Ni No Kuni is an RPG that dared to exist, ridden with flaws but somehow coming out a worthwhile experience. The game was originally released in 2010 for the Nintendo DS in Japan with the subtitle "The Jet-Black Mage." It told the story of Oliver, our small and frustratingly goody-goody protagonist, who travels to a parallel world after accidentally causing the death of his mother. In this alternate world, many citizens have been rendered walking vegetables by having their emotions sucked out. Since the developers had totally never played Kingdom Hearts, they call these folks the Heartbroken. Our hero must face the wizard behind it all, Shadar, who happens to also be holding the soul of Oliver's mother's alternate self. It's a good motivation that I think does well in justifying why a little kid would go through all the trouble. He cares as much about bringing his mother back to life in whatever way possible as he does saving the people of the world. In the DS version, the story ends after Oliver deals with Shadar. It's a logical, completed story with some heartwarming moments. Level 5 and Studio Ghibli both worked on this game, and aesthetically it's absolutely breathtaking. The game looks and sounds like a Ghibli film down to nearly every detail, and the quality never drops. Joe Hisaishi's music, while certainly not his best effort, fits the trailblazing spirit of the game well. I never had any complaints about Ni No Kuni from the audio-visual front.
Unfortunately, when the game was re-released for the Playstation 3 as Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch, a second layer of the plot got slapped on: after defeating Shadar, Oliver must save the world again from the true villain behind it all, a witch who supposedly has a god-given ability to decide the world's fate. Outside of Japan, this is the only version we got, and oh boy does it sour the experience. This section is completely disconnected from the main story, and every scene involving the White Witch throughout the game feels tacked on and generic. Call it padding, DLC, or whatever you like. At the end of the game, I wished that the story had been allowed to end at its natural stopping point. While I have my issues with the original ending, at least the final hours of the game didn't involve developing a new character nobody cared about. George Lucas may have botched up Star Wars over the years, but he didn't add a brand new subplot at the end of any of the films.
At its heart, Ni No Kuni is supposed to be a big, epic adventure in a mysterious world. The game accomplishes making the player feel this sometimes, but falls flat quite a bit. One great moment stands out in particular for me: gaining the ability to fly around on a dragon. When I first took off and heard the brassy, triumphant remix of the world map theme, I almost shed a tear. It was as if the game was finally letting me do the exploration I wanted to. What's more, flying is like flying the airship in Final Fantasy VI. In so many modern RPGs, airships have just become menus that transport you from one place to another. Finally, I was able to fly around in one of these modern, humongous worlds like I flew around in RPGs from my childhood. The novelty never wore off, either--I would fly from place to place just to experience doing so at times, even though I had the ability to teleport. When Ni No Kuni stops holding your hand and feeding you tutorials, which isn't very often, it's honestly perfection. I loved exploring new areas in the world, discovering items with Oliver's spells, and facing new monsters in strange areas. Sadly, these moments don't last as the game's world is smaller than it initially appears, but I savored in them as the game unfurled itself.
The main puzzle gimmick in the game is Oliver's magic. Like in the Golden Sun games, you get a variety of spells that can be used on the map to move statues, burn stuff down, and so on. This would have been a great feature, except it's lazily implemented and doesn't trust the player to do things on his own. One of the only good things about Golden Sun was how the map magic worked: you cast the spell, Isaac performed it, you saw the animation, stuff happened. In Ni No Kuni, you select the spell from a menu, Oliver sits there, no animation usually happens, the screen fades out, and the thing you needed done is done. It reminded me of working on games with the OHRRPGCE. Before implementing animations, I'd do a similar fade out routine. It was meant to be lazy, or a placeholder. When I cared about making it look good, I'd go through some trouble to do so. Therefore, it bothers me that Level 5 didn't go through the same trouble. Oliver's character model had the casting animations from the battle system, so why couldn't he at least look like he was doing something? Of course, the larger issue is that the game never lets the player solve these puzzles. Your ridiculously annoying fairy companion, Drippy, tells you precisely what spell to use at every roadblock. At this point, I'm almost desensitized to these things happening in games, but it's never going to stop stinging. Challenge me a little, game!
Ni No Kuni's battle system is a mixed bag. On one hand, it's the real-time action monster battle RPG system Pokémon fans have always dreamed of. On the other, it almost seems like less work went in to the battles than every other aspect of the game. The most satisfying quality of the battles is that they are usually simple enough to finish. Attacking random mobs head on is often a good idea, and finishes them off quickly enough; you'll want to, as the game has way too many random enemies on the maps for its own good, many of them near unavoidable. The problem is when the system tries to go deeper. When I noticed how difficult it was to toggle between action commands while moving around and paying attention, I knew I was in for trouble. In fact, one of the reasons spamming attacks is so good is that selecting from menus is so annoying. The monsters (familiars) that the game gives you, first of all, are basically just three or four types of fighters with different models. You have your tank attackers, glass cannons, pure tanks, and magicians. None of the familiars I collected had any unique abilities or special traits. This is a problem with the game that doesn't become evident until very late in to it. Unfortunately, it also means that familiars can effectively be distilled down to just the mathematical best choices. There's no reason to use Familiar A over Familiar B if Familiar A has the same role but worse stats. For all its faults, Pokémon at least does a good job making the various monsters have unique abilities and moves. It's a big shame that Ni No Kuni couldn't do the same since the Ghibli art direction makes the monsters look so great.
However, the biggest problem with Ni No Kuni's battle system, and honestly the game as whole, is the ally AI. Eventually, Oliver will have two party members with three familiars each and it's up to the AI to control them. The AI doesn't know how to control them. It tends to throw out the familiar with the highest stat total without any regard to its function in the battle. I can't count the number of times I wanted the AI to attack, but it sent out a healer and started chipping away instead of using the heavy hitter I had worked so hard to obtain and prepare for battle. The AI also loves burning through MP. It will waste loads of MP on spells against weak enemies, or use a healing spell when you take just a scratch of damage. Buffs get used essentially at random. It got to the point where I wanted to just have Oliver solo the entire game, but that's not feasible when your familiar is up against mobs of three enemies until very late in. You will have to rely on the crappy AI and learn its quirks to finish this game, and it is definitely the one thing, despite every other complaint I have, that prevents me from recommending Ni No Kuni to everyone.
While the battle system is deeply flawed, I should mention that apart from the whole White Witch thing, I think Ni No Kuni's story is well-handled. As one would expect from a Ghibli production, the world's very whimsical and doesn't get dark in a way that feels unnecessary or grotesque. For the most part, it's a feel-good adventure. I like to play games like this from time to time; it's one of the reasons I turn to Dragon Quest so much. The game has several mysteries involving characters, too. While it spells them out eventually, it was fun to try and piece them together as the game went on. I guessed who Shadar really was, but was happy when I learned I was correct. The story has Oliver return to the real world from time to time, sometimes to figure out what the alternate version of a character is having problems with or to interact with a few of Oliver's real friends. I liked these sections and felt they added a lot to the mythology of the game's universe. I do wish it went all the way and gave Motorville (the city Oliver lives in) some kind of resolution by the end of the game, though. In fact, until halfway through the game, I (and my friend SDHawk apparently) thought that the alternate world was a figment of Oliver's imagination and he was playing pretend to cope with his mother's death. I'm okay with the game not going that route, but it did feel like a major ball was dropped with regards to Motorville. Maybe if Oliver had met more parallel versions of characters, it would have felt better fleshed-out.
Oddly, I think my favorite aspect of the game is its sidequests. The quests themselves are mostly brain-dead: deliver an item, find something on the map, repair people's hearts, catch these familiars, and so on. Nothing you couldn't think of without playing the game first. What makes the quests good is that you get rewarded very well for doing them. The game gives you merit rewards that can be bought after doing lots of quests which do things like increase walking speed, cut the cost of spells in half, increase experience gain, and make familiars easier to catch. All of these things are simple, but they are nice rewards for the effort you put in. The more subtle benefit of quests is that they make a great substitute for grinding. Ni No Kuni's difficulty spikes quite a bit in several areas, but as long as you keep up with the sidequests, you won't have too much trouble. I am glad more and more RPGs are using quests in this way, as it helps the player feel like his efforts are worth it no matter how trivial they seem.
Ultimately, Ni No Kuni is a fresh, original RPG that came out when we really needed one. It has a multitude of problems, but it's a game that deserves to exist and I'm very glad that I played it. The problems I have are problems I mention because I enjoyed the game and wished those things were fixed before release or avoided entirely in some cases. You could say that that Ni No Kuni is a strange sort of "licensed" game, where a studio that doesn't make games came in to work with a studio that does. If this is the kind of quality we can expect from future licensed games, I'd be perfectly okay with it. My hope is that Level 5 recognizes the mistakes they made in this game's development and improves in the future. I cannot recommend Ni No Kuni unless the idea of a Ghibli adventure in RPG form with monster collection already appeals to you, but if it does, I think you'll enjoy most of the game; it's not perfect, but it's the kind of game I would have loved to play in my childhood.
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