Ni No Kuni II es una auténtica maravilla. He de admitir que al principio no me gustó el cambio de sistema de combate, dado que me habitué mucho al del primero y que soy bastante fan de los juegos de coleccionar criaturas, pero todo lo demás me estaba gustando tanto que al final me dio hasta igual. Disfruté de la gestión de reino como un verdadero enano cuando suelo ODIAR este tipo de juegos; disfruté las batallas campales estratégicas, la exploración, la historia, los bosses, la recolección e incluso EL FARMEO... Estuve muy muy dentro del juego y me parece absurda la cantidad de hate innecesario que recibió por tonterías como el cambio del sistema de combate.
Una obra de arte igual que el anterior y punto.

Ni No Kuni 2 has alot to offer, but having alot doesn't mean it is all done well or needs to be included.
The game looks amazing (even for a switch port), I love the cell shaded graphics my favourite area was the forest. The issue (which is well known) is performance. There are two areas, the open world and the close encounters. The open world, with a more chibi design, is sluggish with a low framerate and minor stutters. The close encounters that's cell shaded does run better.
The game has three main gameplay loops, the quests, the skirmishes and the town building. Doing the main story quest is perfectly fine while the story I find very average.
The game starts strong with the voice acting but seems to wane off throughout the game. This leads to me the audio. The music is suited to the game. I would prefer some more voice acting as well. When there was voice acting it was poorly balanced. The voice acting is hard to hear as it is too soft and droned out by the background music, even when audio for voice is set to max.
My biggest problem with the game is the grinding and side quests. The game does not provide enough xp to move the story more smoothly. As you move to the next zone you will realise you are at 3 or 4 levels too low and you may have to do a 20 side quests to move forward. These side quests are very repetitive being 'collect this item' or 'defeat this monster'.
If they made the game more focused, half of the side quests and had the city building with fewer buildings to balance the residents joining ,this could be a more pleasurable experience. Sure the game would be about 15 hours shorter but it would feel less grindy.
The skirmishes are a fun mini game. There is a minor learning curve and depth. I got into it but it is not necessary. Overall this game is fine but in no means a must own. I put a little over 60 hours into it and would be happier if it was 40-45 hours.

the original ni no kuni was probably one of my favourite games growing up, and the sequel was probably one of the last times ive been properly excited for a game besides botw. i remember it being a little dissapointing, the main gameplay was alright - the kingdom manager was a little fun and the skirmish things were enjoyable enough, but honestly i preferred the first game's even if it was a little unconventional. The story starts off with an actually really interesting intro with the whole president being transported into the other world and nuke thing, but it starts trailing off when it starts focusing on the catboy king making a new city rather than roland, putting him in a backseat for the whole game until pretty much the final boss for basically the same twist from the first game. i do remember there being a cool little section in the water place about letting go of the past, but it's basically as good as the game gets story wise - the first game's story wasnt exactly shakespeare but was fairly charming and had a way stronger focus with Oliver's mother, juxtaposed with the catboy being forced out of his kingdom "oh wait everything's fine he made friends with the conspirators midway through the game, they can keep the kingdom they stole, its all good". the visuals do look fairly good, considering studio ghibli pulled out of this one, with the world losing a bit of that hand painted art direction the first was going for, but still looks pretty nice.

honestly a dissapointing sequel, but an alright game on it's own - although the 12 year old inside me will never forget.

What made me play this? I didn't enjoy the first game (see my review for the first title here)... I guess I just wanted to give Level-5 the benefit of the doubt to see if they made a Dark Cloud 1 to Dark Cloud 2 leap in quality... well, they didn't... :(

While some things they did here are improvements to the first game, it is definitely a "2 steps forward/2 steps back" situation...

The battle system is more fun to play than the original, but it is far too easy... there is no challenge whatsoever in the combat which leads to the game becoming terribly boring before too long.

The story, music, and characters are pretty terrible - and one of the more egregious things is the lack of voice acting and music throughout... it kills any emotional resonance this game attempted to build. It all becomes rather laughable.

The opening is hilarious and sounds like a damn parody... like I just have to talk about it - so minor spoilers ahead, but this happens within the first 3 minutes of the game...

You play as the President of the United States as New York City literally gets nuked to oblivion... upon which you somehow awaken magically in a new world... finding yourself in the city of Ding Dong Dell, a city inhabited by talking animals, you come to befriend a cat-eared child prince(Evan Pettiwhisker Tildrum) and help him try to reclaim his kingdom... it is some real silly shit. Beyond surreal... like even describing it, I cannot believe it is a real premise to a game's story...

The game's sole saving grace was the kingdom building aspect, and its addictive quality... but at the same time, it disgusts me that this is the best part, as it is something you could find from the mobile game market...

Hard pass even for JRPG fans... hell, I don't even know if fans of the first game will like this.

What the f** even was this game? Ni No Kuni II has a lot of good ideas, some not as good ideas and some bad ideas. The worst of all is that it has far too many ideas. The game layers mechanic after mechanic ontop of mechanic after mechanic, nonstop. In the end the game is convoluted and mired within itself. It's impossibly bizarre plot does the game no additional favors.

The opening five minutes are a complete fever dream. A presidential motorcade is driving through a tunnel and then onto a bridge entering some island metropolis that looks vaguely like NYC & Tokyo mashed with one another. We go into a limousine and see the president talking, an older Asian man with salt and pepper hair. He looks out his window and sees a missile roaring towards the city passed his car. The missile hits the city and a mushroom cloud rises over the city. A scene transition shows the president miraculously alive underneath a bunch of rubble where he grunts a few times before a glowing blue light washes over him and teleports him away.

The president reappears but now it's in a castle, and the president is much younger with long black hair in a ponytail. In front of him is a child with cat ears. Who is revealed to be Evan Pettiwhisker Tildrum, the prince of the kingdom in which the castle you're in resides. Within seconds a rumble is heard downstairs and Roland deduces a coup is undergoing. Evan is terrified at the weird alternate-dimension invader. Evan tries to knife him, Roland soothes him and runs downstairs. Roland's suspicions are right and a bunch of ~6foot armored mice-men are charging to kill Evan. Roland fends them off by, and I'm not kidding, literally shooting them in the face with a 9mm pistol. A large mouse, named Mausinger, reveals he had murdered Evan's father, the king, and is now going to kill Evan.

Roland saves Evan, the group flee, some chick Evan loved like a mother dies in the process. Evan resolves to take back the throne, later settling instead on founding a brand new different kingdom based on love or some shit. The rest of the game is spent strengthening the new kingdom through alliances with existing kingdoms and recruiting citizens to come live in Evan's new fiefdom. Which seems reasonable enough except it concludes with flying on a rainbow dragon (which is normally a little star person) into an interdimensional space rift in the sky to fight a gigantic horned rock demon that has a lady/dragon/unicorn creature trapped inside it. You do so trying to win back an ancient continent kingdom for a snake man and the lady/dragon/unicorn creature is his long lost love.

Confused? My favorite is chapter six, where you lead a communist revolution to overthrow Elon Musk. Except it turns out Musk is a good guy and actually was just corrupted by the aforementioned snake man. Eventually Musk realizes he needs to run a more ethical company or something and it all works out. I think. This plot sound batshit crazy and confusing? Believe it or not, the actual gaming mechanics are far, far more confusing.

The game begins as a sort of Kingdom Hearts-style/Ys-style party-based slashing JRPG. Fast paced with slashing combos and some mana-based skills. But shortly after this the game introduces a weapon switching mechanic where each weapon charges up and you have to switch between them to do optimal damage. Not too bad but each of your three party members has three weapons to switch from and the AI does not use them efficiently. So you have to switch characters to use their skills and mana and use their multiple weapons. Every enemy has various class typings and elemental attacks while your weapons also have various effects including elemental effects. It's quite in-depth.

The game then takes you to a global area map that your party trots across. Except your party is chibi and the map is chibi. Encounters take you into the normal attack camera. You then get introduced to 'higgledies.' They are little sprite elfy elemental looking goof characters. They provide all types of support. They can cast skills and provide stat boosts that vary from healing or attack speed or elemental damage reduction to actually attacking enemies either via single target or area of effect damage. Each higgledy, of which you'll collect several, levels up. The higher they level the better their skills. You can think of them like Chaos from Sonic Adventure Battle 2

Shortly after this you get some allies that offer their troops to you? And then here comes another mechanic. It becomes an almost Total War-esque top down real time strategy game where you bring units of troops into battle against opposing armies. Near-top down camera angle with troop commands and infantry stats. Totally nothing like any other part of the game.

Then next you get a city builder. You have to build Evan's new kingdom building by building and citizen by citizen. Each building needs to be staffed by the citizens you recruit. These citizens all have individual stats and abilities that suit them towards certain work in certain buildings. The buildings can perform all sorts of research that enhance your party's capabilities or the buildings produce resources that you can use to upgrade things that improve your party. There are 70 some odd buildings and 100 citizens to build and recruit.

Each one of these mechanics is pretty reasonably deep, and they are all interconnected. It becomes so opaque that it feels nearly impossible to follow. Manipulating these mechanics to your advantage takes hours for even mediocre increases in you abilities. And the game makes it plenty easy to ignore all of these mechanics until near the end of the game or even after the main story altogether. But once you need them, or decide to try to figure it out, it's a bear. Even using guides it's like trying to dissect a god damn frog in AP Bio.

The game is just so god damn unwieldy. Whether it's the actual gameplay mechanics or the impossible to give a shit about plot. It takes like 7 chapters for the storyline to truly develop in a meaningful way, and then the story pivots in a total batshit direction with the Allegoria storyline introduction. In the eleventh hour of the game the entire story switches introducing new characters, settings, lore and new lore relationships. It's a mess. The game just never decides what it wants to be. It's six different games smashed together and the storyline uses time travel, dream metaphors, actual time travel within only dreams somehow, interdimensional travels with no explanation. It's just so, so, so, much. Every time you think the game can't get more nuts, it gets ten times more nuts. Both in story and in gameplay mechanics. Each and every time.

There are redeeming qualities. The music is fantastic. Final Fantasy tier. Just really fantastic music in diversity and quality. Every track is a god damn banger. Visually the game is quite pleasing as well. Super Disney meets Ghibli sort of aesthetic. Some of the character design is uninspired, especially for the main cast. But supporting characters can be quite cool. Lady Trudy, Niall, Pugnacius. Really cool. Some of the cities are similarly cool. Goldpaw is a fantastic city with a really cool vibe that I'm desperate to implement into a DnD campaign someday.

Technically the game was pretty good. No lag or weird spots, no poor cutscene audios or mixing. The game did spontaneously crash once. And the loading times were very long, even longer than you'd expect given I played this on a PS5. But still it hummed along pretty fine even compared to many AAA releases nowadays. The frequency of full heal savepoints as checkpoints was very nice. You can also fast travel to basically anywhere. Fairly player friendly.

Ni No Kuni II is nothing shy of ambitious. Nothing short of large. The game is sprawling. And while sometimes sprawling seems nice like Breath of the Wild. Other times sprawling is quite bad. Like an urban sprawl. And Ni No Kuni is certainly the latter. Just dense and chock full of everything* the devs thought was a cool idea along the way. A little restraint would've gone a very long way. There's a good game buried deep in here somewhere. It takes a lot of work to find it.

Random disorganized thoughts:

I don't really know what to feel about Ni No Kuni 2. The game plays like kusoge but it doesn't look like one, you know? With that beautiful Ghibli art style, it just doesn't feel like it should be as mid as it is.

On the topic of Ghibli, the art style is definitely the main draw of the game. Which makes it a big bummer that, unlike NNK1, there are actually no Ghibli animated cutscenes in this game. Everything is either the characters just standing there or 3d animations. The latter of which still looks really pretty and all, but it doesn't hold a flipping candle to the real deal.

The big thing I wanna type about is the combat, what's up with it?
Each battle consists of a flat circle where you gotta hit the enemy a whole bunch while dodging and blocking, which seems easy enough. But the enemies attack so fast that you really never have time to react, and when you do react, a lot of attacks have such long attack animations that you still get hit after your dodge animation ends. Blocking is also an annoyance as even if you block an attack, you'll most likely fly backwards like 40 meters at least and lie on the ground for too long. Quite frankly it sucks to be defensive, and as a result, most fights just boil down to running toward an enemy spamming X to do quick attacks and casting spells whenever possible to hopefully stagger the opps while spamming healing items to tank through the damage. Something that sounds easy but your character has a priority in getting attacked actually so you end up running in a circle hoping your two friends take care of it for an obnoxious amount of time.

Things in NNK2 just generally take too long. Like, scenes just play out for too long. A menu opening up during a conversation takes too long. Menus popping up from a menu take too long. It just makes one feel like you're wasting your time. I ended up skipping most scenes just cuz they were so pointlessly long.

NNK2 is about an annoying brat, an isekai protagonist, and Lisa Simpson on their journey to unite the world against a big bad evil that wants to bring back his old kingdom literally called Allegoria. It's nothing special, honestly, and it's bogged down by the main character having the worst voice ever. I dunno what it is about it but Evan screeches in a monotone voice at all times. I haven't seen the voice actor in anything else so I dunno if she just struggled to play a little boy or something but jesus. Cutscenes ended up being ruined when the cool kid himself went and made a speech in this grating squeaking metal door noise they call a voice and had to be skipped for my sanity.

I like the music. That's all I really have to say about it though, it's a just really good orchestral soundtrack with a lot of pleasant tunes. Not my cup of tea but definitely something worth peeking. Particularly "Kingdom by the Sea."

Overall, do I think it's a good game? No. Did I enjoy playing it? Yes. Do I regret buying the game twice? Kinda, yeah.

First, it fell like a downgrade.
The story was not as good as the first game.
No cutscenes made by Ghibli studio anymore ...
The characters were lame. Terrible dialogues that are not even dubbed.

But after giving it a second chance:
- I liked the combats but the first was better
- i liked completing many optional quests
- building our kingdom is fun, especially recruiting people
- skirmish missions were all right
- skipping dialogue made the game better
- main story was meh

So, overall it is a good JRPG but not as good as the first one.
The end game is grindy, like the first one

With the original Ni No Kuni being one of my favorite games of all time I had high expectations for the sequel. Alas, Ni No Kuni 2 was a mere shell of the original. Drastically simplified combat, a hollow story, weak original score, and far too easy difficulty made this adventure a bore rather than a magical wonder. The kingdom management sim mechanics were OK but kept the player on too tight of a leash to feel like I was getting anything out of it. It was one of the few genuinely disappointing games I played in 2018, which was a serious bummer.

Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom - 10/10

tl;dr: Nostalgia. Esse jogo está longe demais de ser perfeito, mas minha experiência com ele foi sim um 10/10.


Comecei a jogar esse jogo como quem não queria nada... Estava de férias, fazendo força para aturar o Death Stranding. Depois de 17 horas de sofrência, quitei, comecei Ni No Kuni e essa pode ter sido a melhor decisão que tomei esse ano. 17 horas em DS foram maçantes, 20 horas no Ni No Kuni se passaram sem eu nem perceber. Daí não parei mais até adquirir a platina.


História:
Sabe aquele meme que diz que todo RPG é a mesma coisa? Na primeira missão você resgata um gatinho perdido e na última você mata deus? Isso se aplica a Ni No Kuni, claro. A história começa com Evan, uma criança supostamente herdeira de um reino, tendo que fugir do mesmo pois, em um golpe de estado, a oposição conseguiu assumir o comando e restava eliminar o resto da família real para não haver mais sucessão ao trono. Evan consegue fugir com a ajuda de um homem misterioso chamado Roland e sua mais que fiel guarda-costa e mentora Aranella. É uma história infantil ao todo mas, se você se permitir, a carga emocional logo no começo pode ser intensa.

A partir daí, Evan começa sua busca por um certo tipo de vingança, totalmente determinado em criar seu próprio reino. Um lugar onde todos podem ser felizes independente de raça, ideais, etc. E está formada a base da história, com Evan seguindo seu caminho para, aos poucos, montar seu reino próspero.

A história tem um desenvolvimento bem linear, fiel a todo RPG do tipo. Seus objetivos são claros, os lugares que você tem que ir seguem uma progressão no mapa e o objetivo quase não muda. Descobre-se novas ameaças ao longo do caminho mas, no fundo, tudo se resolve com algumas lutas e o crescimento e prosperidade do seu reino.

Os personagens que você encontra ao longo do caminho são estranhamente memoráveis. Eu conseguia saber o nome da grande maioria só de ver a sua imagem, cada conjunto de personagem "chave" em cada um dos reinos do jogo. Até mesmo os 100 personagens que conseguimos recrutar para nosso reino (falarei disso mais pra frente)... Eu quase consigo olhar para todos e dizer o que ele faz e porque ele veio ao meu reino. ~E nenhum deles precisou de nomes ridículos para serem memoráveis viu, Kojima?~

Apenas para acrescentar aqui, cada um dos reinos do jogo tem sua história. Ela não é muito detalhada, mas é o suficiente para entender a história de toda a terra por onde o jogo se passa, de onde surgiram todos os reinos e seus líderes e alguns detalhes a mais.


Jogabilidade:
Direto ao ponto: RPG meets hack'n slash. Como os RPGs em turno mais clássicos, você entra em combate com um grupo de monstros, ou seja, exploração e combate são duas partes diferentes. Em combate, você pode controlar 3 de um total de 6 personagens em sua party. Mas claro, como não é batalha em turnos, você controla apenas 1 por vez (os outros ficam por conta da CPU mesmo). Você possui golpes físicos pesados ou leves, golpes a distância, magias e... Bem, e higgledies.

Higgledies parecem pequenos fantasminhas coloridos que te ajudam em combate. Eles possuem habilidades passivas, atacam sozinhos ou você os evoca para executar algum golpe especial deles. Esses bichinhos fazem toda a diferença no jogo e são muitos para você colecionar, podendo usar até 4 em sua party. Para encontrá-los, ou você os cria em seu reino ou você oferece o item favorito de cada um para sua "pedra". Essas pedras estão espalhadas pelo mapa todo, tem que ir procurar.

Lofty, seu kingmaker, também ajuda. Kingmaker é uma entidade necessária para que uma pessoa possa ser rei. É o primeiro objetivo de Evan conseguir um, ao fugir de seu reino. Lofty não ataca, ele apenas auxilia restaurando sua mana ou vida e, de vez em quando, te "despertando". Um personagem quando está despertado tem suas habilidades influenciadas pelos higgledies em batalha e "mana infinita" para causar danos arrasadores com um combo de magias.

Mas fora das batalhas, Ni No Kuni oferece muitas coisas como os clássicos RPGs. Existe uma lista de monstros extremamente fortes espalhados pelo mapa para você desafiar, existem batalhas que são literalmente guerras onde você e seu exército precisa estrategicamente avançar contra os inimigos ou se defenderem, existe o seu reino que deve crescer (Cities Skyline menos complexo), várias quests secundárias que te dão itens ou até recrutam pessoas para trabalhar no seu reino...

Sobre o reino, você o constrói bem aos poucos juntando recursos. No começo, são poucas pessoas e pouca coisa que pode ser construída. No final, seu reino é toda uma cidade, com todo tipo de loja de equipamentos, magia, itens, comida... Tudo que você construiu com a ajuda dos personagens que você recrutou. No seu reino você pode criar magias novas, criar e melhorar armas e equipamentos, “desamaldiçoar” armas para não perderem sua força, enfim. Fora essas coisas mais diretas, no reino você também melhora as opções de jogo, podendo ganhar mais experiência e ouro por batalha, melhorando suas forças para as guerras, etc... Tudo isso construindo instalações que fazem pesquisa em áreas diferentes, com pessoas que entendem especificamente daquilo (no caso, cada um recrutado para seu reino costuma ter uma habilidade específica).

Isso já se estendeu demais, é muito detalhezinho de gameplay que faz o jogo ser bem diverso e pode te prender bastante se você gostar.


Gráficos:
Ni no Kuni II é cartunesco. Os gráficos parecem anime desenhados em 3D, tanto na gameplay quanto em cutscenes. Mas também tem partes que você anda no "mundo aberto" e deixa de ter aquele traço de anime e vira algo como um bonequinho de um tabuleiro, apesar da movimentação ser livre. Ainda assim dá para apreciar um ponto ou outro do jogo porque ele consegue ser bonito as vezes. Longe de ser um RDR2, ou The Witcher 3, mas não é um gráfico feio.


Geral:
Enfim. Ni No Kuni me surpreendeu muito positivamente. Eu não esperava me divertir tanto com um jogo que passou por debaixo do radar de tanta gente. Infelizmente, como ele não tem Pt-Br, eu não acho justo recomendá-lo porque o inglês de boa parte dos personagens é meio quebrado, tipo inglês de pirata. Não é muito fácil de entender para quem não é nativo ou manjão da língua... Eu que estudei inglês por 6 anos tive um pouco dificuldade em algumas partes rs

Mas é. Melhor jogo que joguei esse ano (2020). 10/10. Vlwflw.

As a sequel to Wrath of the White Witch, it fails. Though the world and characters are still good looking, Studio Ghibli didn't have as much development as they did in White Witch but their influence is still here.
Instead of sending out familiars and using spells, Ni No Kuni 2 has an action style game play like FF VII Remake, which I don't mind.
My main problem with Ni No Kuni 2 is the story. White Witch had a dramatic and emotional story with twists and turns that were unexpected. Revenant Kingdom's story doesn't get interesting until Chapter 7 which is near the end game.
Side Quests are aplenty because Kingdom building is a major factor and recruiting citizens BUT the side quests are repetitive and boring.
Skirmishes are also new but they are also boring, dull and tedious.
There are some good ideas in this game but if they do a Ni No Kuni 3, I want to see an interesting story and BETTER side quests.