What's the Greatest Video Game: Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch

This is an ongoing list where I try to rate every game ever, the only rule is that I have to complete the game before it can go on the list. For previous entries check out earlier blog posts, and follow me for infrequent posting between Toddler naps and bedtimes.

Couple items up top, I apologize to my millions of fans for taking so long, it turns out the pandemic can be a bit much when trying to just find time to review games. With that said, this is going to be a long entry, because A) I just finished it, and B) I have a lot of thoughts. Ok, let us begin.

Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch (which will just be shortened to NNK below) is a game that might have the greatest elevator pitch sentence in existence, but sadly delivers in technicalities only and with no heart. If I was trying to sell you on a game and my pitch was: "What if Studio Ghibli (known for beloved Animated Films) was going to do a monster catching game, ala Pokemon." With just that thought alone, I would back that Kickstarter, or pre-order for my bonus artbook, whatever they were selling I would buy it. Which is probably why, I was incredibly excited to start and play this game. However, 3 long years later of multiple stops and starts, and FORCING myself to finish it when I was in the home stretch should hopefully tell you where I think this game might end.

NNK is a game that tries to have it's foot in three different doors at the same, which as someone with only two feet would possibly tell you is impossible. The first and most obvious is that this game wants to be a movie (it later became a Netflix one). When you can get a name like Studio Ghibli behind your game working on literally any part, you would expect a world that is vibrant and lively, multi-faceted characters, beautiful art and music, and a compelling story that works for both kids and adults alike. Out of all the things listed above, the only thing I can honestly say that NNK did correctly is that it looks great. Even playing it on the PS3, quite an old console, it looks amazing, but the hand-drawn cutscenes one-up the look of the rest of the game, and they come so infrequently enough that when they do show up, you get so excited remembering who was supposed to be working on this game.

However, outside the art I was let down with the trappings around the story. The game starts off strongly enough with a punishing death of a character, and then sets up a big adventure that will hopefully revive them when all is said and done. However, it loses the thread of that multiple times during the story, hinting at stuff we already know is coming over and over again, teasing the fate of the world trope, and giving us backstory to characters we don't care about 5 hours from the ending of the game. I couldn't tell if this was a game meant for kids to play and get something out of, or if it was just incredibly poor writing. When I say they hinted at stuff we knew was coming, I literally mean they beat you over the head with a twist hours ahead of time, then when the reveal happens, the game wants you to be surprised but unless you are daft that will never come. I feel like RPGs usually have a leg up in terms of story, we as players are signing up for 40+ hours of game, with the same cast of characters, we should easily feel for them as characters, but in NNK I could care less about my party, besides Oliver the other characters had no motivation to continue fighting.

And don't get me started on the ending. Seriously, it is one of the worst endings I have seen, and the fact that they couldn't do a studio Ghibli hand drawn animatic to close the game out. Just a pointless cutscene with a close on Oliver telling his mom he is going to keep living his life. Oh really? I thought you were going to lay down and die. I mean you are a 10 yr old kid, without a caregiver, living in a house by yourself, while the neighbor looks after you, but does not ask you to move in with her. I know this game is a fantasy and I shouldn't bring real-world baggage along, but Oliver is going to have a lot of hard years ahead of him, and unless he just dips to the fantasy world and starts living there as a king, I don't want to see what becomes of him.

Moving on! The other big selling point, is that this is a monster catching game ala pokemon, but Level 5 makes literally every wrong decision it could when making that decision. Not only do you not get the chance to catch monsters until 5-10 hours in, but catching the monsters is simply done by a random chance behind the scenes. If after K.O. a monster, the 5% chance falls in your favor, that monster will be dazed and you can play a song with them to recruit, but there is nothing you can do to increase that % in your favor until 30 hours into the game. If you had hoped to collect them all, or even build up a huge array of monsters, you will find yourself fighting hundreds of battles against the same monsters in hopes that THIS time when you kill one, it wants to join you. How did they flub this up so bad? They have side missions that are based on this very flaw, where you have to catch 3 specific monsters to show to someone, and it took hours fighting them over and over again, tracking them down on a map, so that I could get lucky for a chance at catching them. The game wants you to experiment with different characters, different skills, and different strengths and weaknesses, but unless your favorite thing in an RPG is grinding, you will catch the bare minimum of 9 creatures and move on, because it is not worth it.

Finally, lets talk about Combat. I have played my fair share of RPGs both turn-based and real-time. Both have their draws and I won't debate that here, but NNK here did a number on me. The game has a real-time combat feel, where you control one character (or monster) while the computer backs you up with two other characters or monsters. You can attack, or use abilities/spells, but this drains the HP and MP of the whole character. That's right! if you want to experiment with a weaker monster, or see new abilities, it drains your main characters MP, which you know, will be more useful on bosses or healing. Since each monster has it's own stats, you also don't want to throw out weak monsters, because any damage done to them could mean a knockout to Oliver. Not only does this not encourage experimentation, but it leads to battles where you just mash attack over and over again, to conserve MP for big fights or bosses, instead of on regular battles. Oh, and your two companions, well they do whatever they want, which usually translates to blowing through all their MP early on in a dungeon, getting themselves killed in boss fights, and just being generally unhelpful. You can set their attitudes before battle, and tell them to save energy, or be defensive, but I never found one that was satisfying. They either go on the offensive and help you kill the monsters and blow their energy, or do nothing, forcing you to kill the enemies and blow all your HP and MP to do so. I also hope you like animations, because probably 75% of the moves done by monsters require a special animatic, that is un-skipable, and nixes whatever move you had queued up when the game returns, so enjoy seeing enemies in later dungeons cast spells on you, while you sit on your hands for the 40th time "twinkle twinkle" is cast.

There is a lot in Combat I could go into; how bosses are reduced to running around as Oliver casting your most powerful spells and dodging their attacks until they perish, how the game tries to add nuance by rewarding you for timing your attacks, but it is a completely random and broken system, and how some enemy moves happen so fast that you can't react in time.. but what I want to say is that this game would have benefited immensely if they would have just stolen more from Pokemon (if the creature catching, evolution, and strength and weakness weren't enough). Having monsters with their own HP and MP bar would have allowed experimentation that makes sense, or trying to take advantage of elemental weaknesses, or making this game turn based, where you could utilize all three characters to work in unison with each other. Instead you are gambling on either being the healer yourself and hoping the computer is going to attack, or hoping that you can handle all the damage and that the computer is watching your HP and is going to heal you before you die. However, give players total control of that, and you could really feel powerful and that these monsters can have unique purposes.

I know that people will not agree with me regarding this game. I saw that some people reviewing this game (granted when it came out) called it "an instant classic" and gave it 5 stars. I mean they re-released it for some reason, but I don't know if these reviewers have just never played a game before, or perhaps are so in love with Studio Ghibli that they couldn't see anything past it, but this is honestly one of the worst RPGs I have ever played. I know there are ones out there worse, I have read about them on this very site, but I honestly feel this game took every wrong decision when making an RPG. Hell, there are only three towns and the game doesn't really reward exploration.. Give me Final Fantasy 2 (not the SNES version, but the one where you have to hit your own party to level up HP) over this game any day of the week. Because after 3 years of trying to stomach this game, I can finally say the nightmare is over.

Is it the Greatest game of all time: Oh heavens no!

Where does it rank: It is the 14th greatest game of all time. Worse than #13 WSOP. And only above #15 Harms Way (which is basically a broken game without an online community). 14th doesn't seem bad, but I have only talked about 15 games on this website.

Up Next: NBA 2k18 and NBA 2k20

I really liked Ni No Kuni aside from the 20-hour grind before you moved to the final dungeon (which was way harder than the rest of the game). But I respect the fact that it's not for everyone!

I remember getting a new monster, so naturally my first instinct was to see what that killer can do and throw it into battle. Then it literally dies from one hit from a standard enemy that shouldn't have been any problem, and since the monster HP is also the players HP, it's game over. What you are actually supposed to do is keep that monster away from any action for like 10-20 battles until it has reached a level not too far from your main party, at which point you can even try it out in battle without fear of immediate death.

@rorie: First, thanks for reading! I am curious as to how others played this, so did you constantly change out monsters, or did you find one team of 3 and use them for the entire game?

@apewins: Haha, yes after that happened the first two times, i learned my lesson, but i still found myself sticking to one team because the battles were not enjoyable for me.. so leveling up just to try out a new monster never appealed. I would assume it would be worth it, if the elemental differences mattered more, but in regular battles that was usually worthless and in boss battles using oliver was the safest and best bet to cover everything, so what creature you had for a boss was a non-issue.

Boy, I don't know that I agree the game had no heart. I thought the game bled heart. It's what ultimately endeared me to it.

As for how I played, I had about seven or eight monsters I freely rotated through. As I recall I played the game on easy, or found some way to game it with heals. I need to replay this.

@sparky_buzzsaw: That's fair. I felt that while the character designs were great, they essentially had no motivation and barely a personality outside of one trait for each of them. I think if this game has "Heart" it is how it looks, but not how it acts. However, I am but one voice and probably in the minority for this game.

I appreciate you reading the article, and if you do pick it up again, I would be curious how you feel 10 hours in. While I can't say that playing it on easy would have made the game more enjoyable for me (while i hated the combat, I didn't find it difficult) It might have taken the grind off of the game and probably saved me some hours.

I liked it at the time, but i cant even remember the ending. So i guess it wasnt all that great.

I do still call bananas babanas though. Thats this games fault.

One of my favorite games =)

I like a lot about Ni No Kuni, but I don't think I'm going to finish it, even though I'd really like to. It makes a lot of bold changes and is a really endearing property, but the combat lets it down. One second you're healing people's broken hearts, but for the next ten minutes you're grinding away on combat for levels or a new capture.

@peritus: Thanks for reading! Yeah, I heard that the DS version ends at Shadar which makes the game have a more complete ending (you beat the evil, your mom talks to you as a ghost, world saved).. However, the PS3 and later version has the game continue for maybe another 5-10 hours after the perfect stopping point where the ending resonates less and is more about a quickly shoehorned "save the world" trope.

@morningstar: Thanks for reading! Perhaps I went into the game with the wrong expectation.. I either wanted it to be Pokemon (which it wasn't) or a Tales/Final Fantasy RPG.. What is your favorite aspect of the game?

@broshmosh: Thanks for checking out the blog! The combat is the most damning thing for me. If they made a slight tweak (or maybe its not seen as slight) by either making the computer a better A.I. Partner, or not tieing the Creatures HP and MP into the main characters. I probably would have found this game more enjoyable. Like any RPG, so much is based around the combat and story, that if one is not worth it, the game becomes a slog.

@imunbeatable80: It's generally how I play most games these days out of a desire to not be bogged down. That's doubly true with RPGs.

I couldn't finish this game, and I'm a huge Ghibli fan. Meandering story, annoying combat with bad AI companions and I could immediately tell that the monster collection would be a giant time sink. I quit after recruiting the third character.

@theonewhoplays: thanks for reading.. 100% agree! I'm still in shock that the game took so long getting "started." Depending on how fast you were, getting that 3rd character was probably 15-20 hours into the game.

I agree with your assessment completely! I played this up til you get the boat and decided it just wasn't an enjoyable experience considering the hours I had left to play (and I rarely give up on games). The combat sucked and the story wasn't even there to intrigue me into continuing; to me it had the trappings of Ghibli whimsey and little of the intent. The world was really beautiful and I want to live in that first city you get to that's fish themed (cat themed?) or whatever but that wasn't enough for me, personally.

However I disagree with even slightly comparing this to FF2, that is a great game. :)

@snaketelegraph: Thanks for reading! Im glad im not alone in that feeling. The game looked great, and i feel that was probably the top of their vision board when desinging this game. The problem is combat and everything else was far to low on the list.