So i was going to actually try for plat for this game but i stopped when i got to the one where you have to collect 250 different familiars to much for me even though i love game and its one great jrpg's i played in long time.

jrpgs have always been about grinding.

And further confirmed: I'm playing this on easy if I get to it.

Trophies have always been about busy work.

Yeah, it seems that at every second or third boss encounter, I am way too low level. I always think that it's just me being bad but after banging my head against it a few times, I just give up a grind for a bit. The next time I face the boss I absolutely destroy it. This first really occurred when you face the boss in the Trials section. I thought I was just garbage but in reality I was a few levels too low...

I also think the ai is just garbage.

Are there that many familiars?

grinding is annoying as hell and i hate when its a nesscassity to progress, reason why i love dark souls and persona 4.

No one has said said it yet, but its also purely random to capture familiars. i think i read somewhere its around a 15% chance to have a opportunity to capture and the rarest familiars carry a less than 6% chance to capture. I just spent over close to an hour trying to capture one in the desert for a side quest and finally gave up.

Also, is anyone getting a little Dark Souls vibe on the difficulty. My ass was getting owned early and often until i grinded up a few levels. And then there are the side quests, which dont tell you the difficulty or level you should be to take them on. i went after this one in the desert and my familiars were doing 1 hit damage while he would kill me in 2 or 3 hits. This is my first JRPG so is this normal on a lot of the systems in this genre?

It's not like you have to grind for that trophy. It doesn't even get you any in game rewards.

Aren't most trophies about grinding, no matter what genre of games?

@ManU_Fan10ne said:

Aren't most trophies about grinding, no matter what genre of games?

Depends on game but this game you would prob spend over 100 hours to get a plat. A plat in a shooter is alot less time or adventure game and so on. Plus some other games trophies have more insetting things than kill so many enemies forever until you catch 250.

@Patman99 said:

Yeah, it seems that at every second or third boss encounter, I am way too low level. I always think that it's just me being bad but after banging my head against it a few times, I just give up a grind for a bit. The next time I face the boss I absolutely destroy it. This first really occurred when you face the boss in the Trials section. I thought I was just garbage but in reality I was a few levels too low...

I've come to the same conclusion. I've found most of the boss battles challenging, but I've just hit the first one after getting the boat and it totally destroyed me. The thought of having to grind for an hour was what made me stop for the day.

@Dagbiker said:

I also think the ai is just garbage.

Absolutely. I've had a few boss fights end up taking much longer than they should because the AI won't/can't defend or use items to heal and ends up dead quite quickly. I then have to solo the boss using rather silly tactics which is always fun.

so theres not too much grinding in the game, theres too much grinding if youre a crazy person who wants to get all the trophies.

People are having issues with bosses in this game? Interesting. Also the grinding is dumb. Low drop rate on items you need for quests is getting rather annoying. Also quest variety is fucking atrocious with 80% being the boring Take/Give Heart.

Also getting pretty annoyed at the metamorphing your familiars. As they become absolutely worthless and with how gained XP doesn't ramp up at all and is at a steady slow upward curve it takes so damn long for your familiar to get back to an awesome state. Still waiting on my Aye-Aye Catcher to stop doing 7 damage and go back to doing 40 damage. But it just takes sooooo long for them level, ugh. Really poor thought process.

Ugh, finally my 2nd Jade Marble. Woo can finally move on! Someone shoot me.

I haven't even got to the point where you can catch familiars, but so far I'm enjoying the combat.

@me3639 said:

Also, is anyone getting a little Dark Souls vibe on the difficulty. My ass was getting owned early and often until i grinded up a few levels

I never felt like any boss in Dark Souls told me I was too low level. It always told me I was not a good enough player. Also, Soul Level does very, very little for you on its own.

On topic: For people who have played the game do you have absolutely zero control over the AI or are you choosing not to do it because it is a hassle or something? I am genuinely curious.

@Hungry: No control until you get the All-Attack and All-Defend buttons. Because as soon as you switch from someone they'll just start doing their own fucking thing. Even the AI options are terrible and they just kind of fuck around and do what they want.

I normally just use them as fodder while I just cast the weakness the boss has and just destroy it without much trouble.

Im cool with the grinding. Honestly first JRPG where it doesn't bother me at all. I just love being in the world so much that any reason I have to be in it is fun to me. I love finding and catching new familiars and training them up. Its great. =) I haven't enjoyed a JRPG this much in a looong time.

Grinding, much like chicken soup, is good for the soul.

@me3639 said:

Also, is anyone getting a little Dark Souls vibe on the difficulty. My ass was getting owned early and often until i grinded up a few levels. And then there are the side quests, which dont tell you the difficulty or level you should be to take them on. i went after this one in the desert and my familiars were doing 1 hit damage while he would kill me in 2 or 3 hits. This is my first JRPG so is this normal on a lot of the systems in this genre?

maybe a bit exaggerated compared to some, but the general concept is Pretty typical for JRPGs especially Dragon Quest games. In old school ones, there'd be no warning as to what difficulty you'd face. Some JRPGs have gotten nicer about this over time, but this sounds like a throwback.

If you find yourself hitting that wall, escape (if Ni Ni Kuni allows you to) and go grind a bit. That 1 hit dmg is a warning you are underleveled.

The difficulty ramps of most JRPGs generally expect you to grind periodically or do a large % of available sidequests before moving onto the nest story beat.

@Dagbiker said:

I also think the ai is just garbage.

It is pretty terrible. I don't know how long ago it released in Japan but they had to know this was an issue. Seems crazy that it was never fixed.

Stop buffing me the fight is over. Why are you attacking with your harp?

The AI is rage-worthy sometimes.

I just can't stand the combat

It's not slow enough to use any sort of though-out strategy and it's not fast enough to get by on twitch skill.

Also the AI is terrible

It's often a relief when they die because I don't have to worry about them anymore.

@Demoskinos said:

Im cool with the grinding. Honestly first JRPG where it doesn't bother me at all. I just love being in the world so much that any reason I have to be in it is fun to me. I love finding and catching new familiars and training them up. Its great. =) I haven't enjoyed a JRPG this much in a looong time.

Yeah, I agree with all this. It's a game that is truly more than the sum of its parts (and I happen to enjoy those parts).

Most trophies and achievements involve some sort of grinding or other asinine stupidity; there are a scarce few that are skill determined and only take 5-10 hours or so at most. It's still kind of satisfying to get platinums though.

@Slag: I find JRPGs to have a steep wall right near the start and then if you overcome that wall they become easy for the rest of the game pretty much, regardless of how much grinding you do. A few exceptions to this rule that retain some challenge throughout: Suikoden III, Xenosaga 2, Final Fantasy II, Final Fantasy XIII, Valkyrie Profile 2, and Vagrant Story.

I haven't ran into points where I would have to go out of my way to grind for bosses. Fighting any enemy I come across while fully exploring / getting all the chests in an area is enough to put me at a proper level. The annoying part is the low percentage chance of catching certain familiars. I've been attempting to get an auroralynx for about an hour now. This is with the upgrade to increases the likelihood of a heart.

@Turambar said:

Trophies have always been about busy work.

They have always been about 'rewarding' people for doing things they wouldn't normally do. No one ever seems to get it. Achievements/trophies we're supposed to be for the people that did random or ocd things in video games way before this, i.e. someone being a completionist. Like collecting a certain amount of something in the game when the game itself didn't really need you to do that. Now everyone thinks of they're there just to make me do it to get the achievement/trophy. You don't have to earn them, they're obviously not for you.

@EveretteScott said:

@Turambar said:

Trophies have always been about busy work.

They have always been about 'rewarding' people for doing things they wouldn't normally do. No one ever seems to get it. Achievements/trophies we're supposed to be for the people that did random or ocd things in video games way before this, i.e. someone being a completionist. Like collecting a certain amount of something in the game when the game itself didn't really need you to do that. Now everyone thinks of they're there just to make me do it to get the achievement/trophy. You don't have to earn them, they're obviously not for you.

No, they are there to try to give the game a degree of artificial longevity by having another reward at the end of a somewhat time consuming series of tasks. They are not there to reward completionist tendencies, they are there to foster completionist tendencies. Whether that's a good thing or bad thing is obviously up to the individual player. But their purpose are not exactly disguised.

@EveretteScott said:

@Turambar said:

Trophies have always been about busy work.

They have always been about 'rewarding' people for doing things they wouldn't normally do. No one ever seems to get it. Achievements/trophies we're supposed to be for the people that did random or ocd things in video games way before this, i.e. someone being a completionist. Like collecting a certain amount of something in the game when the game itself didn't really need you to do that. Now everyone thinks of they're there just to make me do it to get the achievement/trophy. You don't have to earn them, they're obviously not for you.

No, they are there to try to give the game a degree of artificial longevity by having another reward at the end of a somewhat time consuming series of tasks. They are not there to reward completionist tendencies, they are there to foster completionist tendencies. Whether that's a good thing or bad thing is obviously up to the individual player. But their purpose are not exactly disguised.

@Demoskinos said:

@Turambar

@EveretteScott said:

@Turambar said:

Trophies have always been about busy work.

They have always been about 'rewarding' people for doing things they wouldn't normally do. No one ever seems to get it. Achievements/trophies we're supposed to be for the people that did random or ocd things in video games way before this, i.e. someone being a completionist. Like collecting a certain amount of something in the game when the game itself didn't really need you to do that. Now everyone thinks of they're there just to make me do it to get the achievement/trophy. You don't have to earn them, they're obviously not for you.

No, they are there to try to give the game a degree of artificial longevity by having another reward at the end of a somewhat time consuming series of tasks. They are not there to reward completionist tendencies, they are there to foster completionist tendencies. Whether that's a good thing or bad thing is obviously up to the individual player. But their purpose are not exactly disguised.

Yeah but if your already the kind of person who just drives through the story and ignores the side person chances are you aren't going to pay attention or care about trophies anyways. Now its going to poke completionist interest but they are already the kind of people who went out of their way to collect every little collectable

If that was the case, we wouldn't hear about people doing tasks they dislike in a game for the sake of an achievement / trophy. Not because they feel compelled to by the game, but because they just want the trophy at the end.

@Slag said:

If you find yourself hitting that wall, escape (if Ni Ni Kuni allows you to) and go grind a bit. That 1 hit dmg is a warning you are underleveled.

Wait a sec. not even persuing the main quest and fighting the mobs along the way and nothing else will leave you that crazy underleveled in this game. are you sure you got all the game mechanics right?

Maybe you have swapped your familiars recently or metamorphed them and have a new set of fresh level ones you trie to beat a boss with? Or maybe you are trying out an attack the boss has an high resistance to or attacking his defended side etc..??

You dont have to grind in this game or check off all the side quests to complete the main storyline. By JRPG standards this is a really easy game and with the easy mode you can play it totally ignorant Brad style if you want.

Also the game doesnt punish you in anyway if you wanna swap between the difficulties whenever and wherever you feel to.

@ArtisanBreads: Just wondering, why would you play this game on easy for fear on grind?

These types of games are always full of the grind, it's (possibly) half of the fun.

@Dchao said:

@ArtisanBreads: Just wondering, why would you play this game on easy for fear on grind?

These types of games are always full of the grind, it's (possibly) half of the fun.

It's not half the fun for me, that's the answer. The story is most of the fun and hopefully the battles are fun enough but I don't find grinding fun. Even in games where I love the combat, like say Final Fantasy Tactics, I don't find grinding fun and I find ways to cheat it how ever I can.

You're talking someone who hasn't played a JRPG since I played probably 15 hours of Lost Odyssey.

So that's why.

@ExplodeMode said:

@Dagbiker said:

I also think the ai is just garbage.

It is pretty terrible. I don't know how long ago it released in Japan but they had to know this was an issue. Seems crazy that it was never fixed.

Stop buffing me the fight is over. Why are you attacking with your harp?

The AI is rage-worthy sometimes.

For random fights give everyone a physical familiar upfront and set their tactics to not use skills. Switch to a character and use their skills manually if you need to. The only time it's worth letting them go all out is during boss fights or especially tough fights. I've had few problems with the AI doing this.

If you need quick exp. but don't want to grind too much, there are two really great spots. Going to put these in spoilers as they are based on how far you are in the game.

The first is after you get to the third town, Castaway Coveand you get the ship, you can go to an island that is Northwest of Ding Dong Dell. The island is called Ugly Duckling Isle. There is an enemy called a toko, a little green dude with a staff. He gives 2,000 exp per battle. But you have to be quick, he will put you to sleep and escape if you are not fast enough. He is pretty easy to beat however if you just maul him, go all out.

The second is much later in the game, but is the single best and fastest way to grind. You can get to this after Hamelin, and after Skull Mountain. After you get the dragon so you can fly around, go back to the continent Hamilin is on, and find a spot on the west coast, an area called Billy Goat Bluff - South. You will find the Tokotoko. He is the same as the first, but he gives 8,000 exp per battle. He is much more scarse than the first guy though. You might spend 10 minutes trying to get one. But its well worth it. I got lucky and got two back to back, leveled up six levels in a matter of minutes.

In regards to the second section above.

I did a 10 minute run of the area mentioned, I found four of them. Netting me a total of roughly 45,000 experience between those four battles and the other 10 or 12 battles I had looking for them. That is quite a boost to your party. And really fast way to level up those low level familiars you have sitting in your manhole resort thing (I forget the name).

I got a little over 20 hours in and suddenly I had to do a lot more grinding. I haven't touched the game in over a week. I've been seriously contemplating playing this on easy because I would like to finish it before March when Bioshock, God of War, Gears of War, and Tomb Raider come out. Does anyone know if it's possible to play on easy and retain some challenge?

@Demoskinos: Ugly Duckling Isle. Its the farthest south of the Swan Island isles. Sorry I gave the wrong location above, it is not Southwest, it is Northeast. All the way to the very top of the map in the middle, above the Summerlands.

Sorry for the sideways image, I couldn't figure out how to rotate it in my images on here.

I knew those guys had to be the Metal Slimes of this game. Saw two of them run off on me and a little shocked. Guess it'll make some of these later game tasks easier as they're just plain grind level tasks. Even 2,000 a battle is good enough.

@Turambar said:

Trophies have always been about busy work.

it also gives some game more playabilaty. i would rarely play a game more then once if it was not for the trophies and i really dont care about them that much.

@Demoskinos said:

@oulzac You know what the name of the island is? I wanna see if I can find this guy.

You can also find it at Billy Goats Bluff, the stretch of land south of perdida.

@Grillbar said:

@Turambar said:

Trophies have always been about busy work.

it also gives some game more playabilaty. i would rarely play a game more then once if it was not for the trophies and i really dont care about them that much.

And that fits in line perfectly with what I said a few posts up: trophies and achievements are there to foster completionist tendencies in people, creating artificial longevity in games. That's not a condemnation of them, just a blunt statement of what they do.

kickflips are better

Grinding for me is exciting because I'm desperate to see my next transformation for my familiar!

@Turambar said:

@Demoskinos said:

@oulzac You know what the name of the island is? I wanna see if I can find this guy.

You can also find it at Billy Goats Bluff, the stretch of land south of perdida.

Yeah, that was the second part of my spoiler, that one gives 8,000. I put that in a spoiler as you need something special to get to it, later in the game. There is also another end game/post game that gives 24,000.

If the grinding is as bad as it is then I'm just gonna drop the difficulty because I'm mostly coming to this for the story and art.

@Turambar said:

@Grillbar said:

@Turambar said:

Trophies have always been about busy work.

it also gives some game more playabilaty. i would rarely play a game more then once if it was not for the trophies and i really dont care about them that much.

And that fits in line perfectly with what I said a few posts up: trophies and achievements are there to foster completionist tendencies in people, creating artificial longevity in games. That's not a condemnation of them, just a blunt statement of what they do.

diddent see that post. but yep pretty much

Yeah got to a point last night where I finally need to grind. I'm level 34 and the first 2 stones were easy enough but the glittering grotto is no joke. I was getting worked even with the right familiars and equipment to counteract ice/water attacks. Think I will do the first 2 trail tournaments and then check out the forest area again for the revamped boss

@Colourful_Hippie:

It's not that bad at all. Late game I'm actually having a hard time keeping myself from overleveling too much. Doing all the quests and fighting a handful of Toko's I ended up making much of the late game pretty easy without actually trying.

The game makes it really easy to overlevel and breeze through the game if you really want to.