better way to look through these would’ve been less of
a headache I feel.
The game has moments of padding to stretch the story out,
many of its story missions are fine, but when I’m searching for 9 sodding
pieces of ‘Art’ for two annoying fairies, or trying to get Drippy’s mother to
laugh, pretty much everything in the home of the fairies was unneeded come to
think of it.
And it’s not just that, this is a game I felt the need to
grind. Now there’s many side quests and bounty hunting missions to take and
help level up that way, but some of those can kick your ass too, and before you
have an ability to fast travel, or fly it takes too damn long to walk
everywhere.
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| I have no shame, leave me alone! |
Of course that’s until you finally do get those things
and grind the Tokotoko’s located outside of Perdida, it’s not cheating if it’s
a mechanic in the game!
And finally on to my biggest complaint.
Before I got used to the combat and controls I found
myself dying a few times, not a big deal right? Well turns out in Ni no Kuni if
you die, then you have two options,
A) You reload from
your save file
Or B) continue from where you were…. After the game takes
some of your money, no not some of it like a goddamn third of it, there were
times where I’d die and the game would charge me upwards of 10 fucking grand to
continue.
I understand you want death to have meaning but give me a
fucking break, in dungeons you cannot save anywhere you like, and they can get
pretty stingy on savepoints sometimes when you’re on your last legs and just
want to heal.
Okay okay ummm what else? The boss fights here can be a
lot of fun and some can kick your teeth in, be careful there. And they can be
varied too from your various familiar monsters, to a giant fucking jellyfish
everything had its own weakness and strengths so it’s up to you to find those.
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| Pretty easy boss fight though |
And once you’ve defeated the Dark Djiinn and shown the
White Witch what for, the game is not over. There’s a post game where you can
continue side questing, bounty hunting and exploring and enjoying the world.
So I did just that I teamed up with some brothers on
missions, explored a nasty swamp again and lost way too much money at the
Casino for dead people.
So all in all I’m glad I played Ni no Kuni, however the
frustrations I had at the beginning and my other complaints do add up, so Ni no Kuni Wrath of the White Witch
Receives my Silver Seal of Recommendation
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| For when your best friend is a doll |
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