Ni no Kuni's been an interesting experience so far, though I suppose I owe it more than such a dismissive euphemism. It's not a game I was sure I was going to like, and some 50 hours later heading into the game's final act I still have yet to make up my mind.

Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch is a 2011 PS3 RPG from Level-5, a studio that's been making JRPGs for a very long time now. What's interesting is that they knew how to make an amazing RPG right off the bat, due in part to the studio being put together by industry veterans. Dark Cloud, Dark Cloud 2, Dragon Quest VIII and Rogue Galaxy -- their four PS2 contributions to the genre -- are four of the best games in that system's library and sit comfortably with the likes of Final Fantasy X and XII, the third and fifth Suikodens, Personae 3 and 4, Shadow Hearts: Covenant and the many, many other sterling examples of the JRPG format available for the PS2.

Oddly, though, I've found that their recent JRPGs have actually dropped off in quality rather than the expected reverse, as they often seem to be focusing their efforts elsewhere. (Efforts like telling a very British man in a top hat how to solve puzzles, or their very interesting collaborative Guild series for the 3DS eShop, or their multiple non-gamerelatedprojects.) Though still custodians of Square-Enix's juggernaut Dragon Quest series, DQIX failed to retain my interest (which is odd, because it's probably better than VIII in all respects besides graphically, but man does that game give you a lot to do) and the less said about the interminable White Knight Chronicles pseudo-MMO franchise the better. Because Ni no Kuni has heavy involvement with Studio Ghibli, who were probably a little hesitant about adapting its animation and storytelling into a video game, Level-5 decided to play it safe and build Ni no Kuni on top of their familiar DQ template, factoring in the DQ Monsters Joker spin-off's collectible monster-raising aspects. Even the game's cel-shaded characters, based on veteran Ghibli artist/animator Yoshiyuki Momose's artwork and cutscene animations, are adapted from their traditional hand-drawn concept art in a similar way to Akira Toriyama's contributions to Dragon Quests VIII and IX.

Now, I don't know if this is something I delve into often, but I'm not a fan of monster raising games in general. I don't particularly care for any instance where you're expected to frequently switch out party members for better ones. I like having party members I can grow used to, to grow fond of, to grow old together with... all right, I'm getting a little too affectionate with virtual computer people now, but I like a static party that develops in fascinating ways as the characters themselves develop in their respective narrative arcs. I also don't mind revolving door scenarios if the temporary characters get at least some time in the limelight, so that their absence becomes all the more poignant (or relief-inducing, in some cases). I don't much care for a bunch of interchangeable goblins and cute critters that, for all I know, are perfectly useless fighters that the developers just threw in for color. Of course, I won't know that until I've spent a few hours raising their levels and then evolving them and then raising their evolved form's levels because they started back at level 1 because of amazing reasons I'm not privy to. This isn't what I want to do for fun. This is agony.

Ni no Kuni has so much going on at the peripherary that I don't even care too much though. I enjoy:

• The semi-real-time combat system. It's fairly MMOish, perhaps a lot closer to Final Fantasy XII than I anticipated going in, with some interesting strategic counterattack elements.
• The storytelling. Though it's a little basic and intended for kids, it's still a very layered traditional Ghibli fairytale that gets a bit darker towards the part I'm at. Hell, it started kind of dark. Between it and Guardians of the Galaxy I'm starting to wonder what the deal is with starting your fun adventure times with a harrowing death scene.
• All the dumb side-stuff. Stuff like stealing emotions from people who have too much to give to those with too little, like some sort of Shang Tsung/Robin Hood hybrid, or working on my alchemy, or chasing down some bounties, or backtracking for treasure chests I couldn't open until recently.
• How much detail has been put into its world. It's reflected in the fully digitized real-world feelie that is the Wizard Compendium book with all its little secrets and advice.
• The card game they invented for the game's customary optional casino area that is actually quite a lot of fun, unlike Fallout: New Vegas's Caravan (plus, it's easy to exploit for mucho dinero).

The presentation is top-notch, there's no denying it. I just don't like the core. I still want to see it through to the end and... hell, who am I kidding, I'll probably even 100% the thing. Is that weird?

I just can't help but feel exasperated whenever I'm feeding a familiar (what the game calls recruitable creatures, like wizard familiars) treats so it'll like me more and evolving it only to find out its last form is a lemon, occasionally literally. Still... while I like this cat pirate I'm rolling with now fine enough, I just know that among the hundreds of little guys, there's another creature out there even better suited for my playstyle... dammit. I guess I'll just keep fighting them in the wild until they arbitrarily decide to join me, then I'll probably give them all to that creepy manhole monster to look after. Pretty similar to how I played Pokemon, now I think about it.

Outmanned and Outpunned

Anyway, this is all just an over-elaborate set-up meant to segue into my other topic of discussion today: Games with copious amounts of punnery.

Ni no Kuni in particular has a lot of puns. The game's apundent with them. My cup punneth over, in fact. Not only do all the familiars in the game have vaguely punnish names, another aspect the game shares with its Dragon Quest spiritual forebears, but every single monster type in the game -- which includes evolution stages, putting the number in the 300s, though there's many evolutions that can't be caught in the wild and therefore won't appear on a naming screen -- has four "suggestions" for names which are themselves puns. Some are pundamental, simply taking the name of the thing and working it into a regular first name, while others are a little more sophisticated and clearly written by someone with a propunsity for wordplay. Since I always give my monsters dumb pun names in games like these, it's been something of a quixotic quest of mine to try to outdo all the game's suggested names. Often, I'll give something a clever moniker only to find out that its also the name of an evolved form. There's nothing like being on a pun master's wavelength, but a lot of the inadvertent joy (and challenge) I've derived from this game has been from trying to out-pun it. That's probably a little weird too.

Besides the aforementioned Dragon Quest VIII and IX, one of the Legend adventure games I've meaning to get back to -- that would be Callahan's Crosstime Saloon -- was full of the punfortunate things too. The game has such excellent comedic writing in general that it seems a little punfair to focus on that one type of humor, but there's a few instances where it really stands out. Often, two or more characters will just start spouting puns at each other until one of them cries uncle. It's a weirdly endearing trait of the game, and it'll happen no matter how dangerous the situation, which gives the game a pleasingly irreverent tone that seemed to be de rigueur in 90s media (The Last Boy Scout and Hudson Hawk being particular favorites of mine. Bruce Willis has always been great at deadpanning. Nowadays he's just dead on the inside). I'd really like to resume LPing that one, actually. Maybe I can just do an all-jokes (whenever context isn't strictly necessary, anyway) version. In addition, there's plenty of Japanese games with big lists of collectibles that the localization team will tend to have some punning fun with, such as the Boos of Luigi's Mansion or the monkeys of Ape Escape.

Anyway, moving back to Ni no Kuni, I decided to create a fun little quiz for you all. What follows are some familiars from the game with a general description of what they look like and five names: four of these are built-in suggestions proffered by the game's name input screen, and in the midst of those four names is a fifth which I came up with. See which ones you prefer; it can be harder than it first seems to out-do this game's punspicacity.

Quiz Time, Fools. Blaow!

A: Rhinosaur: What appears to be a reptilian-rhinoceros hybrid. Slow and powerful and one of the earliest tanks you can find.

1. See-Saur
2. Saur-Spot
3. JudgeRhino
4. Squisher
5. Rhino

B: Firebyrde: A late-evolution bird enemy, found near the start of the game but in a region only the game's airship equivalent can reach. An obvious boon for the game's snowier regions.

1. Torchy
2. Firebert
3. Flamey
4. Scorchio
5. Pyreo

C: Naja: A basic cobra-like creature, found in the game's first dungeon. Successive evolutions also play on the word "Naja". (In retrospect I think I may have made this one too easy.)

1. Carnaj
2. Minaj
3. Teenaja
4. Badinaj
5. Najartime

D: Pom Pom: A floating toxic ball with a goofy expression, not too dissimilar to Koffing. Future evolutions include Pompeii (which has flame-based skills) and Pomagranite (which has Medusa-esque petrification powers).

1. Pommie
2. Pom
3. Whinger
4. Pom Pilot
5. Sook

E: Turbandit: A little guy in a purple turban who wanders around the desert. He's speedy and evasive but not much of a powerhouse, though his future evolutions have a lot of magical oomph. Evolutions named "Turban Myth" and "Turban Legend", for the record.

1. TurbaGrafx
2. Bendit
3. Banjamin
4. Turbangela
5. Turbarry

F: Whambat: A giant bat. Reminds me a lot of Golbat actually, with its huge mouth and tiny wings.

1. Whambo
2. Whamber
3. Ridgeley
4. William
5. Winfred

G: Purrloiner: A bipedal pirate cat. It stands around grooming itself as an idle animation, and has a little cutlass and everything. Adorable.

1. Purrcy
2. Purrcival
3. Purrince
4. Purrice
5. Garrrfield

H: Bougie: A serpentine ghost with a little lantern. Instead of "boogey" it's "bougie", as in bogey.

1. Bouregarde
2. Bougart
3. Boubridges
4. Bouberry
5. Boogie

I: Impaler: A tiny imp holding a spear. They spent all night coming up with the name for this one. Oddly, it's one of a handful of creatures that will always chase after you on the overworld, whereas most will flee EarthBound-style once you reach a certain level threshold.

1. Stabby
2. Poko
3. Jibjab
4. Chevy
5. Proderick

J: Bone Ranger: The first evolution of the game's skeleton enemy. They get progressively cooler looking as they evolve. The final forms of Bone Brigadier and Bone Baron have an interesting divergent evolutionary path, where the Baron is the considerably weaker of the two until around level 90 when it suddenly becomes one of the strongest familiars in the game.

1. Skulomania
2. Skullator
3. Skelextric
4. Skellywag
5. Skelamanga

Answers on a postcard to... I dunno, just write them in the comments. Save yourself a postcard. They're not cheap. Thanks for stopping by, and sorry for all the puns. (I'm not sorry.) (At least, not very.) (Ni no Kuni started it.)

Oh, now I get why you were in pun mode earlier. All is forgiven.

I fuckin' love you, man.

I think Ni No Kuni is next on my to-play list after I finish Persona 4 Golden. And considering I'm only in the very first dungeon on P4G, I should be starting Ni No Kuni somewhere around next April.

Ni No Kuni is a great game. Totally worth the $20 it's for on PSN. Wish I had jumped on the Wizard edition before it became one of the rarest collector's editions in recent memory.

I've said this many times on here but I'll say it again, Ni No Kuni was the best game of 2013 and one of my favourite games.

One day I will get a PS3, and this game is on the list of why. I love all dumb jokes, including puns. I'm struggling to think of other games with great non-referential humour. I'm sure they're out there; I just have a bad memory. I think the funniest game I've played in a while is Octodad. The writing and scenario was okay, but it was mainly just the way the character moved that made the game funny. It's rare to find a game where the main concept is not only fun to play but also hilarious.

Rule #1 for kids stories: The mom is dead.

This is especially true for Disney, but happens basically everywhere else too.

Between it and Guardians of the Galaxy I'm starting to wonder what the deal is with starting your fun adventure times with a harrowing death scene.

If you pay attention, adventure stories in general seem to have no problem with death as long as the major characters don't die and there isn't all that much blood.

This game was basically made for you. Great game, was on my top 10 last year! I really enjoyed the game even if it does have a very plodding pace. So much, in fact that I got the platinum trophy after grinding for nearly 100 hours.

I should really finish Ni No Kuni, but Xenoblade just arrived in the mail..

Also, I *really* didn't like the monster stuff in NNK. It's kind of the only thing in the game that bums me out and makes me feel not super pumped to play it, otherwise it was an unbelievable first 15ish hours I put in. Kinda died a lot though.. :S

• A3
• B2
• C2
• D4
• E1
• F1
• G5
• H4
• I4
• J2

Did I win?

@slag: 6/10. Told you it was harder than it looks.

Definitely enjoyed my time with it, but it was one of those titles where I could write a giant list of minor changes that could have made it so much better. The game is also 30 hours longer than it needed to be, and it's a little too punishing for how little control you have over your party members.

But I only complain because the rest of the game is so damn good. Like you said, the presentation and attention to detail is unbelievable.

And the game has a world map! A JRPG with a world map on a modern console! Whodathunkit.

The puns are one of the many reasons why I adore this game. Top 5 for me last year.

This reminds me that I need to get back into Ni No Kuni and finally beat it. One of the problems you highlighted is the main reason I'm having such a hard time getting through it, which is when you evolve your monsters they revert back to level one, and if you want your main monsters to become stronger you have to do this process twice for every member in your party! God forbid you decide to swap some monsters out, then you have to do it again! For such a charming game the grind can be so unbearable at times.

Im 30 hours into it and I think its great, but I too don't enjoy the monster raising element. I just went online and looked up "best familiars" and am creating a team based on my findings. Also, I captured both dinoceros and lumberwood on my first try, and they have very low percentage rates for capturing. It's okay to be jealous of me.

@mento: right now it looks like I win by default. That's good enough for me!

This is a game that feels like it could've used another six months in the oven, for a lot of reasons. I like it a lot but I really doubt I'll ever play it again.

I would've loved to be a fly on the wall when the decision was made to call it Ni No Kuni in the U.S. market. It just seems a little arrogant not to bother to translate the title of the game into English when you're already going to the expense of porting the entire thing into English to sell it here. I'm all for subtitling games and anime and listening to them with the original V/O actors and all that, but I can't help but feel that they probably lost a few thousand or tens of thousands of sales by not just calling it Another World: Wrath of the White Witch or Another World: Presented by Studio Ghibli or something like that. Sometimes the obviously douche-y marketing titles for a game are the ones that you want to use to maximize sales, and calling this game Ni No Kuni in the U.S. market probably hurt it's commercial viability a bit.

I think this is a little unfair. Considering games like Shin Megami Tensei IV have been localized just fine without a translated English title (not to mention all of the games Atlus has released using the Shin Megami Tensei name as branding), I don't see why such an expectation should be made of Ni no Kuni.

I played it for 45 hours last year and finished it fine, but I was definitely tired of it by the end.

I love most Studio Ghibli films, but I just couldn't get into the story or characters for this. Maybe casually watching a movie less than 2 hours is less to ask for me than focusing on a game 40+ long? Maybe if the environments -- as beautiful as they were -- had a lot more style to them? Grassy kingdom; sewers; forest; desert; snow, at one point; it all looked plain except for minor stylish choices like a kingdom that was cat-themed. I will say this: I loved it a little too much when the characters were in cold, snowy weather and needed appropriate clothing ("You're on a snowy mountain, Tidus. You asshole. Take your ridiculous shorts and crop top and go home.").

I didn't like the combat. It was fine most of the time because I breezed by fights okay, but there were definitely times when my AI characters were making really poor decisions. Unless it's turn-based, I don't really want to micro-manage. Maybe there was a more extensive system in Ni No Kuni, I don't know, but I enjoyed FFXII's Gambit system because it was in-depth enough where every supporting character had 6-7 commands and scenarios, and I didn't have to worry whether or not they were doing the job.

I didn't like monster side-kicks, either. I stuck with the initial choices, leveled them up, and didn't look back. I only got more if I needed enough for each character. Maybe if I played Pokemon growing up...but unless it's the main conceit of the game, I'd rather just move on without spending too much time hunting for monsters I couldn't care less about.

Errands were boring, too. And I did a lot of them.

Whambo has cool sunglasses.

HOLY SHIT THIS GAME CAME OUT THREE YEARS AGO?

Man, time freaking flies. I feel like the game came out last year. Mind blown.

EDIT: Nevermind, it did come out last year in North America... 2011 is the original Japanese release date. Phew.

That may be true. But I honestly don't understand any of those decisions. When you bring a game to the English market it feels a little foolish not to give them a clear and forceful English translated title. If a game is somewhat obscure in its gameplay mechanics, to the point where you expect that only relatively knowledgeable players will discover it (as may be the case with Shin Megami Tensai), then I can see the case where obfuscation might be a benefit (in the sense that you're making it clear that you're appealing to the hardcore market, who in turn feels appreciated by that specialized attention), but Ni No Kuni feels pretty accessible. I don't see how they would've lost anything by making the name a bit more legible to the casual audience and stressing the association with Totoro and Spirited Away in the marketing. I'm guessing that Studio Ghibli exercised a bit of power here that might've acted against the game's marketability, but then I didn't pay much attention to the game's marketing efforts when it came out.

All that said, I didn't really pay attention to Ni No Kuni's English sales, so maybe it did gangbusters despite it's title.

I remember I got an hour into Rogue Galaxy, not long enough to get anywhere serious but long enough to be excited about playing more of it, and then the game just fuckin' locked up and wouldn't ever play again. I think I was like 10 at the time so my initial response was just to get mad, didn't even think about like returning it to the store or anything.

To this day that game sits at the top of my list of 'white whale' games (along with Dark Cloud oddly enough, which I played on a demo disc. Again, enjoyed it but never got to the full version). One can only hope that they'll get the chance to update it for modern consoles or just release it on PSN or something. A fool's dream maybe, but I hold to it all the same.

Just realised Dragon Quest VIII is also on my white whale list.

What was up with young me and not quite playing Level 5 games?

@wjb: Oh lord, the AI is terrible in this game. Really made me appreciate Xenoblade's ally AI. There's no tactical setting between "cast all your biggest spells constantly at these small fry" and "don't cast shit and watch helplessly as I forget to heal myself and collapse like an idiot". There's a "keep us healthy" option but they'll still unload all their strongest attacks whenever there's no-one who needs healing. I've also noticed that they'll just put their familiars away and bop enemies ineffectually with their crappy harp and grapple hook gun.

As for the monsters, yeah, I rolled with the defaults for a while (and gave Swaine the lemur some kid gave me, since he's proficient with that genus) but I'm near the end of the game and a lot of other creatures are outclassing them. I've just been tossing the occasional strong-looking creatures in the third slot and comparing stats with my defaults whenever they finally catch up. It's how I found put my pirate cat is pretty badass.

@rorie: Honestly, I like Ni no Kuni just fine, but it's weaker than any of Level-5's PS2 games. I'd say it works best as a gateway to Level-5's other RPG output (and probably RPGs in general, because of the family-friendly Ghibli edge) but I'd much rather be playing Dark Cloud 2 or Rogue Galaxy.

I've been wondering about the name too. I suspect they might have been worried about calling it Another World and getting it confused with Delphine's Out of This World (which was Another World in a few territories and was rereleased fairly recently). Second World maybe, since that's a more literal reading of the Japanese. It's possible they were expecting that most of their sales would come from people who had been anticipating the game since its DS incarnation, who would recognize it better by its Japanese name. JRPGs are in the same kind of place that Fighters once were, where they can only really guarantee sales from folk already dedicated to the genre and tries to market directly to them.

@euandewar: They're all pretty lengthy, in fairness. My backlog is filled with games of equivalent length too and it's just hard to find the time to play them. RPGs aren't really suited for playing in spurts either, because immersion counts for a lot. I'd have to say though, that Level-5 RPGs were to the PS2 that Rare platformers were to the N64: they found a niche and really made it their own.

Certainly all of the hype pre-release was all about the Ghibli influence on the art style and the soundtrack rather than how the game played. I found it to be a very serviceable if a little bit underwhelming Pokemon/Dragon Quest Monsters inspired experience. As noted before the AI were absolutely terrible and the game was very timid in handing out too many options and mechanics out at once. I remember it was quite a while before the game decided to give the options to go all out attack or all out defence. A very simple concept to grasp yet the game walked you through at a sluggish, as if it didn't trust you to know what you were doing.

Playing through it once was fine since every new gorgeous location was an experience in itself. Certainly wouldn't see myself playing through it again though. Especially since the last act that was added to the PS3 version felt very unnecessary and dragged out the length a bit long than it should have been. And that low key ending definitely felt super tacked on.

Even though Level 5 have put out critically acclaimed JRPGs at a reasonable rate they've still put out a fair few average stuff in the past like Jeanne D'Arc Inazuma Eleven or the WKC series for example. I personally think Ni No Kuni falls somewhere in between, and to be honest if didn't have that striking art style and soundtrack then I probably wouldn't have bothered completing it.

Well, as far as Shin Megami Tensei is concerned, Atlus did try a localized version of branding the series many years ago with Revelations: Persona and Revelations: The Demon Slayer. But it was a pretty poor effort, as "Revelations" bears no relation to even the most literal English translations of Shin Megami Tensei: True Goddess Transmigration. Try putting that title on the front of a box in Gamestop.

I think it's also a bit odd to suggest it's foolishness to not release games with an English title in North America when, in the reverse case, a lot of western games that see release in Japan see titles at best transliterated into katana. It's still the English title, just in Japanese characters, which is no different than a romanized Ni no Kuni.

Great! Thanks for reminding how much i enjoyed this game, I may have just got the digital version just to get out of putting the disk in...

I own a playstation 3. I could play Ni No Kuni. Your rather tepid endorsement/denunciation tells me I probably don't need to jump at getting it anytime soon. Of course, I feel like even if the mechanics interested me, I'd probably find the rather cheery, saccharine tone to be a little off-putting.

I bought Ni no Kuni from the PlayStation Store a little while back, around three days before we had that 'Big in Japan' sale and its price temporarily plummeted to £3.99 (yep, I'm still a little bitter about that). I had a quick peek at the game's opening minutes and was impressed with what I saw, so it's definitely high on my list of games to play soon(-ish). The revelation that it's chock-full of pun-derful wordplay has just bumped it even higher up that list. Having read this blog I'm really looking forward to sinking my teeth into it, hopefully later this year.

Epilogue: I just recruited a Tyke enemy (little guys with spears) and the first suggested name was "Tyke Myson". Goddammit, game.