Ni No Kuni is a collaboration project between Level 5 and Studio Ghibli and supposedly the savior of JRPGs, but is  this really true?

The game starts off with Oliver in Motorville.  He lives with his mother and is best friends with a kid named Philip.  Oliver sneaks out one night after his mother goes to sleep to test drive a vehicle his friend Philip made.  While driving the vehicle, because of the White Witch, a tire falls off and Oliver falls into the water, saved by his mother who woke up in the middle of the night and started looking for him, but then dies of a heart attack shortly after.  After bringing a doll his mother gave him to life because of his tears, the doll, Drippy, tells Oliver that his mother can be brought back by saving her in the world where he's from and that Oliver is the chosen one, a wizard that's destined to save their world.  Ni No Kuni's story has every cliche in the book, but it's decent.  It's not anything special, but The dialogue is written well enough during story events that it's just good enough not to skip.  Side quest events are a totally different story.

When getting to Drippy's world, you learn that the people in the world have been brokenhearted by Shadar.  While it's a main portion of the story, most side quests you'll speak to someone who has a broken heart and they're missing a certain piece of their heart.  Whether it's kindness, enthusiasm, love, etc, you'll read some dialogue about what's wrong with that specific person, and then you'll need to take heart from one person who has more than they need and give it to that person to complete the quest.  Other quests will have you getting certain items, getting certain monsters, or defeating a required number of monsters, but 95% of them consist of healing people who have a broken heart.  The dialogue between these sidequests gets really repetitive between the people who have a broken heart as well as those who have too much.  It'll get to the point that you just start skipping the text boxes and then give them the required feeling that they're missing.  You'll want to do the quests though as you'll get bonus' like running faster on the world map, more experience per battle, etc.  

When Oliver first learns how to use magic, he'll acquire the Wizard's compendium.  The further into the game you get, he'll learn new spells at certain points in the game.  Spells that are used more frequently and will allow Oliver to cast attack or defensive magic, unlock locked treasure chests, find hidden treasures on the world map, and use magic that's required to progress in the story.  It really gives you a lot of useless magic in the list, because some spells you'll use once in the entire game, while other spells you'll use in a single area, then one more time later in the game kind of like a way for Level 5 to say "see, we didn't forget about every spell."  

Another feature about the Wizard's Compendium though, aside from the spells, is that it's somewhat of a strategy guide and that it also gives a large amount of back story to the world.  The Wizard's Compendium is 360 pages in length and is literally jaw dropping in detail put into it.  Black and white as well as color drawings and very text heavy.  Think of it as a novel with pictures.  Alchemy ingrendients, spells, monster species, maps and locations in the world, etc, with everything being described in detail.  There are even short stories that you'll receive when completing main quests, side quests, and sleeping at each inn that further detail the game world.  The game even has an alphabet written in runes, so those of you who learned al-bhed have another useless language to memorize if you want.  

As a Wizard, Oliver can fight for himself or he can summon familiars to fight with him.  He gets friends along the way that will join his party and they can also use familiars.  If a character summons a familiar, then they'll be on the sidelines while the familiar takes their place in battle.  Any HP damage received or any magic used will remove from the characters pool of HP and MP as the familiars have none of their own.  If the character gets knocked unconscious then the familiars will also be unusable.  Each familiar has three different class tiers, with the final tier being two different types.  Getting the first tier familiar and leveling it up, upgrading into the further tiers, the familiar will keep every skill it has learned.  

The games biggest problem is the battle system itself.  While you can attack and have magic, there are very few skills in the game for your familiars and the more powerful magic and skills, except late game magic that Oliver acquires, uses too much MP for the damage it does.  Most of the time you'll keep hitting the x button for your familiar to attack since that'll be  the most damaging.  There's no reason to move around in random battles unless to position yourself to attack a different enemy after changing targets because you're not going to dodge regular attacks and skills from random battles are useless to defend against.  With three enemies each being in a random battle, each using skills at a different times, you'll waste time defending on a skill that might be aimed at another party member.  The game is easy enough to not even require defending during normal battles.  

So while the combat is monotonous, that's not even the half of it.  There's no efficiency in the combat system.  Just about every RPG that has an action style combat system with multiple characters, whether it's Tales of, Star Ocean, etc, you can switch to a different character to cast a spell, or open a menu to have them cast the spell while you retain control and do something else with your other character.  On Ni No Kuni, Let's say that one character has a familiar out that you want to switch to.  You have to switch to the character which will pull the familiar back from where it was at, then you'll have to send the familiar back out.  During all of this pulling the familiar back and sending it back out, and then waiting a second until you can actually control it and choose an attack or skill, the enemies can attack during that time.  The character might also be in a different location than the familiar was at, so more time is wasted to get the familiar closer to the enemies.  What if you want to cast a spell and then switch characters though?  If you use an item, cast a spell, etc, you are stuck as that character until the spell is fully cast.  There are some spells that are fully cast but don't damage enemies until a few seconds afterwards, sometimes even between 5-10 seconds, including the most powerful single targetting spell.  Let's say that the enemies or one of your characters use a spell or skill that plays a cutscene, the spell you cast is cancelled out, regardless if it was about to cause damage, about to heal, whatever, and if it went past the point where you actually cast it, then you lose the MP and get robbed of the effect.

It wouldn't matter so much if the AI of your allies weren't dumb as bricks.  About the only way you can make the AI competent, is remove all but the lowest costing MP skills from the familiars, and then tell them to do whatever they want, giving the AI a familiar in the second or third slot one that is a healing familiar.  They'll do alright when it comes to recovery, but you give them any skills that happen to cost a decent amount of MP and it'll be  gone within two battles.  The other problem with the AI is that when not healing or wasting magic, they're also not attacking often.  It takes a second, but you can cancel attacks automatically by hitting o incase you need to defend against a boss.  With your allies though, you'll see them attack one time with their familiar, and then you'll see the familiar back off, meaning they cancelled the attack after a single strike and moved backwards.  This happens all too frequently, so the majority of the time, you as the player will be doing all the work with a single familiar.  If you switch to another character or familiar of your own to heal with, you'll notice it doesn't get anything done in battle.  The AI is useless when it comes to actually dealing damage.  When you tell the AI to defend in boss battles, using the party defense commmand, there's a lot of times they'll defend, then cancel the defense out.

So Ni No Kuni has a poor menu system you're required to use in combat, an innefficient way of controlling allies, some horrible bad AI, with a combat system that is mainly mashing x in random battles.  Bosses are really the only highlight of combat, and even then, the flaws within the game hold those back from really being enjoyable.  

The graphics are good, but Level 5 has had other offerings that have looked better in many ways.  All characters and monsters are cel shaded with very good animations, the towns are colorful and well designed, and the world map looks good, but it's all a bit disappointing when Dragon Quest 8 looked better in some aspects and not too much worse in others others, or their other PS3 title, White Knight Chronicles looks far better in all aspects.  The game also has good music, even if lacking in variety, though being fully orchestrated certainly helps.

Ni No Kuni did have the potential to be atleast a good game, but it's marred with an awful battle system.  The combat takes up most of the game so it's hard to recommend based on just everything else, but if you can look past the combat, everything else is atleast decent.

Gameplay 3/10
Design 7/10
Presentation 7/10
Balance 2/10     

Overall 4.75

I actually really liked it, one of my favorite JRPGs of this gen and the closest looking game to an anime imo.

Wow that was pretty harsh, I sold my PS3 due to the lack of good JRPGs and to have money for a 3DS XL and this only helps my argument...

Btw. I decided to start reviewing games differently so graphics and audio didn't make much of a difference unless it was really bad. Games might be scored too high or too low but otherwise be better or worse because of the graphics.

Gameplay is the games main focus, so as an RPG it'll be the combat and gameplay outside of combat. Design is the level design, so whether it's an RPG or not, just the design of the world, not how the graphics are though. Presentation is story, graphics, and audio, plus how fast or slow it progresses. Balance is the games balance, but also weight. If the game is heavily focused on gameplay then it'll be weighted for gameplay, if it's heavily focused towards story(presentation,) like Persona 4, the balance will be weighted for story, plus points towards or removed from balance issues ,

Well the majority of people actually really liked the game, it has a 8.6 on metacritic for its user score.

I completely disagree with basically all of your points. You don't seem to grasp the necessity or function of most of the combat system's quirks.

1. How are their very few skills exactly? Each familiar learns about 12+ abilities in it's lifetime progression. Its a lot like Pokemon where they only learn them after they reach a certain level, some only being acquired at certain evolution levels. Each Familiar even has a chance to go down a different path for the 3rd evolution to further diversify their usefulness.

2. Like every RPG that came before it, yes "Attack" command is one of the most useful abilities. But its not a button mash fest either. Even if you are just attacking, positioning plays an important role, as some enemies guard their front and by default decrease damage to them unless u attack from behind. Balancing when to stop attacking and quickly switch to defend is another strong tactic, as not only will it save you from massive damage but will also get you Glims.

3. You complain about other abilities not being useful but they are. You also say that they wear out their usefulness due to sucking up too much MP. The idea is to not just spam your powerful techniques. Its to assess which move is best. Lets talk Mitey for instance. He has that one Cross Cut move that is super effective for multiple reasons. A: When a strong enemy is gearing up to hit you with an attack, Cut will pull them into it's animation. Effectively cancelling the attack they were trying to pull off (not bosses tho). B: It has the chance of killing multiple weak enemies at once to quickly end a battle and net you lots of glims. And at the end of he day, if you are timing your skills just right, you get glims that replenish your MP so it won't matter how much MP it used up.

3. You can't tell me with a straight face that you got through the entire game without using Defend. I just beat the game myself after putting in 90+ Hrs into it, I have lvl 90familiars and those damn robots at the very end could basically one shot most familiars.

4. The AI, just like WKC before it does kind of suck and needs much direction. Yet its never really gamebreaking. It just means that switching between each character should be incorporated into your strategy. If you put them on anything other than "Don't use abilities" they will use it like its going out of style. I basically always kept the guys on DUA and the girl on Healing duty. She will spam healing spells excessively, yes, but if you are getting off criticals the enemies will drop Glims. She will dash for them almost immediately. Problem solved. Anything else you need from them can be done with the All Defend/All Attack macro. You see a big baddie powering up, All Defend quickly. Doing this just before will pretty much always net u Glims and strong chance of a Shining Glim for Supers. You should also equip your team with familiars that will obviously support there fight mechanics. Load the guys with Beefy Defenders and Damage Dealers. The girl with Elemental Spell Casters/Healers. Guy's equipped moves should be appropriately allocated as well.


So in general, you were doing it wrong...

About your review system: Good points. What we need is a good story and gameplay. I would also add some points for "innovation" for reviewing games.

About the review of ni no kuni: While I mostly disagree about your review I liked they way its written. For me ni no kuni was a great game. Keep up the good work.

Firstly, I wouldn't take this Jaded Review of this game as Gospel. Many people really loved this game including myself. Over all it was highly rated by those who get JRPGs.

Second, huh? PS3 has plenty of outstanding JRPGs. Valkyria Chronicles, Folklore, Resonance of Fate, Tales of Xillia, Demon's Souls, Disgaea 3/4, KH 1.5 HD Final Mix, WKC(admittedly this might be more of an acquired taste). As far as Console offerings this gen, PS3 was the way to go.

Gosh I don't agree with this review at all. Id give it an 8.5/10 guess the games not for everyone.

Everyone deserves their own opinion and all that jazz but this review I cannot get with. It sounds like a rushed one done before someone even finished the game. Played it for a few hours without really knowing how it works and was just like "This is dumb, I don't like it".

This game is most definitely a Solid 9/10 for me. I would hate for someone who was interested in this game to take a review like this serious.