Ni no Kuni 2 is a gorgeous looking game, the setting and style really carried me through on this one. Most other aspects of the game left me unsatisfied, unfortunately.

This world of weird animal factions and fantasy kingdoms manages to be somewhat unique, despite its component parts. The story is serviceable, if a bit predictable and scattered in parts. It definitely loses coherency at the end, with the final enemies coming out of nowhere with very little motivation.
This game, like the first, nails the Studio Ghibli look and feel. There is something appealing about just hanging out in this world.

Combat is very simple, every character has two attacks that are ostensibly light and heavy that can chain together in any order. There are also a number of special abilities that each character has, most of which are damage oriented. In a nod to the first game, you collect little helpers that you can trigger during battle to create healing zones or deal damage to enemies.
The abilities and attacks sort of don't end up differentiating themselves that much (even between characters). For me, the combat reduced to dodging enemy attacks and triggering my helpers while spamming my best abilities.
I think this would be fine for an RPG like this but it is undermined by the game's balance. Most major enemies (even those 10-15 levels below you) can kill you in one or two hits, while being sacks of hitpoints you just have to grind through. Every battle ends up being an endurance challenge of how well you can perfectly dodge every enemy attack. I found this to be tedious and not much fun.

There are some secondary systems in the game, but most of them are pretty uninteresting. The most extensive one is a kingdom building mini-game (this is also the major thrust of the plot). It is cool to build a little town, but the mechanics are... uninspired. You set up research and development then just wait for things to finish, essentially a clicker game. This could have been much more, but as is, it is tedious and unsatisfying.

Overall I wasn't that satisfied with Ni no Kuni 2. It looks good but almost all of the gameplay is either uninteresting or tedious or both. If you really want to play something with the Ghibli style then maybe check it out, but otherwise there are much better options.

It's neat having a kingdom sim running while you are out doing quests because it gives a little extra incentive. It's nice the kingdom building gives rewards to combat. But, the kingdom sim thrives on hiding information behind expensive and unbalanced upgrades. The higglies seem useless. It's hard to keep the item tiers in your head. And the plot is pretty standard (thank god for that skip button!)

I played it purely because I like the blend of kingdom sim + jRPG, and I enjoyed doing quests to recruit new people to my town. If that's not your genre jam-re, you probably won't get far.

There are no difficulty modes, you could see that as a good thing or a bad thing, depending on what you think of its base. I hear some people say it's hard because they don't grind enough and I hear some people say it's easy because they grind too much or they're just really good at figuring out what to use for stats and building their kingdom, which I'll get to shortly.

There's a pretty smooth transition from fighting to traveling and vice versa, the only downside is that once you're engaged in combat, it locks you in so you can't escape until you defeat them or they defeat you. You do have a chance to run before they catch you though.

One of the the best things about the game is that it's not turn based. I've seen Dragon Quest XI gameplay where it looks like it should play more similar to this and I actually prefer this over FFXV combat. So it's not the same as the original for those who've played it. The other best thing about this game is its visual design, the whole reason I bought it. There were some character designs that I really liked as well as some that lack but all in a Ghibli-esque style.

In the grand scope of things, it’s a big world with tons of side quests. With some of the side quests, you HAVE to look it up, like this one where you make a tart for this guy in Goldpaw (pretty early in the game) but you can't actually make it until you beat the main story, I get having side-quests in areas that you can't do yet so no one area is deemed irrelevant and they do have certain side-quests and NPCs open up after beating certain missions but why not these? Why were these the exceptions? It just doesn't make sense to do it this way, if anything, give me the resources readily available. There's no reason I can't have a certain market or lumber yard when they're all the same but with different names.

Now my biggest complaint so far is the potential. Sometimes the person you do the quest for will join your kingdom but the game requires you to keep your kingdom a certain way in order to progress, so you can't just pick and choose your villagers, there's a minimum amount you need to have. That breaks the illusion of being able to customize your kingdom and getting to interact with your villagers in an engaging way because most of the time, you're just filling in another space. There's a specific point where the difficulty ramps up overall which was around the end of Hydropolis for me but it makes it very easy to fall behind on leveling your kingdom as well as your party. There are also "skirmishes" which have a similar playstyle to Pokemon Rumble (cool in concept) but in reality is pretty annoying. You even have to work on your skirmish forces' level separately through the kingdom research (as well as just doing more skirmishes) so there's a lot to keep track of.

That kingdom research (for whatever department it may be in) says things like "this will take 9 minutes" or "this will take 25 minutes" but that's annoying when you have nothing else to do but wait for those to be done, when you need to level up in order to progress your missions. The kingdom is just a mandatory mobile game! You can actually speed up research but you have to spend your money, and not just regular money, oh no, this is a special currency that you only get from your kingdom, for your kingdom. The whole thing seems pretty counterproductive if you ask me, especially considering it's done in increments. To speed up a single research task you could be spending purchase after purchase to lower it by 10% each time, mere minutes to sometimes a wait above 45. All it needs are the microtransactions to purchase them with real money and you got yourself a gacha.

I believe MGS5 has something similar to the research part, but the difference is that I actually had fun with Mother Base in MGS, this one just makes me feel like I'm playing Clash of Clans. Once you get enough gold steadily coming in, it's not as big of a deal but it's definitely tedious. Combine that with the grinding, which took me way too much time just to keep up with the level gap of "Recommended strength" and my actual level. You're taking down hordes at a time and the XP just seems to slow down. I would be fighting enemies way above my level and barely even a scratch so I looked it up and it said it's more quantity over quality, (or in this case level) which is nuts to begin with but even doing so barely increased it at a solid rate, I got the exp necklace, messed with the tactic-tweaker, did side-quests, did a bunch of stuff with the kingdom itself and it was just never enough, it was like the game was trying to unnecessarily inflate its playtime. Now my best advice that actually ended up working, is to do the optional boss fights littered among the world (tainted monsters). I don't like them but they're the only things that seemed to give me a reasonable amount of xp and even some decent weapons. Mornstar, The Sword of Unity, end-game item with 270 damage? Try my Giant's Tooth or whatever it's called with 290!

The story isn't necessarily priority here, it kind of sets itself up from the start. You go to each kingdom, beat their boss, unite them. That about sums it up, that's not bad for a game like this but it's not as rich as many JRPGs and I hear even the first game so I doubt you would have to play the first one to understand it (at least I didn't). It also starts out as a sort of isekai where Roland is a president who gets sent to Ding Dong Dell to service a furry king...what a fanfic.

The first half peaked and then just became unenjoyable for me after Hydropolis. There was a boss late-game that I was into but it was sandwiched between 2 really dumb bosses, so it evened out. I'll give it a 2/5 or 4/10 overall. I don't really recommend it but if I did, I would recommend the Nintendo Switch version (which is apparently out now) because I got this on PS4 around launch (yeah, it took me this long) and I felt that it was best suited for the Switch as soon as I started because of the quest system. The only downside is that I hear that version runs poorly, which is a shame because honestly, I might've dropped it if the PS4 version ran that poorly. It actually ran pretty well, barely had any load times and has a massive world with consistent quality, quite impressive.

I'm one of the few who prefers this game over the first one. And why is that? Well I think the characters are much more well written, for one. This game's locations are also far more visually interesting than the first game's, possibly because of improved graphics. But most importantly, I absolutely LOVE building up Evermore. I've always been a sucker for building and management in games, and everything about Evermore from going to different cities to seek recruits, waiting for the coffers to fill, and slowly upgrading buildings made this game a treat to go to. All in all, a very enjoyable experience that is definitely a result of my bias.

Ok, je me suis lancé dans ce jeu avec tellement d'attentes! Les critiques étaient excellentes et le jeu a été fait par Level 5 (grand fan des Professeur Layton). Mais, j'ai été déçu dans l'ensemble. L'histoire est correcte sans plus. La structure est convenue et répétitive. Les quêtes annexes sont souvent inintéressantes et pour moi bien des aspects ne font aucun sens. Les combats sont très biens et c'est certainement l'aspect que j'ai le plus aimé du jeu. Les skirmish est l'un des aspects négatifs qui étaient relevés sur le jeu et, étrangement, c'est un des aspects que j'ai beaucoup aimé. J'ai fait tous les combats, même obtenu le trophée sans me rendre jusqu'au platine. Trop de grinding pour monter de niveau, voilà ce qui m'a fait abandonné le Platine. La gestion de la ville est bien, mais trop limitée.

What a disappointment. compared to it's Predecessor, this really ain't it.
The story was below average, the characters are all mummies straight of "Trope-book" and the Combat was a step down for me compared to WotWW.

This game has redeeming factors though. the Soundtrack was amazing (as expected) aswell as the Art of the whole game in general. so there's that.
But that most certainly won't carry a game but it definitely saved it from sinking for me. 6/10

the gameplay in this entry of ni no kuni is absolutely excellent, i genuinely could run around farming forever. not to mention, the progression system, both during and after the story is spectacular!

the graphics and art direction are just gorgeous, even without ghibli this time around (i do quite miss the 2d cutscenes, though)

i particularly like the idle kingdom building aspect, it's really nice spending a few hours farming resources in the world for whatsoever you need them for, and then coming back to a full stash of gold waiting in your kingdom.

the only issue i really have with this game is that the story feels a lot more immature than the previous one. i love them and all, but i just don't feel for these characters as much as i do the characters in the original

Giocando le prime ore di Ni No Kuni 2 pensavo di trovarmi di fronte ad un ottimo titolo. Le premesse erano ottime, i personaggi interessanti e le meccaniche non erano da meno. Purtroppo questa sensazione è presto scemata al proseguire della storia. Ni No Kuni 2 presenta una storia molto scontata, non particolarmente interessante, ricca di scene telefonate che fanno sì che il giocatore non sia mai davvero catturato dal titolo. L' overworld è da gioco per Playstation 3, senza esagerare. Estremamente datato e stilisticamente brutto da vedere. Le meccaniche principali del gioco non sono malissimo ma ci sono alcune scelte davvero fastidiose. La creazione del proprio regno è forse l'elemento migliore del gioco, che spinge di più a proseguire, ma il vincolo temporale delle risorse lo trovo davvero fuori luogo, sembra di trovarsi in un free to play online. Le battaglie tra eserciti sono molto carine, pagano l'estetica davvero di pessimo gusto ma il gameplay funziona bene e sono divertenti da giocare. Il gameplay principale invece qualitativamente l'ho trovato abbastanza normale, non ha particolari sbavature ma neanche elementi degni di nota. Non è un gioco che consiglierei onestamente.

Do you like the art of Studio Ghibli? Lighthearted fantasy with lots of pun and alliterative names? Combat that's fast-paced and easy to learn? Then you'll like Ni no Kuni II.

Despite the II in the title, this game is unrelated to the original aside from very minor easter eggs so don't feel put off about jumping into the series with this game.

The story is simple but easy to follow with lots of interesting characters to meet, landscapes to explore and monsters to defeat. The gameplay stays fresh by introducing things like city-building tasks, side-questing to recruit citizens, make your kingdom stronger, and use their skills to create and improve your gear and spells.

Ni no Kuni II is a solid JRPG and while it's not groundbreaking it shows how to do the fundamentals very very well. 4/5

(OBS: Review curta por ser 00:00)

Simplesmente um salto em comparação com o primeiro jogo, combate mais divertido (Descartando toda a mecânica de familiars), personagens com mais interações e história melhor executada, mesmo sendo em essência, histórias com muitos pontos em comum.

OBS: Roland meu novo husbando, homem perfeito do caralho.

In a lot of ways, this improved upon the first game but ultimately it is a tad too inconsistent for me to prefer it. Combat is completely different, it's an action RPG akin to FF7R now, it's very fun, but not as deep as the first game, however the first game can feel super slow sometimes so I think combat wise both games are equal to me. The dodge roll in this game also functions a bit like Dark Souls so timing the dodge roll for i-frames was cool. The gameplay also has a lot more varied aspects like the kingdom building and army battles which are fun distractions and break up the gameplay pretty well. Side quest content is also above average for JRPGs as they feature good writing and have some effort programmed into them instead of NPCs just dispensing boring text like Xenoblade.

However my biggest gripe with the game is the padding, specifically in chapter 9 where it forces you to level up your kingdom to level 3 which takes way too long. I like the kingdom building, but making it a requirement you invest heavily into it by doing dozens of side quests feels like it's a bit shoved down your throat. It's the same issue I have with Torna, however, as I said the side quests are actually good in this game so it's not as bad, still annoying though.

The story is interesting to me, while I think the consistency of it is questionable, the world building is genuinely incredible, probably the best I've ever seen. Each Kingdom feels extremely realistic in this world and the problems each kingdom face are interesting and a lot hit close to our reality like problems with poverty, war, racism etc. These topics are handled excellently in this game. And Roland is genuinely one of my favorite video game characters of all time, Chapter 7 and Chapter 9 were so peak, I genuinely believe Roland is the true main character lol.

While I think this is a bit inferior to the original, I still ultimately think this ambitious game is a worthy sequel to the first game, give it a go, just be prepared for the chapter 9 grind lol.

Comepleted with platinum trophy earned; 175/175 side quests completed, 60/60 tainted monsters defeated, all characters level 99, kingdom fully expanded. This is a thoroughly charming, beautiful RPG, though with a few flaws. Contrasting with the first game, combat now takes place in real time and is fast and fluid, but most will find it to be (too?) easy in the early parts of the game. That said, there's a significant jump in difficulty a little over halfway through the game and if you seek out side content, challenging encounters are there to be found throughout. If you choose to use them, there's quite a large range of battle mechanics - typical spell, ability and weapon/equipment selections, then a 'zing' mechanic allowing enhanced versions of skills to be used, ever-present fairy-like creatures known as 'Higgldies' that provide bonus effects, a food system and more. Now, the low difficulty means that you could probably get through the game without using many of these, but they're all enjoyable to experiment with.

Aside from the core RPG gameplay, there are two other key elements to the game - kingdom-building, which tasks you with building up a new kingdom (in reality, more akin to a growing town) from scratch, with limited customisability and skirmishes, being real-time battles between armies that take place on the game's overworld map. Neither of these are especially deep, but I found them to be enjoyable companions to the main game.

Flaws? Well, the easy difficulty could be seen as one, depending on your mindset. The storyline is quite simplistic though as mentioned at the start, charming throughout, and voice acting is very sporadic and its implementation can become a bit grating at times. Overall though, I enjoyed my time with this game and would happily recommend it to anyone who enjoys JRPGs.