The moment I hit the first dungeon in the first town when they forced me upon puzzles that could not be completed bacause of a lack of resources. Yes, that's right, if you ran out of mana (which happens extremely easily by the way) when you hit the first puzzle you are SOL. Apparently you can go back to town, waste all your hard-earned coins on a few new potions, or sleep, or grind more monsters for mana drops. Fun.

I also played on easy and let me tell you something; there's nothing easy about it. The monsters in the first dungeon hit hard...really hard. Died at least two times. 

It's safe for me to say Ni No Kuni is one of the absolutely worst JRPGS ever made. Horrible gameplay is dragging this down and apparently it gets worse. Once you get allies; they tend to run out of mana too and are useless in comebat. 

But that's not what pisses me off; it's the fact that I couldn't progress in the main story because I ran out of mana. WHAT? I have NEVER seen a worse design choice in any JRPG. I can't even recall any game in the genre that has puzzles tied to your resource system where you can actually run out and fail to progress. And no, I'm not going to grind more monsters for mana just so I can proceed with the main story; that's incredibly stupid.

All this could be remedied if they let you restore full mana and full health after each fight. There, problem solved. At least on easy difficulty. That is some bullshit design. 

I think it's safe to say I've lost faith in JRPGs. The last good ones were Lost Odyssey and Eternal Sonata. 

Ni No Kuni is an unbalanced mess. Wiped from harddrive. 

points taken from your review
1 u clearly don't know how to play any games
2 u didn't play the game for more than 5mins
3 u r an idiot
4 same as 3
5 u r just seeking attention


User has been banned for this post   ~Barozi

YOU are one of the worst JRPGs ever made.

Ok cool

But seriously, you are making a big deal out of very little. I personally got through that specific puzzle first try (because I'm not bad I guess) and like you said, you can just go back into town and sleep if you run out of mana. Also, while there is difficulty, its really not game breaking (and I play on normal). Its a healthy challenge (although it can feel slightly unbalanced at times).

HOWEVER, Ni no Kuni is far from the amazing game it was painted as. It does have a lot of flaws such as the incredibly stupid friendly AI and many other things that just aren't done as well as I had hoped. If you aren't charmed by the presentation, stay away from this game. There are other JRPGs that do things much better but the thing that makes this game special is the presentation and that is what keeps me playing.

Sorry that you didn't like the game but swearing off JRPGs is hilariously petty :P Try looking at some DS/3DS games or play Xenoblade...

This thread should be locked.

I played on normal and had no problem with the first dungeon. Infact, the entire game is pretty easy.

The very first dungeon when you're by yourself is better because you can switch back to Oliver when you're about to get attacked. When more enemies and allies get added, you don't know who is going to be attacked, without going into all out defense it's pointless. Switching to all out defense is a waste on normal battles because instead of taking one attack to one character, you're defending one attack and making all three characters useless for a small period of time. Not efficient to defend on normal battles with more than one character but early in the game it's a lot better than later.

If you want a good action RPG on the PS3, play Tales of Graces F.  There's multiple difficulties on that and can be changed at any time.

You died ... twice? Good heavens.

LOL. I take from your review, that you're not a hardcore player, but instead some mainstream casual who gives up on the first sign of difficulty. Well, that's fair, the game wasn't made for you. But you have no big problems, most games these days are made with players like you in mind, so simply get something else and play on.

You had difficulties with the first dungeon? You must be joking, the whole game is too damn easy.

It's quite overrated though, it's not as good as many people say but it's enjoyable.

It wasn't my fault, I lit the first two pillars with fire but then the game didn't recognize me being in range for the 3rd so they got reset and I was left with no mana.

I just bought a PS3 and I have a HUGE backlog. The last thing I need is suffer patiently through bullshit design like this. Why do you defend it just because it was easy for you? Have you ever seen a design mechanism like that in any JRPG? I can't recall a single one.

The bottom-line is: it's inexcusable. I don't have time for that "teh hardcorez" crap. That's just not how good games are designed today.