The reason? I couldn't ever think of anything to make a Side Post about.
I mean, there's only so many times I can go back to Final Fantasy for Side Post ideas.
Or...I'm unsure of how to go about an idea I currently have. One way or another, I'm generally unsure of what to do. SO! What am I planning to do? A game review!
For this review, I'll be talking about a fantastic and incredible game called Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch. More likely than not, you haven't heard of this really great RPG, but lucky for you, I'm about to give you a brief glimpse into this game! By the time you finish reading my review, you'll want to go out and buy it up! Let's not delay this any longer...
Recurring Fantasy Presents
Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch Review
Now, before I get fully going, I'm going to lay out how I plan to score/review the whole thing. I'll be covering my usual points of interest (graphics, gameplay, story, characters) plus a few other things as I go along. I'll have a short pros and cons list at some point, and then I'll follow up with a final words on it. I'm going to try and include a few screenshots as I go along too! I'm hoping to keep the review short but awesome, but my usual style says that won't happen. Let's start with a nice foreword.
In this day and age, the RPG has (in most cases) left the turn-based style behind in favor of action with hack and slash elements. I'm more of a fan of the turn-based RPGs, but sometimes a game pulls through that does a great mixture of the old with the new to create something magical. Thus steps in the game I'm reviewing! Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch is a recently released RPG that proves creativity isn't dead yet! If I were to try and describe it in a sentence/equation, I'd say it is Studio Ghibli meets Dragon Quest plus Pokemon equals massive pile of fantastic and enjoyable win. (or Studio Ghibli x Dragon Quest + Pokemon = WIN!)
What's so special about Ni No Kuni? There's really no one thing that makes it special because it is an all around great game with no major flaws. It combines the cinematic look and feel of a Studio Ghibli movie with a fun yet challenging RPG with more than enough to do. I've rambled on enough for an intro though, so let's get right to the good part! The ACTUAL review! To begin, we're going to take a look over the first thing that truly opens up Ni No Kuni as something new and different: the graphics and atmosphere.
If you have ever seen a Studio Ghibli movie (My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, Princess Mononoke, and more!), then you are already familiar with the graphical style of Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch. For those of you who are not, first off...SHAME ON YOU! Moving past that shameful thought, I'll follow up with a few images that I've hand selected from around the Internet. (Apologies! I meant to only do like three images, but then I found a pile of images I wanted to share. I also wanted to make sure there was a decent variety.)
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| Flying around the world on your dragon. Yuuup! You get a dragon! |
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| The Forest Guardian! BOSS BATTLE TIME! |
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| A small glimpse of an active battle. Also the best image I found...quality-wise. |
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| Oliver and Mr. Drippy arrive in the other world! |
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| A glimpse of the world map in the desert area known as Summerland. |
Do you see it? Are you giddy and/or amazed yet? Honestly, this game is just a refreshing look at how games can appear! They've taken a memorable animation style and turned it into a game. The style and look of it all just fills me with nostalgia. The graphics are quite enjoyable, but the music and atmosphere aren't going to be left behind! The environment, the people, the colors! This game doesn't fail in any of these aspects. No matter the location, the monster, or the event, it always does its best to feel vibrant and alive. The music is always there and just adds into the entirety of a nostalgia bomb. The look and the style of the monsters throughout the game is pretty interesting as well. They tend to lean more towards cutesy than cool, but it's a pretty interesting variety. To reiterate, I really like the look and design of this game, from the monsters and music to the characters and world.
If I were to further reiterate and describe it in a single sentence, I'd summarize it as such: Ni No Kuni is like walking through a Studio Ghibli movie. I can't stress that enough. Overall, the game looks and feels how it should. I could go on forever about how much I love this aspect of the game, but you get the idea. If the pictures didn't get you excited somehow, I have nothing more to say to you! Of course, this is just the graphics and atmosphere! It's time to dig into the next part...THE GAMEPLAY!
If I were to further reiterate and describe it in a single sentence, I'd summarize it as such: Ni No Kuni is like walking through a Studio Ghibli movie. I can't stress that enough. Overall, the game looks and feels how it should. I could go on forever about how much I love this aspect of the game, but you get the idea. If the pictures didn't get you excited somehow, I have nothing more to say to you! Of course, this is just the graphics and atmosphere! It's time to dig into the next part...THE GAMEPLAY!
Another great thing about this game is that the looks...can be deceiving. Despite the admittingly child-ish look (still love it), the game doesn't hold back in the gameplay department! Ni No Kuni brings in a really strong RPG experience littered with fun yet challenging battles and enough side quests to keep you busy for a long, long time! The side quests are a good variety to boot. You got your monster elimination, item collection, character back-and-forth-talkary, fixing heartbroken people, and more!
Your main character is an aspiring wizard and learns new spells as you travel along. The spells have all sorts of applications from battle spells, like healing and fireballs, to field spells like opening chests or talking with animals. The spell selection is quite vast, and many of the spells have multiple uses apart from the obvious. Besides spells, you also collect and mix items for item creation, aka Alchemy, and you can even capture monsters to make into allies! One of my most favorite parts of the game revolves around your massive in-game, fully-readable spellbook. When you start the game, it's missing a large portion of the pages, but you slowly collect them all as you play through the game. It contains all your spells, all the monsters, stories, a list of items, alchemy formulas, and more! It is easily one of my favorite parts of the entire game. I'll go into more details about all of this later on, but let's cover exploration first.
The exploration of the world of Ni No Kuni is reminiscent of older RPGs. You walk around a large and expansive world map with all sorts of different islands, continents, and regions. There are special locations all about that are enter-able of course (dungeons, forests, towns, etc). Exploring the world map is a very nice experience in and of itself because it is a beautiful world to walk around. The game has your usual areas like a forest, a woods, the volcano, a desert, and more! While exploring areas, the environment is fairly interactive. Making use of various spells you learn throughout the game, As you explore the various areas and locations, the game has traded out random encounters for monsters on the map. This means you can fight them directly or attempt to run away. Of course, that entails the initiative and ambush factors. (Taking the monsters from behind gives you initiative, but getting assaulted from behind causes an ambush.) This talk brings us to the next point...the battles!
The battle system of the game is mostly action-based, but it does take a little turn-based style into the mix. You fight monsters in an open arena in whatever field you are currently on. You can fight the monsters directly as the characters, or you can fight the monsters with your familiars (also monsters). When the battle starts, you can move your character about and physically dodge some attacks. However, when you go to select actions, the game pauses and gives you time to choose your moves. Each character has a specialized selection of spells and abilities, or you can just physically strike. Moves have a charge up time, but physical attacks will constantly lash out for a period of time. There's all kinds of factors along with all this like timing and speed, but I won't be going into those details. New areas do come along with harder enemies, and your selection of powers and familiars can easily turn the tide of battle in your favor or against you. The game doesn't really try to create anything new, but the style/method it uses is done very well. Battles feel fairly fast-paced, but they are almost always fun. Boss battles feel big and epic-y. It's a win-win scenario.
While you fight off random monsters, you also gain a chance to get into the Pokemon aspect of the game and catch monsters! (I know there are other games with monster catching, but Pokemon is one of the more recognized names.) Capturing monsters is enabled after you get a ways into the game, and it allows you to create your own team of powerful familiars to fight at your side. (Three familiars per character plus three backup familiars you can change out in the field.) Like your characters, the familiars have a selection of moves and abilities they can learn as they level up. After so many levels, monsters are able to "metamorphosize" into stronger versions of themselves. It's also possible to boost a familiar's stats through the use of treats. As they grow more "familiar" with you, it's possible to boost their abilities more and more. If you enjoy Pokemon, this part is just right up your alley.
The game does offer one really unique part of the game, and it involves collecting and restoring emotions! There are people throughout the land who are "heartbroken". They have been cursed by the main villain, an evil wizard, and they are at a loss of a particular emotion. It's up to you to restore that emotion to their heart and fix their life. To do this, you first have to collect the necessary emotion from someone who has an overflowing amount of it. You then take the emotion and restore it to the heartbroken person. It's an interesting gameplay mechanic, and it's interesting to see how it all works out. One thankful part is that you only have to deal with a couple emotions at first, and more of them unlock as you continue throughout. They also made sure that emotion-full people are easy to spot, and that's a good thing. Anyways, that's enough about the heartbroken people. As you may realize by now,there are a lot of things to do in Ni No Kuni...and yet I still have one more part I need to talk about before moving on...Alchemy!
Your main character is an aspiring wizard and learns new spells as you travel along. The spells have all sorts of applications from battle spells, like healing and fireballs, to field spells like opening chests or talking with animals. The spell selection is quite vast, and many of the spells have multiple uses apart from the obvious. Besides spells, you also collect and mix items for item creation, aka Alchemy, and you can even capture monsters to make into allies! One of my most favorite parts of the game revolves around your massive in-game, fully-readable spellbook. When you start the game, it's missing a large portion of the pages, but you slowly collect them all as you play through the game. It contains all your spells, all the monsters, stories, a list of items, alchemy formulas, and more! It is easily one of my favorite parts of the entire game. I'll go into more details about all of this later on, but let's cover exploration first.
The exploration of the world of Ni No Kuni is reminiscent of older RPGs. You walk around a large and expansive world map with all sorts of different islands, continents, and regions. There are special locations all about that are enter-able of course (dungeons, forests, towns, etc). Exploring the world map is a very nice experience in and of itself because it is a beautiful world to walk around. The game has your usual areas like a forest, a woods, the volcano, a desert, and more! While exploring areas, the environment is fairly interactive. Making use of various spells you learn throughout the game, As you explore the various areas and locations, the game has traded out random encounters for monsters on the map. This means you can fight them directly or attempt to run away. Of course, that entails the initiative and ambush factors. (Taking the monsters from behind gives you initiative, but getting assaulted from behind causes an ambush.) This talk brings us to the next point...the battles!
The battle system of the game is mostly action-based, but it does take a little turn-based style into the mix. You fight monsters in an open arena in whatever field you are currently on. You can fight the monsters directly as the characters, or you can fight the monsters with your familiars (also monsters). When the battle starts, you can move your character about and physically dodge some attacks. However, when you go to select actions, the game pauses and gives you time to choose your moves. Each character has a specialized selection of spells and abilities, or you can just physically strike. Moves have a charge up time, but physical attacks will constantly lash out for a period of time. There's all kinds of factors along with all this like timing and speed, but I won't be going into those details. New areas do come along with harder enemies, and your selection of powers and familiars can easily turn the tide of battle in your favor or against you. The game doesn't really try to create anything new, but the style/method it uses is done very well. Battles feel fairly fast-paced, but they are almost always fun. Boss battles feel big and epic-y. It's a win-win scenario.
While you fight off random monsters, you also gain a chance to get into the Pokemon aspect of the game and catch monsters! (I know there are other games with monster catching, but Pokemon is one of the more recognized names.) Capturing monsters is enabled after you get a ways into the game, and it allows you to create your own team of powerful familiars to fight at your side. (Three familiars per character plus three backup familiars you can change out in the field.) Like your characters, the familiars have a selection of moves and abilities they can learn as they level up. After so many levels, monsters are able to "metamorphosize" into stronger versions of themselves. It's also possible to boost a familiar's stats through the use of treats. As they grow more "familiar" with you, it's possible to boost their abilities more and more. If you enjoy Pokemon, this part is just right up your alley.
The game does offer one really unique part of the game, and it involves collecting and restoring emotions! There are people throughout the land who are "heartbroken". They have been cursed by the main villain, an evil wizard, and they are at a loss of a particular emotion. It's up to you to restore that emotion to their heart and fix their life. To do this, you first have to collect the necessary emotion from someone who has an overflowing amount of it. You then take the emotion and restore it to the heartbroken person. It's an interesting gameplay mechanic, and it's interesting to see how it all works out. One thankful part is that you only have to deal with a couple emotions at first, and more of them unlock as you continue throughout. They also made sure that emotion-full people are easy to spot, and that's a good thing. Anyways, that's enough about the heartbroken people. As you may realize by now,there are a lot of things to do in Ni No Kuni...and yet I still have one more part I need to talk about before moving on...Alchemy!
I'm starting to get a bit lengthy on the gameplay area, so I'm going to try and wrap this part up quickly. Alchemy! You mix things together and get other things. Sounds simple, no? Well it isn't! (Actually it is, but bear with me!) When you first receive your cauldron, you only get a couple recipes to try out. However, if you remember my mentioning of the book up above, the wizard book contains a list of several recipes. You'll have to make a note or remember offhand, but it's possible to do any of the recipes available as long as you know what goes into them (and have said items of course). The selection of create-able items is pretty large, and it also gives you access to many items you can't buy or obtain easily...if at all! I'd go into more details, but honestly, alchemy is pretty simple YET extremely useful. It's a good thing. I've said a lot about the gameplay, so I'm going to run over it real quick before I move along.
Ni No Kuni gameplay is the entire package of RPG funnary. You get exploration, side quests, item collecting, fun battles, expansive list of spells, monster hunting and collection, alchemy, and probably a few things I forgot to talk about! Basically, Ni No Kuni has everything that an RPG fan could possibly want in an RPG or a game in general! It's fun and engaging gameplay where there's always more to do or see. Of course, we haven't even gotten to the story and characters yet, so guess what is next?
When it comes to RPGs, some of the factors that should always been considered are...
- Are the characters enjoyable?
- Is the story enjoyable?
As far as I am concerned, those are the only real factors you should consider. RPG stories and characters are almost always overly crazy or convoluted. I mean...they are supposed to be, but there comes a point when a story/character can become too crazy and overly complex. Of course, you have to be careful to not go to the exact opposite end. A super simple character can feel plain and un-interesting. Thankfully, Ni No Kuni brings in a cast of lovable and interesting characters, and it compliments it all with a story reminiscent of a storybook or (once again) a classic Studio Ghibli movie. Without further ado, I'll start with a brief description of the story.
WARNING! POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!
You may now read on.
The story is the adventure of a boy trying to save his mother. It sounds simple enough, but then you add...THE TWIST! However, he soon discovers that he's a chosen individual known as The Pure Hearted One. He travels to a new world (alternate dimension of his own) and begins an adventure to bring down an evil djinn named Shadar. It's your usual idea of an alternate dimension. People resemble people from his original universe (referred to as soul mates), and you have to travel back and forth between the worlds to solve problems. As you travel along, you adventure through a wonderful and mythical world where cats are kings and there's a desert town with a milk fountain. It's a pretty crazy fantasy setting, but at the same time, it doesn't feel too far-fetched to seem unappealing. It's not the biggest and most original game, but it's a nice balance of elements to keep it in check yet still great. Now, I won't talk a lot more about the story because I wouldn't want to reveal too much. Of course, you can't have a great story without some fantastic characters!
The characters of Ni No Kuni are a large cast of crazy and interesting individuals. You have your main hero, Oliver. He's a boy becoming a wizard so he can save the alternate world and his mother. Mr. Drippy is a cute little guy who is Oliver's faithful guide and sidekick, also Lord High Lord of the Faeries. The duo travels throughout the world and encounter all kinds of people. There are Cat Kings, Cow Empresses, Pig Princes, and more! (And they aren't all animal-humanoids either!) The best part about the characters is that they all feel unique and fun. Each one comes alive in their own way. I'll admit that a couple of them come off as a bit silly, but I still like them nonetheless. (There are a lot of puns with the animal people though...Not like they could help that.) Time to get more detailed!
Oliver is just a simple boy who wants to right a wrong. He just wants to save his mother, and he ends up trying to save a whole other world in the process. Throughout it all, he proves to be the Pure Hearted One time and time again. He acts just like he is though...He's just a kid. He can be a bit gullible at times, but thankfully for him, he's got Mr. Drippy to help him out. Mr. Drippy is easily my most favorite character in the game. He's a weird-looking little guy. He's round with a big nose, and he has a lantern hanging from his nose.
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| Mr. Drippy with the Wizard's Book. |
As usual, my game review has gone through the four major tiers of RPGs: graphics & atmosphere, gameplay, story, and characters. As far as I am concerned, Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch is a fantastic RPG experience and does a fantastic job in all four tiers. The graphics and atmosphere breathes life into a genre where the look and feel of the game has become a one horse town of generic-ness. It's a beautiful and breathtaking game that makes you feel excited to explore the vast array of locations across the game world. Alongside a beautiful game is a game with great gameplay! It's nice to see something not trade looks for gameplay or vice versa. For Ni No Kuni, you get the best of both worlds.
It's interesting combination of action and turn-based battles is almost always fun and often can be challenging. Even without the numerous battles, there's a whole portion of gameplay to do. While you explore, you'll discover all kinds of interesting and collectible monsters, a large assortment of spells, plenty of items to buy and create, and just oodles of side quests to complete. Of course, the game just keeps going from there! It comes into you brain and unleashes a great and enthralling story full of vibrant and alive characters. I'll admit that the game might seem childish to some people, but I think the more appropriate word is cute. If you don't instantly fall in love with the cast of characters, then I have nothing to say to you.
The shortest way to describe Ni No Kuni (as I've stated a couple of times now) is this...Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch is like walking and exploring the world of a Studio Ghibli movie. It's just a great big package of fantastic game that doesn't hold back in any of my tiers of RPG-ary. A fan of RPGs should jump on this game immediately. A fan of J-RPGs should have already bought and started playing this game. For everybody else? Unless you just hate the idea of an RPG, I'd highly suggest the game. It's plenty of fun and more than enough to do for the price. It's a great game and you should acknowledge it! ACKNOWLEDGE IT NOW!
I'm really glad that I heard about Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch, and I'm even happier that I reserved and purchased it! I look forward to playing through it more and more and completing it before too long. (I realize it's bad taste to fully review something without fully playing through it, but I've been busy with FFXII and other assorted games. Gimme a break!) Thanks for reading my humble review, and I apologize for the horrible format of it all. I really should just do the entire review in one sitting, but I ended up typing it up over several sessions. Either way, my review is complete! Look forward to a new Day coming soon! RECURRING FANTASY...OUT!
~May the Crystals Guide Me~
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