YAR:

Yeah, I thought this was a DS only game, so I was a little surprised to see that bit at the end.
 
It looks absolutely spellbinding though.

Hooray for the art department, but the game has yet to convince me in terms of gameplay.
 
What makes this worth following, though, is that it is the first DS game that comes shipped on a 4 gigabit cartridge - that's about a CD-ROMs worth of content, because of the FMV and fully orchestrated(!) soundtrack. 
Also, the game is supposedly coming accompanied by a small hardcover book that is required to play the game and contains information, story, the bestiary, etc.
 
It certainly is an interesting project, this first Ghibli game.

Ah, well look here.
 

 
Left: The Book
Right: The case this game comes shipped in.
 
 
This is way too geeky to ever see a western release.

The DS rocks so hard.

This is way too geeky to ever see a western release.
"

Looks fantastic. And that Collector's Edition... DO WANT! There's no way it's gonna be released outside Japan though...

Those with a flashcard can now download get the Ni No Kuni demo (google / rom sites).
The filename is cvn-l5pp.rar .

 Ah well.

Having played the demo, and judging from the available footage, I must say there is little to this game apart from the visuals and sound that is immediatly impressive. Ni no kuni seems like the next basic, generic JRPG that doesn't do anything new or exciting in terms of gameplay and combat.

Now it looks and sounds spectacular. It looks even better than I thought it would, even the in-game cutscenes are absolutely great. The voice acting is fantastic. The FMV are fluid and frequent. The soundtrack is as awesome as you'd expect - but cut away the pretty stuff, and this demo could easily have been made with the RPGmaker.

The combat seems very, very uninspired. But we'll see. Its also very possible that the script and writing more than make up for this - I wouldn't know. I didn't understand a word of the dialogue in this japanese demo. :)

OK, if your all wandering why the animated cut-scenes look so amazing it because it was made by Studio Ghibli. Yep the same people that made Princess Mononok, Spirited Away and lately Ponyo. It movie quality anime in your DS.

Via Twitter yesterday, Level-5 CEO Akihiro Hino said a date has been finalized internally for a Ni no Kuni exclusive press conference of some form.  
 

"It looks like we'll soon be able to announce a variety of enjoyable things"

A ton of new screenshots from dengeki. Here's a sampling:

This is the reason everyone should own a DS.