Remember when SE said traditional jrpgs don't work anymore and the genre needs to move on? The reason they made FF13 so cinematic filled with cgi animations with a new action based battle system. Well, FF13 was one of SE's least liked games.

Ni no Kuni shows why SE was wrong, its a traditional jrpg that stays true to its roots, and guess what? The game is turning out to be one of the best jrpgs of the last decade. Hopefully SE gets the memo and make a memorable rpg again, and it doesn't have to spend millions on pretty cgi to make up for the horrible story and characters.

Ni no kuni doesn't have a giant internet campain for free advertisement. Nor does it have article after article at IGN. OpRainfall was big for sales in NA. Idk if Ni No Kuni has that backing but I'm hoping it sells well, we need more Jrpgs.

It may crush it when it comes to gameplay and experience, but sales wise, it's quite abysmal in comparison. I tend to understand S-E's point of view when it comes to FF. They want to sell more because they invest so much in the development of those games. But their focus is at the wrong place. If they'd try to create a consistent universe and use CGI to a minimum, if at all, then the costs would be lowered. Back then, when they used sprites to tell the whole of their stories, the games were still effective in their narratives. Now, they're looking to make new fans because to recoup the cost of their games, they need to sell a lot more copied.

But they do that at the expense of their long time fans. If you ask me, I'd say that Team 1's heads need to go. Kitase and Toriyama have next to no grasp about what the series really is about. I'd put Ito as the head of Team 1, and make Kitase go back to directing the video segments only, if at all.

Ninokuni still has an action battle system. Or rather action and command-based. Same goes for FF XIII though...

FF devs/producers say a lot of crap but you shouldn't generalize; SE still makes different types of games. Bravely Default recently came out, it's a traditional RPG, and it got very good reception. They just need to localize it already.