I think there is somewhat of a curve to the experience of Ni no Kuni, and a lot of the disagreement you'll find about the game has to do with different players being at different phases of the game. I'm about 50 hours in, and I'm knocking on the door of the game's end. The majority of the "RPG" elements of the game have held up; I love (almost) all the characters, I have been thoroughly satisfied with plot and its twists / revelations, I love the music, I love the exploration, I love the horrible puns and the goofy familiars.
But as the game winds down, I have to say I truly, sincerely hate the combat. It's been a sort of parabolic experience for me. In Ni no Kuni's very early sections, I was pretty nonplussed by the fighting; of course, the game opens its mechanics at a very slow and deliberate pace, so that is to be expected. As I got further into the game, I started really enjoying the combat -- there would be frustrating moments, but they were always things I felt that were within the boundaries of my control and which I could do better. However, somewhere around the 35 hour mark, a sense of loathing started settling in for me as the fights became less forgiving, and the flaws in the combat system stood out more and more. Now, as I'm going up against end-game bosses, I find myself struggling to keep playing at times.
First and foremost, the AI is remarkably terrible. I've glanced at various forums, and most people seem to notice this later in the game (not sure if the larger # of available spells affects the games AI) and it continuously worsens the longer you play the game. Now, heading towards the game's final dungeon, the party members I'm not controlling can often be seen running against the wall with a familiar out but not taking any action. And healing -- forget about it. I've tried setting up two characters as healers, specifically with healing pets and setting their AI mode to "Keep us healthy." Somewhere around the 40 hour mark, they decided they didn't like doing that anymore. Even though I've given them familiars which have vastly superior healing capabilities compared to their own, they tend to dismiss the healing pet -- sometimes to auto attack / melee, sometimes to do nothing at all.
I've also hit a boiling point with casting animations. Many bosses early in the game have "cinematic" abilities that stop all other action. Bosses later in the game have tons of them, and sometimes cast them every 7-8 seconds (some more frequently than that). This leads to a situation where you cannot use some of your good abilities on numerous boss fights, because if the cast time is 2 seconds + the ability needs an additional 2 seconds to finish its animation, your abilities will get "canceled" in order for the boss' spell to go into cinematic mode. You don't lose the MP, but it *does* set your ability to use spells on cooldown.
And the bosses that leave damage or ailment effects on the ground, and constantly watching your AI teammates run right through them...
Watching the AI teammates bring out their familiars at the start of a fight and waiting 10 seconds before they'll do anything...
Switching from Oliver to a teammate in order to make them bring a familiar out or cast a spell, only to in-turn watch Oliver immediately dismiss his familiar and decide to go whack something with his wand...
Not being able to equip any of the badass, high MP abilities on your familiars because if you do, your teammates will spam them and go OOM 15 seconds into a fight...
The list goes on (and on, and on). Every layer of complexity and difficulty that gets added to the combat, I feel the flaws just stand out more and more. I can't see myself ever playing the game again because of this, and that is such a damned shame, because Ni no Kuni has shown me some of the most heartfelt, sincere moments I've ever seen in a JRPG, and the characterization seen in the game (I'm trying really hard to avoid any remote spoilers, here) is just simply excellent.
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