Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch, Part 2: A Nearly Proper Game, Ei’nt It?
Being an adult gamer with a job and a real life can drastically stretch out the time you take with one game. I began playing Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch over a month ago and ended my playthrough with approximately 55 hours, having played through the main quest and doing only a small chunk of side quests when convenient. I could have spent many more hours outside of the main quest.
In Part 1 I talked about what it was like to journey through the other world with Oliver—an ordinary boy-turned-wizard, and Drippy—Lord High Lord of the Fairies. But approximately eight hours into the game the dynamic changes, when a second controllable party member, Esther, joins the team. Esther’s specialty is taming familiars—cute-but-fierce creatures that inhabit the wild. Familiars are kind of like feral animals: they’ll attack you if you come too close, but impress them and they’ll get all lovey dovey, giving Esther the opportunity to tame them with a song from her magical harp.
Having more party members allows the player to switch between them on the fly and control other familiars—eventually three per character, one at a time. Unfortunately, the party AI in the game is not great. Whether controlling Oliver or Esther, the other will always try to use up all of their MP, exhaust their familiars’ endurance, heal too often or too little, and generally not fight wisely. Your AI-controlled characters are going to get knocked out often at first, and will continue to be knocked out often later, depending on whether you overlevel or just play the game straight through. This becomes problematic in new areas with higher-level creatures and in boss battles. There were quite a few bosses I had to defeat using only one character (of the three in my party) for a quarter or more of the fight. But at least your party members can’t use your items—they’d surely waste them. Of course, it means they can’t use Phoenix feathers to revive members, either, which could have been helpful at times. The difficulty of battles increases when your party first expands, and increases further when you gain your third character (about 17 hours in).
But the game’s charm cushions the often-frustrating battle system. The world is lush and detailed, the score feels ripped straight from an epic Disney film of yesteryear, and everything has life and personality. And the places, people, and creatures have names that will make you smile—from Ding Dong Dell to characters Kublai and Khan. If you’ve played Dragon Quest IX you may be familiar with Level-5’s penchant for name puns. And while I found them cheesy when I first played DQIX, I found them endearing and adorable in Ni no Kuni. Maybe it was because of my wife’s constant swooning over the creatures (the cat-thief-swordsman “purrloiner”, for example, or the “Sasquish”), but I hold fast to the idea that her reactions only enhanced it. You can certainly see Level-5 in the game, from the quirky creatures and characters’ personalities to the overall look, and their collaboration with Studio Ghibli truly brings the world to life. The world map is presented roughly to scale—mountains and cliffs are, well, mountainous compared to your party, and lands take a little time to traverse. A nice part of this presentation is that, on the world map (though not in cities or dungeons), the entire party appears on-screen, including any guests traveling with you.
The cities and towns, while gorgeous, are not as scaled. Yes, there is plenty of space to move and their sizes fit the pace of the game, but they more resemble very small cities than the sprawling metropolis they are often implied to be. This is further highlighted inside kings’ palaces—you usually enter into a large, spacious throne room that is nearly empty.
But I loved visiting the cities because each one captures a separate culture (complete with foreign travelers), customs, and the scenery truly feels pulled from an animated movie. I even find myself humming the city score when I’m not playing.
On top of it all, the story is well-crafted and the dialogues are great. There are moments that will make you giggle and moments that will make you sad–such is the power of good storytelling. Unfortunately, by the end of the game it becomes obvious that the White Witch was not present in the original DS version of the game and was added on just for the PS3 version, as the wrap-up of that plotline does not have as big a bang as it should have. The aftereffects of defeating Shadar could have been the true ending—and perhaps in the DS version it was—but you get literally under one minute of an ending after the White Witch business is resolved. It almost felt like a DLC story that the game would have been fine without.
But despite AI frustrations, grinding detours, and the abrupt ending, I enjoyed this JRPG more than many games I’ve played recently. It will make you smile, tear, and occasionally rage, and for the most part you’ll appreciate it doing those things to you. It’s a fairy tale built upon fairy tales, and it’s stronger for it. Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch is a charming entry into the JRPG genre with a good balance of tradition and modernity, and a fully fleshed-out world.
3 Notes/ Hide
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