Anyone playing Ni no Kuni 2? (Thoughts on the game)

[Ljink96]

I personally think it's not as good as the first. The story to me is just kinda bland. It starts out interesting enough but then spirals downhill. Within 20 hours in the game I began to feel story/plot fatigue. Go here, fix problems, skirmish, town building, and it cycles around this nearly the entire game.

The game is gorgeous, best JRPG I've ever laid eyes on, combat is so...damn...easy. In the beginning I felt it had a nice pacing but by the 8th hour in or so, you just kill everything. Bosses and infected monsters are so easy, dream doors are easy, etc.

For a game that has voice acting I've got to say, for 2018 it's mediocre and there's not enough of it. It cuts in and out at the most random of times. And when there is voice acting it's only for say...10 to 20 seconds or so. Reminds me of the PS1 era tbh.

The quest system is fair enough, some quests were enjoyable, most are just go here and get this. They tried to make the quest system more viable by incorporating mandatory side quests to progress the main plot and it turned out okay I guess, at times I was frustrated because I had to find someone numerous times just to join the kingdom and progress. And often times they get so wordy and they're not talking about anything I haven't heard of before, that just gets old, Golden Sun comes to mind with a lot of the dialogue. Not as bad as Golden Sun though.

Music...eh, Joe Hisaishi did a much better job in the first game, and II heavily relies on the first game's soundtrack, There are some gems like Gold Paw, and Hydropolis, but they're few and far between. Overall, my experience was just...meh. I had high expectations after the first game but I was kind of let down. Even though the battle system is nice and flashy, and Tales of -esque, it didn't retain the amount of strategy you needed in the original and I was afraid of that when I heard they were changing the battle system, my concerns were justified it seems. Most of the time you just hit A or the action button over and over until the next enemy is dead and when the golden thingy appears you're basically God at that point, just spam the spells. 

Not a bad game by any means, I'd rate it a 75/100, You can tell that Ghibli wasn't as involved in this game as the first. It seems like a shell of what the original was. I understand the original had world tropes as well, but when the series keeps doing it, it becomes old. The Plains, The Water Place, The Desert Place, The Snow Place, The Beach Place, The Poison Place, The Technology Place, it just gets old you know. Definitely not something I will thoroughly remember for years to come. I guess coming off Xenoblade Chronicles 2, my expectations were a bit high.

Last edited by Ljink96 - on 09 April 2018