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| It's Ni no Kuni 2! |
Did
I enjoy playing Ni no Kuni 2: Revenant Kingdom? Absolutely. Did I
fall in love with the world far more than I did in the first game? Yes. Do I
think that objectively speaking, Ni no Kuni 2 is a good game?
To be completely honest, no.
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| Evan is adorable. Not sure about cut-price Lisa Simpson |
There
are many good points and bad points to this game, the sequel to one of the most
notable JRPGs of recent years. For me, the good outweighs the bad. But I am
under no illusion whatsoever that many people wouldn't feel the same. This game
hit a perfect note for me for two reasons - firstly, the overwhelmingly
enjoyable nostalgia evoked by what is almost a reimagining of Suikoden; and
secondly, because I utterly adore the cute, girlish, angsty adolescent
character archetype so common in JRPGs, but not very popular in the West. I am
well aware from characters like Hope in Final Fantasy XIII and
Genis in Tales of Symphonia and the hate they get in Western
fandoms that I'm in a minority for loving that kind of character. A lot of
people cannot stand these often whiny adolescents, so I really wouldn't recommend
they play a game like this where one is the main character.
While
I enjoyed the original
Ni no Kuni, I did not love it. I liked it
enough to begin grinding out the platinum, but lost my saved game and never
felt like going back to replay it. The world-building was nice, Oliver was a
likeable kid and of course the Ghibli connection was intriguing, but I felt
that the second half of the game was messy, the combat was slow and frustrating
- especially when it came to catching and levelling up familiars - and some of
the mini games really were not very fun. The idea of going back to replay the
game doesn’t appeal very much at this stage.
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| Evan's Oliver cosplay |
The
sequel is an altogether different prospect. I had fun from beginning to end and
even grinding out the platinum trophy was mostly enjoyable. I liked Evan much
more than Oliver, too. While both are supposed to be the same age, Evan seems
at least 3 years older than Oliver, who to me looked 10 and was written like he
was 10. Evan was convincingly 13 … though only the Japanese subtitles of the
original trailer reveal that’s his age, and since Level-5 are notorious for
putting things into trailers that don't make it to the final project – most
glaringly in
Professor Layton vs Phoenix Wright – I'm not sure his age is canon.
Though Oliver has a much more detailed backstory and far more emotional depth,
I liked Evan Pettiwhisker Tildrum far more, as he was adorable from beginning
to end.
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| How cute is he? |
It
was Evan's introduction trailer that actually made me preorder this game, which
until then I had thought I might get sometime in the future on sale. Evan and
only Evan convinced me to shell out the cash. He is the most adorable character
I've seen in a long while, especially as a lead character. The characters I like
tend to be androgynous, optimistic, goofy, shy and uncertain of themselves, but
can step forward to meet a challenge when they must. Evan is all of these, with
silly cat ears. His appearance fits the archetype to a tee, with that vaguely
aristocratic page-boy hairstyle that has come to symbolise the boy prince (and
conveniently skirts the question of whether Evan has two pairs of ears or a lot
of blank skin on either side of his head). His blue-eyed pretty face would look
a lot like Penny from Inspector Gadget with a pair of pigtails. I wasn't
disappointed by him, either - he starts adorably diffident and fussy, goes
through some angst, but emerges stronger and becomes a capable leader while
never stopping being adorable. If the protagonist were the only thing to
consider, I'd be delighted with Ni no
Kuni 2. The one thing I would
have liked to have seen would have been more development, more depth in his
reaction to loss, betrayal and sacrifice, which was all kept just a little too
light and brisk, even for a game with children as an ostensible target audience.
Another
strength is the visuals, building on the first game's aesthetic to try and make
the player feel like they're immersed in a Ghibli world. Natural scenes in
particular look fantastic here, mostly in the background of world map battles, and
the Chinese-style city of Goldpaw is gorgeous and great fun to explore.
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| This just looks beautiful, and fighting dragons is classic fantasy fun |
I
also enjoyed the combat much more than the first game's turn-based system, even
if it's less nostalgic. It's like a simplified Tales game,
with lots of hacking and slashing, plus long-range attacks, some of which have
to be channelled. The game is certainly easy, though I added to the challenge
by insisting on playing as melee Evan, and should probably have had a
difficulty slider or at least tougher bosses. By the time there's actually a
challenge in combat, the game is more or less over, and there really could have
been some Kingdom Hearts-style ridiculous hidden bosses: only one
of the post-game bosses was even a little challenging, coincidentally the one
you can easily grind levels from as she spawns extra minions, and neither the
toughest tainted monster nor the one at the end of the boring post-game dungeon
was challenging. The Higgledies also add a small but fun additional layer to
the game, and if you take the time to explore the system you do very well. Aesthetically,
they’re a great addition, evoking the Kodama from Mononoke-hime, and very cute and entertaining to watch. Though if
your brain accidentally interprets the loading screen higgledies as facing
towards the camera rather than away from it, you’re gonna have a bad time. But
having a summoned Higgledy knight or a huge gravity ball that is then copied by
another Higgledy means a huge power spike in battle, which was very rewarding.
There probably should have been more of a boost from getting harmonious
Higgledy groups, and giving them unison attacks could have been an extra level
of fun as well as another throwback to Suikoden,
but they were certainly a positive addition.
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| Higgledies are just one more part of what makes this such a happy, cute world |
Speaking
of Suikoden, the core of the game beyond the central storyline was pretty much
directly lifted from the classic series. Around the world, various characters
can be found who ask you to do different fetch quests, and in return they'll join your cause. Some just ask for cooked
dishes, or for you to kill off a boss, but some ask you to do very lengthy
tasks or to give them something you won't find until the endgame. They fill up
your city and can be set to gathering materials or researching various perks.
At first, I absolutely loved this system, but in the end it's executed a little
poorly. You only get to a stage where it starts to feel satisfying and you're
eager for it to continue when you're about to finish the game, and it's a
definite disappointment you can't max out the kingdom before you watch the end
credits, four necessary recruits not showing up until afterwards. The
city-building should have been more flexible, the rewards more varied, the
possibility of levelling up the whole kingdom far more frequent (or automatic)
and the Stars of Destiny - erm, I mean the Evermore recruits - able to give
more interesting bonuses.
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| Uhhhh |
I
also quite enjoyed the army mini-game. There was one of these in Suikoden, too, which was also oddly cute
for such a serious matter (and you could permanently lose allies in those
battles!). Here, the same rock-paper-scissors system prevails, only you roam
the countryside engaging in battles, taking down structures and occasionally
having to chase or escort another unit. A lot of others online hate this mode,
especially the necessary number of battles for the trophy. But I liked it,
mostly because I imposed a rule on myself not to use the square button. The
square button in this mode is the win button. It's so much more fun not to use
it and actually having to strategise which troops met which enemies where. Of
course, when you can summon a dragon to the middle of the battlefield it
becomes a bit moot, but I had a blast with this mode using this condition. At
the same time, obviously the mode would have been way better if I didn't have
to artificially increase the difficulty.
All
these elements were delightful and I have no complaints about them. For the
rest, however, I wasn't so impressed.
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| The mysterious look |
The
story itself is unoriginal and unsatisfying. There was so much potential to
explore this world and these characters that was not realised. Everything
starts out very well, in classic JRPG style and not a million miles from Suikoden. The young king is overthrown
on his coronation day, saved only by a mysterious man from another world who
appears in his room and a Seirei no
Moribito-style female guardian. In the aftermath, Evan decides to found his
own kingdom and unite the world, not by conquest but by alliance. Some have
taken his quest to be Hitler-esque but it's really more of a case of starting
the United Nations. The rest of the game is spent going between the different
nations, finding that luckily they have a huge problem caused by an outside
force, saving the day and forging an alliance. Then there's the matter of who
is causing all the world's problems. It's nothing new, you soon get tired of
Grima Wormtongue scenarios over and over again, and with only five kingdoms, it
doesn't take very long to get through and has to be padded out with things like
a three-part fetch-quest-cum-minigame-tutorial to get a library card. The
ending just isn't very satisfying and the game length is too short, especially
when there were so many interesting questions: what about kingdoms who want
nothing to do with Evan's system? What about kingdoms who would leave if Evan
allied with old enemies? Should Evan's privileged birth really make him the
great saviour of the land? Then giving the real triumph of the ending to a
character the audience doesn't care about in the least (tied into the story
with a bizarre throwaway superpower) irritated me quite a lot. I really hoped
for more from the final act of this story, and can only hope future DLC is more
satisfying.
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| Evan, you can't just go into people's houses and do that |
The
game also has a very weak supporting cast. The other party members, for some
reason all human, are extremely bland. Compared with the casts of the Tales games, Chrono Trigger, even goddamn Popolocrois,
these characters are flat and boring. Batu is just a musclehead. Leander has
pretty much no character beyond that he is smart, Bracken has some sparkle but
never gets decent development. They try to spark some chemistry with Tani and
Evan with a fake romance scene but there's absolutely no connection between
them so it falls flat. Only Roland gets a modicum of development, but the
chapter devoted to his actions is wasted with next to nothing new revealed
about him, his superficial appearance in this world is never explained and only
the first game's premise makes him even being in this game anything less than
completely bizarre - and given that the first game is referenced largely only
in old statues, place names and a single early puzzle (the game's only fun, vaguely
challenging traditional RPG puzzle), that doesn't feel like enough.
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| Totally blending right in |
You
might notice that I used all the English names here, whereas I insisted on
using the Japanese names for the first game. Actually, yes, I played through
the game in English, something I have never done before when given the choice.
I even got undubbed roms of older games when I could. But Evan's voice was one
of the reasons I fell for the game, and the acting is very good here. I love
all the regional accents, with Welsh fairies returning but also plenty of
Yorkshire, Scottish, Estuary and even Australian accents rendered (sometimes so
thickly I wonder if non-British audiences can understand). That said, sadly
there isn't nearly enough voice acting here. Sometimes at very strange moments,
recorded speech ends to be replaced by grunts and that
bleep-bloop-in-vaguely-the-pitch-of-the-speaking-character familiar from many
other RPGs kicks in. The first game had way more recorded speech
and animated
cutscenes, so lovely as the rendered world is here, this was a real
disappointment in a sequel on a next-generation console. Other problems include
the speech boxes during army scenes being tiny and disappearing too fast and
the effort put into rendering character movements noticeably declining over the
course of the game - Evan's final rousing speech is delivered in such a robotic
way that you wonder if the scene was meant to be animated and then they couldn't
get it done so slapped together a basic scene in the in-game engine.
Given
that one character is canonically an English speaker and Evan has a very
British boy-king feel to him, playing in English made sense. Plus to be honest,
the Japanese version has really silly names. Tani's Japanese name is 'Shirty'.
On the other hand, I wish the main antagonist's name had been kept, as the
English version seemed to be designed to spoil a twist for any player who knows
how Japanese morae work. Still, when I play it through again, I'll do so in
Japanese.
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| This guy is such a troll |
The
world-building also suffers as the game goes on. Ding Dong Dell is a fun
classical fantasy city, though the fish theming is pretty hilarious and the
Grimalkin must get hungry a lot as they go about their business. Then Goldpaw
is absolutely gorgeous - though with Sino-Japanese relations not at their best
just now, I question the wisdom of making a city that's clearly based on China
and then having it populated by dog-people with names like Fai Do and Bau Wau who
love gambling but are suffering because of their leaders' corruption and
cheating. Hydropolis is pretty but nothing particularly original. For some
reason too many JRPGs have to have a futuristic world amongst all the swords
and sorcery, from Chrono Trigger to Tales of Symphonia, and it's always the
ugliest and least fun part of the game, and the same happens here. The tone
doesn't fit well and fighting robots after all the majestic dragons just isn't
very exciting. Much better to keep it simple and high fantasy, and maybe throw
in a ninja village or a vampire castle or something. Wait, that's Suikoden again.
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| Evan needed more friends |
Though
Ghibli was not involved this time, key personal stayed on. Momose Yoshiyuki did
a great job with the character design, perhaps my favourite element of the
game, but I was disappointed by Hisaishi Joe's input. I adore his work, own
several of his OSTs and image albums, and the themes that reappear from the
first game are great. The rest...is lacking. Most of the city themes are
simplistic and repetitive, lifting from Carmen and, of all things, Kraftwerk,
and the battle music is unmemorable. I think what extra work was done here was
phoned in.
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| Go, my knights! |
With
the game barely marketed and most of the revenue coming from big fans of the
first game shelling out for hugely overpriced limited editions, I don't know that
the sales here are going to inspire much confidence in a further sequel. I
wouldn't be surprised if Level-5 just stick to their safe cash cows like Inazuma 11 and Professor Layton, both of which are about to have new anime
adaptations (woo!). Maybe they'll even go back to Dark Cloud. But I would certainly enjoy seeing more from Ni
no Kuni, especially with more Evan or perhaps some sort of event where Evan
and Oliver can work together. I’m keen for what the DLC will bring. But when
I'm being completely honest, I cannot say that this game was well-made or worth
returning to over and over again, and the quick, easy platinum is testament to
the lack of depth and substance here, even if it's far less frustrating than
the first game was. There’s some more endgame content for a 100%, more
weapons and outfits to get, but since absolutely all of them are obtainable
only by grinding items in the extremely boring final dungeon, I don’t see
myself bothering.
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| Ta-daaa, it's the platinum |
I
loved Evan and had more fun with the first half of the game than I have with
any other game I can think of in years. But ultimately I was left feeling a
little unsatisfied, even disappointed. And the honest truth was that if Evan
had looked like Kratos I probably wouldn't have cared for the game at all. Still,
after finishing off the game I felt like something was missing from my life that
no other game can quite fill, so that’s definitely a sign I enjoyed the world.
I’m very keen for the DLC and will absolutely buy it. But I categorically
wanted more, and I have to say, this game didn’t quite deliver.
