Ni No Kuni 2 - Review @ MMORPG

MMORPG has reviewed Ni No Kuni 2:

The RPG Files: Ni no Kuni II: The Revenant Kingdom Review

Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom is the newest JRPG from developer Level-5 who is also known for their work on Professor Layton, Dark Cloud, Yo-Kai Watch serieses. A follow up to 2011’s smash hit Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch this entry isn’t a direct sequel. Similar to the Final Fantasy series this is a sequel in name and theme only.

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Loot in Ni No Kuni II is everywhere. In this way the game feels similar to an ARPG than a traditional JRPG. You can hold on to these items and build sets of gear that have certain elemental affinities that can help you with tainted monsters and other difficult encounters.

Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom is a solid entry into the Ni no Kuni franchise and another good RPG from the developers at Level-5. If you like games in the Star Ocean or Tales franchise chances are you’ll like this game as well. If you are a fan of older games like Suikoden or Dark Cloud where you focus on building a kingdom or city you’ll find plenty to like here too.

Score: 8.5

Pros

• Great visuals
• Lots of interesting characters
• City Building

Cons

• Chibi Graphics Overworld
• Monotonous combat

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More information.

Theres something about this thing that attracts me. Not the typical jrpg or anime fan but this seems to check a lot of interesting combos. I think I'm going to buy it if it goes on sale.

Buy it. I went to just try it and chill before continuing ToCS2 and now I can't leave it alone.

And IMO chibi openworld is not cons. This type of openworld is unique and perfectly fits the game being RPG/buildersim hybrid.

Well, saying folks that enjoy the Tales stories makes me a tad more interested in it than I thought I'd be. I'm assuming it is more like the latter Tales games, rather than like Symphonia. If, however, they had said "Trails" fans, I would have bought it directly on the spot!

And Dragon Quest XI coming to Steam in September, PC is feeling the love of JRPGs.

Goddamn it, I need to finish Ni No Kuni first. I bought it because the kids liked it, then I ended up playing it... and now I haven't touched it in a year.

Then again, I take it the story is totally new/unconnected?

Yeah I read about Dragon Quest XI coming to us computer folks, looking forward to it and hoping for the best.

Carnifex said:

I'm assuming it is more like the latter Tales games, rather than like Symphonia.

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Never played Symphonia. NNK2 is totally different from Tales and is totally opposite to Berseria. Honestly there is absolutely no game I could call a similar experience. It's uniqueness of a sort doesn't mean everyone will like it.

wolfing said:

And Dragon Quest XI coming to Steam in September

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Never heard of it. But if it has a kickarse story, bring it on!

Shagnak said:

Goddamn it, I need to finish Ni No Kuni first. I bought it because the kids liked it, then I ended up playing it… and now I haven't touched it in a year.

Then again, I take it the story is totally new/unconnected?

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NNK2 is a standalone sequel, the story is not related to it's predecessor, combat is different, characters are new and world execution is redesigned. In other words, you don't have to (pay for garbageware only to be able to) play NNK1 at all.

LOL, Joxer never heard of Dragon Quest. Not sure if he's trolling or just avoided JRPG news for the last 20 years.

There is a huge difference between JRPG news in last 20 years and switching horse with a donkey news.
Or to be more precise - if it's not on PC then it's such garbage PC audience would never buy.

Okay Valkyria Chronicles proved me wrong a bit, but we waited a decade to see it on PC because Sega was not aware what gem they were hiding from PC audience, underestimating us just because so called peasants didn't buy it on Nintendo or whatever similar rubbish it was made for originally. But that's just one rare example among thousands of shovelware titles that should stay away from PC.

I've been playing eastern games since the late eighties, and I don't recall a time that they've been anymore prolific for the computer than now. I mean, unless you lived in Japan and played them there, some of these games were hardly even known in the west, let alone available. Truly, the sheer amount of games that are around for us now are nothing short of amazing.

Carnifex said:

unless you lived in Japan and played them there, some of these games were hardly even known in the west, let alone available.

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I bet he made a dissertation on Dragon Quest 10.

I was playing a bit of this...you know what really makes this game stand out? The art, it's fantastic....it draws you in and is so smooth...it's like playing a rpg dragons lair. Or staring in a saturday morning cartoon.

I'm curious - is it so easy that it is boring ?

Try your average jrpg on nightmare/hardest difficulty mode, and you'll likely run into challenges that would have your average gamer fleeing back to Tetris. I suspect this game will have a setting that provides a sufficient challenge, it would be most odd if it does not, imo.

Carnifex said:

Try your average jrpg on nightmare/hardest difficulty mode, and you'll likely run into challenges that would have your average gamer fleeing back to Tetris. I suspect this game will have a setting that provides a sufficient challenge, it would be most odd if it does not, imo.

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I don't believe it does. I think there are supposedly some optional enemies who are super hard, but for the most part combat is pretty easy and brain dead. Even the harder fights aren't actually interesting, it's just that you might have to use some healing items. That's what kills the game for me, as interesting as some other aspects are. But your mileage may vary.

rune_74 said:

I was playing a bit of this…you know what really makes this game stand out? The art, it's fantastic….it draws you in and is so smooth…it's like playing a rpg dragons lair. Or staring in a saturday morning cartoon.

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That is wonderful to hear. I've been eyeing Ni No Kuni 2 for a few days now. Not only is the color palette easy on the eyes, but the game is visually appealing, too, which is a great bonus on the side. I may pick it up this weekend.

fadedc said:

Even the harder fights aren't actually interesting, it's just that you might have to use some healing items. That's what kills the game for me, as interesting as some other aspects are. But your mileage may vary.

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Some optional bosses will wipe the floor with you even if you spam revive party all the time. Also you can use IIRC max 10 healing items in the same fight, something like that.
Note however that one of party members has a default healing spell (but AI is braindead) and the prince later can unlock reviving spell.
Also there are "brownies" that can heal a portion of your health, then there are skills from research that make "healing balls" drop more often, etc.
Easy you say? Try some skirmishes without doing recruitment sidequests or boosting your "army". Oh, it ain't possible? You don't say.

The game at the same time provides both easy and challenging content. Easy for fastrunners, challenging for completionists. A proper design decision mainstream surebets would never dare to do.

Ragnaris said:

That is wonderful to hear. I've been eyeing Ni No Kuni 2 for a few days now. Not only is the color palette easy on the eyes, but the game is visually appealing, too, which is a great bonus on the side. I may pick it up this weekend.

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Visually the game is not watching but playing anime. I love it.

The thing with traditional JRPGs is that difficulty depends greatly on if you like grinding or not. I hate it with a passion so I never do it, but others do, and the same battle could be extremely hard for someone and extremely easy for someone else, and the difference is mainly that the former fought it with level 30 characters and the latter with level 50 characters.

Unfortunately for me that means many times I find myself frustrated about a final boss so I go to a walkthrough to see how to beat it, and they mention stuff like "This boss is easy, just cast Megalumbra and it does 9999 damage on it". Well, my Megalumbra only does 500 damage on it so I either leave the dungeon and run around in circles for a couple of hours grinding levels, or what I most likely end up doing, just watch the ending on Youtube.

This game is a bit different.
I don't grind without any reason here (some sidequests are "kill a certain number of trashmobs type though) and can't say I have any problem with the main story as I get XP from doing sidequests. It's the main story that's easy so "very busy" reviewers can finish it in a couple of hours. And fastrunners ofc.
One doesn't have to do sidequests here at all to finish the game and to kill optional high level bosses, trashmobs respawn and you can grind them all day long without caring for anything except the main story. Trashmobs that are a few levels lower than yours do not attack you - if you want to grind them, you need to initiate fight deliberately. Yes you read it right. When backtracking because a sidequest appeared or you couldn't solve it before (didn't have a correct item or spell), usually trashmobs will ignore you as you outlevel them too much.

In other words, this game tries to make sure any type of person can have fun with it. You hate grinding, okay, you don't have to do it. A game is not a game if you don't grind? Okay, there you go, you can grind till doomsday.

I've simplified it a bit, but I still say this game is something you've never seen before.
It ain't overrarted Dragon Dogma.