1. hellyeah9019

   10

   not a fan of these types of games but gave this a shot and so far great game. mature story, simple yet challenging gameplay starts easy but definitely becomes more difficult. 15 hours in. honestly this game will have me try out other games in this genre with out being bias towards them. i say give it a shot and hopefully you enjoy it like i'm doing… Expand

   • Helpful? 3 of 3 users said Yes.
2. Sceptic

   8

   I usually stay well away from the JRPG genre,but since the beloved Studio Ghibli was heavily involved I gave this a chance.It turns out that Ni No Kuni is a truly wonderful game despite it's agonisingly slow start.It takes far too long to perform alchemy and fast travel as well as tapping through a large volume of fairly incidental text.The linear nature of the game is well hidden,but there nonetheless.However,It's beautiful and wonderous to behold.The familiars are varied and fun to use,but I would have liked them to involve more care.Simply equip them and feed them and they'll level up automatically even when not actually used in combat.The worst part of this game is the MP system.There are multiple ways to heal,but the only way to get MP is through coffee and leveling.Sometime you may drink 10 coffees is a single battle which is ridiculous.Though I'm quibbling a bit,I love it even though a JRPG can never match an open world RPG.… Expand

   • Helpful? 8 of 9 users said Yes.
3. BigDragon

   7

   The Good This game attempts to combine the monsters of Pokemon, epic world and scope of Final Fantasy, gameplay of Secret of Mana, and story of a movie like Spirited Away. It does a great job of wrapping these things up and creating a beautiful and eye-catching package. Sometimes making a good game isn't about pushing polygons or competitiveness. I really enjoyed the characters, environments, and story development in this game. It's nice to play a modern JRPG. The inclusion of anime scenes and voice talent also added to the experience. Overall, a great game worthy of investing time into. There are so many characters and creatures to discover and environments to roam around in. We need more games like this one! I had to borrow a PS3 to play this title and do not regret it.
   
   The Bad Jack of all trades, master of none applies here. I found the familiar/monster designs to be rather lacking. It seems they took the good designs and played a DLC shell game with them across regions and retailers. The DLC creatures are much stronger than the ones in the normal game resulting in a major difficulty spike when you try to leave the first continent. This game could have really benefited from more appealing creatures to catch. Furthermore, the actual mechanics where you impress and tame creatures are unbelievably tedious. Metamorphosis resetting creature levels back to 1 is also very annoying. The combat seems to revolve around running away, restoring MP because it drains so quickly, and bumbling through switching to and from characters to keep the AI from failing to defend against attacks. Really tedious much of the time. The game also could have benefited from more voice acting rather than switching between anime, in-game animation, and wall of text mode. PS3-exclusivity also hurts this title by limiting its audience. They really should put together a Kickstarter campaign to get this game released on Steam for the PC.
   
   Final Word If you're a fan of Pokemon, Final Fantasy, Secret of Mana, Breath of Fire, Chrono Trigger, or other JRPGs then you should definitely pick up Ni No Kuni. The wall of text dialogue, tedious battles, and frustrating AI may (but not necessarily!) deter everyone else.… Expand

   • Helpful? 9 of 10 users said Yes.
4. Gastel71

   3

   This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Horrible, horrible jrpg, really. Read Ironsheik and and Nugs187 reviews, they say almost everything it should be said about this game. There are other issues though, like for example how useless and boring is all the "familiar capture thing" (there are hundreds of them and levelling up a familiar takes ages and almost all of them start at a very low level and they are useless anyway since you can beat the game by using always the same couple of familiars over and over, like I did), how cliched the game is (ie. first you explore the overworld on foot, then you can use a ship and finally you can fly on a dragon...how original, isn't it?), how the environments are really bad (fully decorated rooms in jrpgs are a standard since the snes era I think...try to enter a "castle" in ni no kuni, do you know what you'll find? A big empty room with a throne in the middle, I'm not kidding) and I could go on for hours but honestly this game doesn't deserve the effort. Shame on the developers that just took advantage of Studio Ghibli's collaboration trying (and succeeding) to sell a sub-standard game disguised as a "work of art".
   
   P.S. All the above is valid if you are older than 10, while for little children, played with their parents, the game could be great.… Expand

   • Helpful? 5 of 10 users said Yes.

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