PixlBit

You know, I was thinking about doing a full review of this game at some point, but given that it takes me forever to get NES reviews up, I'll keep this on the brief side. This blog assumes, by the way, that you know what Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch is and have either played it or read a few of the reviews going around.

Before I do that, I should probably mention that I don't necessarily mind RPGs of an earlier vintage. I own anthologies of the Wizardry and Ultima titles, I've tinkered around with plenty of roguelikes, and I've played through the entire Dragon Quest series (up through IX, anyway). I can usually stomach opaque and arcane design decisions to a certain degree, given how many NES games I've brute-forced my way through (although, granted, I still have hundreds of RPGs ahead of me). I don't hate old-school gameplay in and of itself.

However, I *do* hate the way so many seventh-generation console games endlessly baby the player, either with drawn-out tutorials or endless checkpoints. Every single original PS3 title I've played for more than five minutes - with the exception of 3D Dot Game Heroes, which has its own issues - has been guilty of this. Bioshock lets you turn off Vita-chambers for an extra challenge and an achievement, but you can still save your game every three feet. In Just Cause 2, dying outside of a mission doesn't cost you anything - you could theoretically take a dozen suicide missions to the same base and gradually chip away at it until the area's 100% cleared. Even Demon's Souls is unusually lenient in some capacities - yes, you lose all of your souls upon dying, but your inventory is completely untouched.

I'm not saying that I hate these games - I think Bioshock, Just Cause 2, and Demon's Souls have a lot of great things going for them. I wouldn't necessarily ask for increased death penalties in these games, since that would require a fundamental reworking of certain aspects of the design.

So what does this have to do with Ni no Kuni, then? Well, combine certain old-school RPG problems with modern-day babying, and you've got a game experience that borders on painful at times. I said I'd try to keep this brief, so let's go down my gripe list:

First of all, combat is clunkier than it should be, because the game doesn't give you your full set of commands until a good ways into the game. Some of these features would've been nice to have earlier than they come in - I still haven't gotten the ability to set my party to focus on attack or defense, and I already have my third party member. One particular boss - the one you fight prior to getting the alchemy pot - uses an attack late in the battle that does massive damage to anyone who isn't defending, and unless you know that you're supposed to keep your second party member at 100% full health, she won't survive the blast, because the combat AI is too dopey to know what to do. How long has it been since Final Fantasy XII introduced the gambit system? I'm not asking for something *that* complex, but a little more control would be nice.

Second, familiars level way too slowly. Most of the ones you collect early on start at level 1, and getting new familiars to be remotely useful requires that you keep them in an active battle. Also, only familiars in your active battle party gain levels; no experience whatsoever - not even a fraction of the normal battle experience - is given to your reserves or your stored familiars. Considering that Dragon Warrior Monsters - a fairly "old-school" monster-raising RPG by today's reckoning - avoided both of these flaws, Ni no Kuni's treatment of the matter is inexcusable.

Third, the game continually insults the player's intelligence throughout the course of the game, with already-obvious solutions to spell- and heart-related puzzles continually given away by Drippy. The game also parcels out gameplay features at a slow pace, as mentioned earlier, and doesn't even have the courtesy to give you more than one formula for your alchemy pot when you start out. I also haven't gotten certain treat recipes I've already mixed to show up on my alchemy list, since there isn't a section for them. Is this a bug? Am I supposed to unlock that section later? Why would you withhold that from the player?

My last complaints are with the story, which... well, I haven't finished the game yet, so I'd rather wait to complain until later. I think I sort of had the ending spoiled by one review, but the explanation was non-sensical enough that I've mostly forgotten it now. As long as the main villain doesn't turn out to be a small, lonely rabbit-child who just needs a little love - which, yes, is the plot twist of another RPG by a certain company, but I won't say who.

The thing is, other RPGs have already approached the problems present here in more elegant fashions, and Level-5 has even done things better themselves in their eariler games. Jeanne d'Arc and Dragon Quest VIII and IX have far better alchemy systems than Ni no Kuni, and... well, I suppose I was expecting something like Dragon Quest VIII when I played this game. What I got was a game that had several of the components that made Dragon Quest VIII so enjoyable for me - excellent art direction, a solid orchestral soundtrack, and the gameplay systems necessary for a classic-style, yet reasonably deep, RPG. And yet that seems to be wasted by stupid design flaws that could have easily been avoided. I don't hate the game, but I'm a lot more disappointed by it than I thought I was going to be.

Anyway, I'm thinking about giving up on the Ni no Kuni and going back to Final Fantasy V... or possibly resuming my playthrough of the original Wizardry. The latter is incredibly arcane, but it does certain things right that I wish more RPGs would pick up on...

So... thoughts? Agreements? Disagreements? Should I stick it out, or put it down for another RPG?