Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch

I am an absolutely huge fan of all things that Studio Ghibli does, and has done. Nausicaa is among my top 3 favorite films of all time, and I could name you nearly every main character from every one of Miyazaki's films. When I heard that Studio Ghibli was teaming up with Level 5, I pre-ordered the Wizard Edition the moment it was available in North America. The idea of having the guys who did the Layton games (and one of my favorite Dragon Quest games) making a full-scale RPG with that very specific art style left me giddy with anticipation until the day the package arrived.

I started playing the game, and my first session was 6 hours long. The music was an instant classic for me, because being a Ghibli fan means being a fan of Joe Hisaishi. The sounds were also charming, and Level 5 nailed the visuals. It all felt very true to the Ghibli style, and had the perfect amount of whimsy. The next time I played, the session was also 6 hours long. Following that was a 4 hour session. The next was 3. I think you can see the pattern. The further I got in the game, the more I found myself not wanting to play it.

Though the music and visuals are great, they started to wear on me. Animations are recycled a lot, sounds get repeated constantly, the soundtrack plays the same tracks for hours on end, et cetera. The part that really had me straining to return was the gameplay. To me it feels like the combat system is a mixture of Persona 4 meets Pokemon. At first, this was perfect because I'm a huge fan of both of these games; but I found myself cursing my horrible AI partner, found the lack of ability to pause the battle as it was happening to switch moves a bummer, and generally found the combat to be monotonous and lame. There was a battle I had that involved a fairly strong boss, and within the first 5 minutes my AI pals were down. I had revived them 2 times already, but they kept dying. The next 25 minutes were spent on my own doing the exact same move, dodging his attacks, collecting orbs to restore mana, and repeat. Eventually, he went into this cycle in which I could not possibly do significant damage to him unless I had everyone available to attack, and he killed me. I was not about to go back and do this a second time, so I put the game down for a significant time, and really did not care enough to come back (I did finish it eventually).

This surprises me, because I can deal with mediocre gameplay; but one of the weakest parts I found was the story. I did not feel emotionally connected to Oliver, nor did I find the story particularly well-written - in fact, at parts I found it downright bad. I will not spoil any story beats heree; but there were multiple moments that made me think "why?" Drippy is a fun character for the first few hours, but I found him to be dreadfully annoying by hour 20. Thankfully some of your other buddies you meet along the way are pretty cool; but they don't really redeem the game, in my opinion. The reason Persona 4 had me enraptured for over 100 hours was because I loved the characters, and I genuinely wanted to see how the story would end; but I could not care less how Ni No Kuni went. By halfway through the game, I had an idea of where it would go, and it kind of went there. And then ended. And then KEPT GOING (because it is a Japanese RPG).

Honestly, if you have the patience for the game I do recommend it; but I was left thoroughly disappointed. I will not say the game is of a bad quality, because it is not. I just found it to not be the quality I expected, and I did not have a good time. I did not want to go back and collect everything I'd missed (no new game+), because by the end I just wanted to box it up and put it away.