Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch Greatest Hits / Grands Succès

Ni no Kuni is a game that has been on my radar for a number of years now, and I'm happy I finally got around to playing and beating it as I zoom through my PS3 exclusives that I've been putting off. A JPRG visually directed by the legendary Studio Ghibli (even if it was just a B Team) seemed to be a solid match for Level-5's recent successes with the Dragon Quest remakes. But despite this game being an inevitably positive and entertaining experience for me, almost every single thing about it is compromised in some way, and ultimately feels like something that could've been much greater.

Before I dig in, I need to mention the Wizard's Companion, which came with the deluxe version of the original Japan-exclusive DS release of the game, and it works as a beastiary, guide, artbook, and lore anthology all at once. It's present in-game in the form of a digital copy, but it's ridiculously hard to navigate, especially when required to solve a puzzle or follow a recipe. It really does feel like you're supposed to have the book on-hand in real life as you play through the game, and maybe that's a more satisfying way to do it, but the books go for well over a hundred dollars and, well, is in Japanese, so I didn't have a physical copy on hand for my time with the game. It's totally gorgeous though... so maybe one day.

The primary plot device sees Oliver, a perfectly normal young boy from a small Americana town called Motorville, transported to a magical world of fairies and monsters in a quest to become a wizard and save his mother, who passed away in his world but remains alive in the other. Every character in Motorville has an analogue in the magic world, so occasionally you'll have to interact with characters in one world to alter another. An interesting concept that surely ties into the ideas of magical prowess and all, but the trips themselves strip the player of critical thinking opportunities by outright telling you what you have to do at all times. Side quest to break a motor? Your Navi-esque companion will mention to you that there's a mechanic in Motorville, for example. They never leave any room for the player to explore this dual-worlds mechanic in ways outside of the immediately obvious - and that constraint unfortunately becomes a running theme of the game.

The pacing of the story is the first thing that jumped out to me as jarring. Ni no Kuni is an E10 rated game, so some compromises for the sake of a younger target demographic were to be expected, but holy fucking hell does this thing take a while to get off the ground. You aren't given another party member until 9 hours in, and you aren't even given a familiar to fight with until 2 hours in. The first continent, The Summerlands, takes about 10-12 hours to complete, but then the next two cities and their substories (The Fairygrounds and Hamelin) take a cumulative 5 hours. Around 12 hours in, as you prepare to receive your first boat, you fight three bosses in a total of 5 plot points, all of which happen with literal minutes between them. You also receive the fast travel spell and the on-command dragon to fly around the world within an hour of each other about 20 hours in, which felt immediately superfluous. It was little things like this that made the experience feel really unsure of it what it wanted to be - either whimsical gallivanting or this fast paced adventure, and often times it fell flat of either.

Oliver's quest to become a wizard is no joke - you'll learn something close to 100 spells throughout your journey - but close to half of them merely appear in your Wizard's Companion and are not usable in-game. In others, they are used a single time to further a plot point or solve a puzzle, and never touched again. A fairly non-interactable environment also means you couldn't play around with spells in innocuous ways either, like shooting a "Quicken Growth" spell at a flower shop to see if it is overrun. Every opportunity to use magic is scripted and doesn't reward exploration or imagination at all.

The worst case of this hand-holding comes with the Locket mechanic, which allows you to help mend broken hearts by taking traits like confidence or kindness from those who have lots of it and giving it to those in need. This give and take transaction comprises nearly half of all side quests in the game and is necessary to progress the main plot at many critical junctures, and in general it's a rather cute and charming mechanic. You might need to give a queen with a large appetite some restraint, or a bored ruler some enthusiasm, for example. However, to flesh out Oliver as a polite 12-year-old boy, every interaction with someone with a desirable trait - even when you might be on the fiftieth case - comes with close to a dozen lines of dialogue of Oliver working up the nerve to ask them if he could extract their excess heart, and Drippy directly telling you which spell to use AND which trait they are lacking. It feels infantilizing, removing any sense of thought to the situation, even if it is supposed to be in character.

Across your journey, you'll pick up three other party members, with a maximum party size of 3 at a time. All four party members can collect - and have preferences for certain types of - familiars, which are for all intents and purposes just Pokemon. They are captured at the end of battle if they like you a la SMT, and each party member has three to pick from, each with their own abilities, as well as unique spells and abilities when no familiar is summoned, which can lead to a wide array of versatility for one team across a battle. The combat is executed in real time, with pauses to select spells and items when the respective commands are entered, and also while selecting a target to attack. Commands are selected from a (very janky) wheel and are played out automatically followed by a cooldown timer. They can be canceled at any time, though, so you won't get stomped by an AoE attack from a boss because you were halfway through attacking instead of defending or evading. There are also a ton of rock-paper-scissors mechanics in play by way of elemental resistances and the familiar's "sign" - Sun, Moon, Star, or Planet - all of whom had different defensive and offensive properties when pitted against other signs. It's a lot to keep your mind busy, but ultimately the enemy designs are visually clear enough about these resistances that guesses are usually still correct.

The most immediate problem with combat is the lack of control over the party. As a Persona fan, I don't have an issue with only maintaining control of one party member at a time. The problem I do have is how thin the options are for party tendencies when they're left to their own devices. You can't order them to attack the nearest enemy (only your target and not-your target), can't order them to use MP conservatively (only all or nothing), nor can you order them to be careful about defending themselves without your input. In most fights, your teammates will take a shitton of damage from not defending and blow all of their MP on healing themselves. It works, ultimately, but nothing about it feels satisfying from a tactical standpoint. All of that said, it is very possible to take down creatures well above your level range with smart switching of characters, MP management, and simply staying on your toes and physically moving out of the way of attacks. Familiars with high movement speeds became crucial to my style of attack by the endgame, as the ability to run out of range immediately was consistently useful for the sake of survival. That of course means that my party never once took advantage of it by themselves, but I digress. I will say that the one saving grace of the combat is that, like in most other JRPGs, decimating weaker enemies with huge numbers popping up doesn't get old, and generally speaking, being overleveled is pretty fun.

From a purely aesthetic standpoint, there is very little to complain about. As mentioned before (and nearly every time the game is brought up), the visual design was handled in part by Studio Ghibli to great effect, with whimsical, pastel color palettes, a tasteful cel shading effect to mirror the look of their 2D work (which is exhibited in cutscenes a la Professor Layton), and a wide variety of interesting environments and towns. The world map itself that you traverse has some beautiful water and weather effects, and the masses of land (specifically the grassier hills) have a watercolour painting quality to them. The major characters also all had lovely Ghibli charm to them, with expressive animations and exaggerated regality. I liked pretty much every single thing in this game visually, with the exception of the familiar designs, which was more of a core issue of quantity. For some ridiculous reason, they decided that it would be a good idea to include 400 enemies in the game, all collectable except for the bosses. However, a strong emphasis on evolution (with splintering paths at the final stage) means that out of the 350ish actual familiars in the game, there are really just 85 or so base designs with some slight changes. Every familiar has four similar variants, and that can make a journey through the world feel a lot smaller than it needs to.

The soundtrack - composed by Ghibli regular Joe Hisaishi - is also consistently pretty quality, with the rather large caveat that the entire soundtrack is less than two hours long and will repeat early and often throughout the duration of the game. It just doesn't feel like the themes were meant for mass replayability as much as they were for cinematic purposes. Without fail, every first encounter of a theme in its environment took me aback (such as the title theme in the main menu, Golden in Golden Grove, Drippy in the basement of Ding Dong Dell, or Yule in Castaway Cove) and made me want to just sit around in the environment. From an objective standpoint, the OST is well above average, I just wish the first minute of each theme was a bit gentler given how quickly you'll be changing locations to end the game. The sound design in general was stellar, with solid SFX and brilliant voice work (at least on the English dub, which was what I played with).

In all, Ni no Kuni is a game with a ton of problems that still gets a gentle recommendation from me on the condition that you have a lot of time on your hands and appreciate this brand of JRPG. It's got far too many bosses, doesn't really know how to pace its own story, is completely tedious in many cases, and has some unsatisfying combat systems in place - but it is still a relatively unique experience for a PS3 exclusive, and aesthetically is an enormous success for a 7th gen title. It's clear that an enormous amount of time went into designing this world and its inhabitants... they just forgot to really polish the game part of it as well.

I'm very excited for the sequel, as it looks to absolve just about every issue I had with this game that I can see. Hopefully Level-5 learns from their mistakes, but in the meantime, the original will holds its own contentious place in the 2011 gaming canon.