Ni No Kuni Review

[forevercloud3000]

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...