Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch
PlayStation 3
Back in my teenage years, my favorite genre of game was far and away the JRPG. It was the 90s and I played as many of them as I could get my hands on. Final Fantasy 7 through 9. Then I went back and played some of the older Final Fantasies. There was Xenogears. Breath of Fire. Grandia. The Shining Series. The Oasis series. Albert Odyssey. I had my hands full with them.
Over the years the genre has seen a massive decline in popularity. It was beginning to seem as if I hadn't played a decent JRPG in ages. If I ever wanted to play a good one, I had to go back and play an old game on an older console. Had the JRPG become a lost art?
Not quite. Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch delivers a solid, old school JRPG experience to the PlayStation 3.
I had heard about this game for a while before finally getting around to it. I thought its cartoony graphics looked really intriguing. I had read a few reviews for the game, which were all favorable. When I saw it on sale for a ridiculously cheap price on the PlayStation Network, I decided to make the jump and purchase the game.
I didn't actually get around to playing the game until over a year after I bought it. My Gamefly subscription had just ended, and I was now in the mood to play a longer game like an RPG. So I decided to finally give Ni No Kuni a go.
Immediately I was blown away by the game's graphics and presentation. It is more like you are steering your character through a living, breathing anime world than playing a video game. The graphics and animation are stunning. The voice acting is great. The game pulls you in with an interesting story line.
Right away I thought: this could be the amazing JRPG experience you didn't even realize had been missing from your life for over ten years. I had forgotten how much I loved the genre. I was ready to dive into this game and play my life away.
Let me tell you a little bit about the game's story. There are two parallel worlds running next to each other. One world is a normal kind of world, very similar to our own. The other world is a world of fantasy and wonder. Magic, dragons, kings, witches, robots, all kinds of crazy stuff. The fantasy world is under threat of a man named Shadar, who is using his evil magic to damage people's emotions and wreck their lives.
A boy named Oliver in the "real" world is pulled into the magical world to save the day. Each world has a "soulmate" in the opposite world. This means that one person's soul is connected to someone similar to them in the other world. What happens to one soulmate affects the other.
Oliver's mom has just died, and he finds out that she has a soulmate in this new world of magic. And she is in danger. So if Oliver can just save the soulmate, he may save his mom from death in his world. He embarks on a magical quest to stop Shadar and save his mother. This is just the very basic version of the story. There are many different subplots throughout the course of the game. Expect some big twists and turns. I'm not going to explain everything that happens, though. I ain't got time for that shit.
As I mentioned before, the graphics are terrific. It feels like an interactive anime in many ways towards the beginning of the game. Put that together with the game's slick presentation, its lively musical score, and some decent voice acting, and everything gets off to a very nice start.
If I was going to grade this game based on my first couple of days with it, it would get an A+, for sure. I was immediately pulled in by it. In addition to being a visual masterpiece I found the game to be extremely fun to play, too. Combat isn't exactly traditional JRPG turn based, but it is close enough. You aren't just limited to a corridor or a dungeon like every Final Fantasy game these days. There is a world map to roam. Cities to visit. People to talk to. Actual stuff to do.
Everything in the game is bright and colorful. The environmental design of the game is brilliant. It is one of those games that you stop to look around in awe every once in a while. Each city has its own unique look or visual theme. There is a huge cast of supporting characters. Everything feels very alive.
One thing that really makes the game feel so alive is its music. I kept admiring the musical score when I was playing this game. So many catchy little tunes. Some grand, sweeping orchestral numbers. This game's music really adds to its personality. I have several favorite tunes from the game, but this one is my favorite:
As I mentioned before, I was ready to give this game an A+ based on my first few days with it. It had the graphics of the Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker (but sharper and much more advanced). Characters and imaginative story line straight from am L. Frank Baum novel. And a musical score that could have come from a Walt Disney movie. I loved it.
Over time, however, my opinion started to change a little bit.
I still ended up liking the game in the long run, but I feel as if it started off strong and then tapered off a bit. I wasn't a huge fan of where the story line went. It feels very much tailored to little kids rather than adults. There are some plot twists and a few interesting moments, but nothing too Earth shattering. Mainly you just walk from one city to the next, run errands for people, do good deeds, repair people's emotions who were touched by Shadar, and collect stuff.
In a nutshell you are just traveling the world, doing good. Kind of like Romanian philanthropist Herkermer Homolka in the movie Congo. Exactly like him, in fact.
The story line is very basic and dull the first three quarters of the game. Its all about taking down Shadar and helping people. Doing good gets boring after a time. Especially when you factor in all the grinding and leveling up you have to do. The game is not easy, by any stretch of the imagination. In between each city you travel to, you must fight enemies. Lots and lots of enemies. It seemed like I had to spend more time fighting and leveling up in this game than I did in any other RPG I had played in the past.
So many fights are unavoidable. Sometimes its like "aaaaahhh just let me through. I know where I'm going, all I want to do is run through here! Why do I have to fight something every ten steps???" It gets old after a while.
The game's story line never does get much better. In the last quarter of the game, after you think you've won, things finally take a drastic turn from the direction they were headed. But even with the game's "big twist", I still found the story to be severely underwhelming.
I guess I am spoiled by stuff like the Walking Dead, Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, and Lost. I like dark, somewhat twisted things. I love big bombshells, shocking plot twists. Stuff that makes you think. The game's story line is too simple and cutesy for me. Even though things take a turn near the end, I had already stopped caring about the story line long before then.
I feel as if a fantastic story line is essential to making a great RPG. It is what motivates you and keeps you playing. What makes you not want to put down the controller, even after you've been playing for nine hours straight. After the first few days of playing, Ni No Kuni lost that hold on me. Sometimes I would go for days, one time even longer than a week in between playing sessions. It needed that killer story line as motivation to keep going. Especially when the game is so difficult and you find yourself having to do a lot of frustrating grinding all the time. The game becomes much less fun to play, and fast.
It seems like I am doing a lot of complaining about the game. But really, I enjoyed it overall. Even though you have to fight a lot, at least the battle system is done well. You can move around the screen in all directions while battling your enemy. You can switch back and forth between different characters, each with their own special tactics. You can only control one character at a time, but you can tell the other players how to play. Either with the default 50/50 attack/defense settings, or all out attack or all out defense. I have read several complaints about the computer controlled characters doing stupid things like using up all their magic immediately. Some of these complaints are legit, but they didn't bother me much. I just made sure I was well stocked on items at all times.
The sheer creativity level of the game is worth the price of admission. The look and the feel of the game. The game's environments. Its music. The different places you can travel to. In many ways this game is a throwback to RPGS of the old times.
And there is so much stuff to do. So many tasks to run, people to help. I find that what kept me playing most nights was running errands or completing tasks. I'd finish one, and be like "just one more!" but even then I'd keep playing. So while the game's story line may not have been interesting enough to keep me going, at least the title's game play mechanics were.
I'd recommend this to anyone who is a fan of old school style RPGs. Or even anyone who is a fan of RPGs in general. It is not a perfect game, but it was enough to renew my interest in a genre I had long given up for dead. Don't come for the game's subpar story line. Come for its crisp graphics, gorgeous environments, sprawling world, epic musical score, and fun quest system. Its a lovely game, but as far as story line goes, it didn't quite have the huge impact on me that I was looking for.
Overall:
B
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