mesoian

@Stymie said:

The boss design in some of the later fights also worsen the problem with the constant short-CD, cinematic spell casts. However, I've found the rest of the game endearing enough to finish it out at this point. I have a few other points I'm tempted to make, but hard to do sans-spoilers and I think they're just a little bit further ahead of where you are now.

Yeah, the farther I go, the more apparent it becomes that combat cannot sustain high levels. The game feels like it's shaking apart, which is a shame to see.

So, 30 hours in, major plot twists revealed, the end game in sight but still another 20-30 hours to go on this tale of self exploration. Ni No Kuni has been pretty damned whimsical, though it has teetered on the edge of becoming somewhat boring. Let's run it down, shall we?

The story has been nice, and I feel that's the best I can really say about it. It considers itself to be clever while being perhaps too easy to understand, undermining the cleverness dramatically. It's very clean, in that it seems to attempt to emulate a Hollywood script meant for children. It never attempts to challenge the player's conception of what's actually happening. More than a few times, I would watch as a scene of shadowy figures discussed plots against the world-at-large without any justification behind it, the lot of them being very cartoonish, mustache twisting caricatures of famous nursery rhyme staples; and I would wave my hand across the screen and declare "That guy is X, and that means X is Y," with near flawless results. At this stage in the game, my predictions have only been wrong once, carrying a slight amount of disappointment in that I think said prediction would have lead to a more interesting conclusion in the long run. Is that bad? Certainly not, it’s merely safe. Safe and tidy, which can prove to be a struggle to hold someone's attention for 60 hours. I'm hoping, as I move into the second half of the game, that things become a bit vaguer and a real sense of urgency is presented to the player. Probably the biggest disappointment I have is that I'm not feeling the emotional connection with the cast that I thought I would. Oliver and Esther are pristine characters; you know that from the moment you meet them to the moment the game ends, they will do no wrong. Swaine is slightly more grey area, but even then, once you solve his “issue”, the most challenging thing you’ll get from him is a little crassness ever so often. You can sort of look past it as Esther and Swaine have a bit of a rapport that works well when the narrative calls for it, but Oliver, being the pure hearted one, has to stay the Jesus figure; he will always fight for what is right and be sheepishly adorable on top of whatever emotion is called for. It’s a pretty dry engagement considering you’re out to save the world as a secondary mission.

That being said, the thing that has kept me engrossed and wanting to push on though has been the combat system. I've always liked the idea of a free roaming combat hub where your actions have more importance on things like whiffing or blocking or evading. The RPG trope of characters lining up on their arranged sides and taking turns whacking at one another was fine in a time where developers didn't quite have things worked out, but that we have games like Grandia, Star Ocean and the Tales series, which feel almost like action games every time you enter a combat scenario, I feel more games need to break away from tradition. It's nice to see that Ni No Kuni does this, but man, oh man, is the AI stupid or what? I spent 3 or 4 hours taking on the mid story swell boss rush last night, the end result usually being Esther and Swaine dead on the floor for the majority of the fight, and me, Oliver and my Puss'n'boots single handedly taking down whatever the game could possibly throw at us with little to no effort. Without going too far into spoiler territory, the story bosses are pretty shoddily put together compared to the monster hunting you can spend a lot of time doing on the side. Good strategy and AI Chaos takes a backseat to simple patterns which have more to do with running from one side of the room to another while trying to rush the enemy down. It's these boss fights that show how shallow the combat can be, and it's really a shame because the framework of it all is pretty amazing.

But still, even with that said, bumping around the world to see what lies within and beneath is still fun. I have my air ship equivalent, I can explore where I want, and the game does a good job providing you with systems that allow you to travel from place to place very quickly; which makes the TONS AND TONS AND TONS AND TONS AND TONS of fetch quests a simple matter rather than a time consuming chore. I actually quite enjoy monster hunting as these side missions can provide quite an interesting challenge at times; though, as already stated, if things get too hard for the AI to handle, they boil down mostly to my other two party members dead on the floor, and me and my Puss'n'boots taking on the world. Money never seems like much of an issue since the amount you get from regular battles feels like it increases expediently with the game’s length, and the pot collected from doing quests eventually gets pretty massive. There were points where simply wandering through towns netted me 10-15 thousand gold with almost no effort.

The music is good, the presentation is good, there’s nothing I overtly hate about the game thus far, I’m just not in love with it how I thought I’d be. There’s still a lot of ground to cover, I just hope that there’s something still in the wings that will really be the impressive amazing thing that makes me say, “Okay, NOW it’s on”. Trouble is, even if that happens, the game will have suffered from FF13-itis, where things don’t pick up until 20 hours of the game are complete, which is a real problem. Ni No Kuni is a slow burn, in and of itself. As it stands, it takes about 8 hours for the game to stop leading you by the hand as it injects narrative into tutorials. I can’t say that between those 8 hours and the 30 I’m at now, it’s been nothing much learning the systems, but at the same time, we haven’t had that 3 act climax. Being this late into the game, it makes me wonder if it’s ever going to come.

But I’m not giving up on the game, much the opposite in fact. I want to see where it’s all headed and really hope there’s a fitting payout in the end. There’s seemingly a lot left to see, entire continents that have things there but no good way to access them. Here’s hoping there’s some real twists and story beats that keep me on the edge of my seat rather than force me to be a successful profit.

DARK CLOUD 3!!!!

@Milkman said:

@IBurningStar said:

This is the post where Ben reveals himself to be a total twat, followed up by a sweet burn by this Ben Spurr guy.

I'm not on Kuchera's side here but Ben Spurr is a piece of a garbage. He's the idiot who made game where you beat up Anita Sarkessian. (uh oh, I said her name!) He's a much bigger asshole than Kuchera is and shouldn't be lecturing anyone about anything.

OH GOD YOU'LL SUMMON HER!

Seriously though, I didn't know he was the one who made that game. That's...pretty repugnant.

@LiquidPrince: If your store has it, which is the issue. It's sold out everywhere.

Short answer: Religion

@coons84 said:

There's too much of a mixed opinion for this game, some say it has tremendous difficulty spikes, or that there's mass amounts of grinding to be done, or that the combat system is too complex and clunky. If it takes 40-60 hours to finish, I think I'll buy it and play it on easy if its gonna prevent me from wasting more time grinding to get through a game that's gonna take a long time anyway to beat.

So, regarding that:

I think people who are complaining about having to grind aren't doing the sidequests. Side quests don't reward you with anything but money and items, but more than that, they force you to go back into enemy infested areas. There was a sidequest early on that asks you to catch a couple of desert mobs and I probably spent an hour finding and killing them over and over waiting for one of them to go heartmode so I could catch it.

The only other thing it could be is that people are wandering into areas that have really higher level monsters. There's a bit of connective tissue between the desert and the valley where the Crypt of Woe (castle of tears? whatever) is where some pretty high level mobs hang out and can cause problems, especially since they look similar to the mobs that you were just fighting. The game keeps you on a certain path that way that you can't really break out of until way later in the game. The only times I've died were when I wandered into those areas or I was messing around with newly obtained or evolved familiars.

@billyhoush said:

Hearing there is an easy mode sold me on this game. I played the demo and I'm simply terrible at rpgs. I couldn't beat the first bad guy but the story and atmosphere looks amazing.

To be fair, that demo is TERRRRRRRRRRRRRRIBLE at explaining how the game works. Going to the volcano actually did a better job showing me how to fight and use items and switch familiars than being thrust into a boss fight with no context.

@doobie said:

@Mesoian said:

Which is silly since the game is already incredibly easy.

i'd heard from multiple people and reviews that towards the end the game is really hard. so you must be like amazing at it.

I'm about 22 hours in and the only point that ever gave me any problems was Porco Rosso and Doing the quest to find the pieces of Mornstar out of order, so I ended up beating the ice continent while severely under leveled. I like the game a lot, but man, it's easy. Whenever I feel myself getting pressed against the wall, I just switch to my level 26 puss-n'-boots, who is still underleveled, and use evade and attack combos. I take no damage and end up doing 150-300 damage each attack session. Pair that with the Tin-Man I have Swaine using and you blast through pretty much every mob.

Edit: Oh, one thing that was surprisingly hard that took me by surprise was the battle tournament at the Trials Temple. I was shocked when my party wiped really early on. That was around the 12 hour mark though, I should go back and give it another try.

Oh, and the casino uses Vegas rules for everything except Platoon, so Blackjack is unbearable.

Which is silly since the game is already incredibly easy.

@JayEH said:

I love watching their "Let's Watch" of the MGS4 cutscenes

So dumb that Konami made them take that stuff down.