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Finished Ni no Kuni 2 a few days back but didn't bother to write a short review until now.
The beginning and the end of the game are the best parts story-wise. The middle section isn't all that interesting and always follows the same repeating formula. Travel to new kingdom, the king/president is possessed by evil guy, fight kingmaker, kingdom joins the union.
Battle system isn't that bad but it's always the same from beginning to the end. No new (basic) moves to learn, no new moves by equipping different weapons etc. Luckily, you can freely choose with what character to play so there's at least a bit of variety. Dungeons are decent but there are little to no puzzle elements (only in the kingmaker quests AFAIR).
A major gimmick of the game is a kingdom builder mode that lets you erect buildings, do research and requires tons of new citizens. Getting new citizens is IMO the best part of the game and done cleverly by completing side quests. However, many of the buildings and research topics are pretty pointless and it takes an insane amount of time to fully upgrade everything. By the time you have researched the newest level of weapons/armor, you can already buy better stuff in the next kingdom and even if you can't it takes materials AND money to create them. In the end it's cheaper to buy what's available in a regular shop. In short, the mode had potential but isn't very well executed.
Visually, the game looks a lot better than the first game. No surprise here as it released quite a few years later but a generational leap is definitely visible.
Voice acting is disappointing as 95% of the lines aren't voiced at all.
The game offers a lot of content but the main story is quite short when you think about it. I finished the game in 33 hours with about 70 side quests finished (they can be finished within a few minutes each) and several hours that I spent building my kingdom which in the end wasn't really necessary. If you didn't level so insanely slow, the story could be completed easily in less than 25 hours.
Still, I had quite a bit of fun with the game but it's no must play IMO. I'd give it a 8.0/10 leaning more towards 7.5 than 8.5. Another JRPG on Xbox completed.
