This game seems to have combat resembling that of the Tales series. Now, in the Tales games you can typically customize your party members' behaviour to a great extent. You can decide if they're going to be aggressive or defensive, what enemies they should prioritize attacking, if they should try to be where the action is or stand at a safe distance, which of their moves they're gonna use and not use, if they should be conservative with the mana or go all out, how low they should let an ally's HP get before healing and so on and so forth. You can also pause at any moment during a fight to quickly give them some direct orders (or perhaps adjust their AI) and then start the battle up again. So basically, you can have them act exactly the way you'd like them to, and the process of doing so is very easy and elegant.

Is this also the case in Ni no Kuni? I'm kind of on the fence about getting it.

Unfortunately no, that is not the case in this game.

You have one option and the ai is pretty dumb, so you kinda have to jump around between characters to excel at the combat, or just load up the best familiars on one character and let the party members fend for themselves.

Lame. That makes me significantly less interested in the game.

You have a few options. You can tell the party member to attack the weakest,strongest, or the same enemy that the leader is attacking.

You can also tell each member whether or not to use skills. You can tell a party member to focus on healing or fighting (or to go "all out"). There are a few other options I can't remember at the moment.

It probably has most of what you are looking for, except an easy way to control each party member.

You just have the options to go all out, make them attack the leader's target, a different target or find the weaker opponent. You can also make them not do anything or provide support. That's pretty much it. It's not as complicated as other RPGs where you can specify the HP percentage when they will defend or use healing or items to heal themselves.

I'm not that far yet in the game, but I've been reading that it's either you learn to switch among the different characters which makes the combat frantic (so far this is what I'm doing with Oliver and Esther), or you just equip them with familiars that fit them or are strong enough to fend for themselves. The AI isn't that smart, so you just need to manage them a bit and check their health and magic quite often.

And the game is awesome and fun. :)

I just played through Tales of Graces F immediately before starting this game. Yes, you have more control in Tales, but here is my two cents based on my experience in Ni No Kuni.

I hear people complaining about the party members AI, but I am roughly 25 hours in and I have so far had very few issues. The two AI partners do tend to run through their MP very quickly IF you assign them abilities that cost a ton to use, but I have found several low-cost skills that do the same if not better damage. Eventually you gain the ability to tell them to either go all out on Attack or Defense and they respond very well IF you command them in time - which is, naturally, a huge part of the game.

I am playing the higher difficulty of the two and not once have I died because of the poor party AI or lack of control - I have only been killed because I rushed to a boss fight without healing or one of the very well-designed and intense battles got the best of me. Everything boils down to party management.

If you like the thought of a classic JRPG with modern sensibilities, a unique artistic design, and excellent writing, check it out. Liking Studio Ghibli films is also a huge plus. Maybe wait for a price drop sometime down the line if you are on the fence?

@Icemael said:

This game seems to have combat resembling that of the Tales series.

It might resemble Tales when looking at it, but personally I don't think it feels or plays anything like a Tales game. Only real similarity is the ability to run around during combat. There isn't really any combos or chaining regular attacks into skills or anything, and everything has some cooldown before you can use it again, kinda like the ATB stuff in some FF games.