Ni No Kuni: The Another World

Played for 10mins or so before work: Wow ! The cell shading effect and texture work is so damn pretty, it really feels like i am playing a Ghibli movie !
Lovely ! Need to get home quick ! It looks so damn good and has instant Ghibli charm in the opening cutscene that my wife says if she can co-op with me somehow ! If not , thrn it will be she who plays and I who watches !

Now, thats a first ! B)

 

To be honest, it never really feels like a Ghibli movie. Sure, on the surface you have the unmistakeable art direction, but the story underneath is clearly all Level5. It's also one that sports all the jrpg cliches you could possibly imagine. I'm fine with that personally. I enjoy the game mostly for the high quality art und the mechanics. The archetypical characters aren't particularly interesting and remain entirely one-dimensional.

Still, I wished there were more voiced cut-scenes. The don't need to be hand drawn either. The engine driven ones look good enough. After the first hour of the game you'll be advancing the majority of the story by reading text and pressing the x button. The story telling is also rather inconsistent. 80% is just text with gesticulating characters, 15% are proper engine driven cut-scenes, 3% are hand drawn, and the final 2% are gesticulating characters with self-advancing text and voice acting. Sometimes the game will use all 4 methods in a single scene, and the result is a bit jarring.

 

Visually it's very Ghibli, but whereas Ghibli deals in interesting themes and shades of grey, NNK is a mostly traditional good vs evil story with kackling bad guys instead.

 

Miyazaki is at least not listed anywhere in the opening credits. If he was involved, I imagine he would have been credited. IIRC I think I saw the guy who directed My Neighbors The Yamadas in the opening credits.

 

Miyazaki himself isn't involved anywhere in it, I think.

Played the game for around5 hours yesterday. Good game, good good game, hence the 5 hours in a go ! Like the battle mechanics a lot and love the art a lot. The story doesn't feel like Ghibli once u r in the fairy world. The initial start in the real world does have a Miyazaki's trademark feel to it. Child protagonists, small family events etc. But once in the Fairy world , its back to videogamey save the world routine. But thr beautiful art of the fairy world and suweet music makes up for it !

My gripes, for now , are mainly technical:

1)I would have liked higher res textures in the environment. Characters look sharp, but environ textures, if they had been higher res, the game would have achieved the ghibli look perfectly.
2)Lack of AA. Why? We are on the ps3 here.
3) Just a bit of visible pop-up ! Again, why?
4)command wheel with D-pad and movement with left stick means we require two left thumbs ! Right now, in the heat of battle, I find myself holding the left stick to one side using my right thumb while browsing the command wheel with my left thumb!

Other than that the game is a purrrfect fantasy journey. Beautiful and charming.

A question: Should I sell stuff like 'Dumpty Egg' and 'Springwater' or are they going to be of use later ?

 

Once you get the Cauldron you can use alchemy and many of the items you find throughout the realm can be used for that purpose.

 

I'm about 8-10 hours in..

I've just got my second characther, and she wanted to use my familars.
But how do you know which familiars is better suited to be used with one characther compared to another characther?

 

@Renegaderocks: you can also use L2/R2 to cycle through menu options during combat. No need for a second index finger.

 

When you switch familiars you should see 3 small pictograms of monsters just over the familiar slots.

If one of them is moving up and down (or something like that) it means that familiar is well-suited for the character.

 

I finished the game yesterday and I never really understood how that preferred genus thing worked to be honest. Didn't seem to matter a great deal, though. A slightly less awesome Puss in Boats/Puss in Bouts will still own just about anything he comes across.

 

What difficulty did you end up using?

 

Normal

 

Did the game tell me that? never knew !

BTW, What is the best qay to use that lemur familiar provided by the saucepanhead boy? he just dies everytime I try to use him !

 

Game purchased digitally!

 

Pretty sure it's part of the tutorial. The genus affinity bonus is only 10%, so it really don't matter until endgame.


All 3 of those familiars are awful. In general I find that anything with the "Pysch Up" skill sucks (which the lemur guy has). Defend is just ridiculously better. That said, I took the lemur anyway for a short time because he's an early bloomer so he gets better ATK than Mite pretty fast. Not bad for plowing through peons that are just barely too high level not to run away.

Once you can tame, I'd recommend taming a banana dude for the girl and then go back to the sewers and tame a snake for Oliver. The Naja is one of the best familiars in the game once it's leveled up. Mite is actually very good for a -long- time, but is not good for endgame. It's sucky that they force you to evolve him early the first time, but since he's not an endgame powerhouse anyway, the small loss in stats isn't that big of a deal.

 

I don't use any of the starter Familiars, they all haul arse.

If you want to brutally hurt your enemies grab two Dineceros and two Ice Maidens.

Or if you just got the ability to charm familiars, go grab two Najas from the first dungeon in Ding Dong Dell, they are better than anything you will come across for a long time, until you can get the Dineceros and Ice Maidens.

 

Thanx for the tips ! Did some side quests today in DDDell before I start towards Golden Grove. Great game ! Absolutely loving it !

I bought the jump ability with my first merit card, turns out its just as useless as the game description said ! I thought it might have some use at all !

BTW, had taken up the side quest where u have to find the diary of the traveller. It is supposed to be on an islqnd with two trees in the NWest of the map, but can't find it anywhere ! Any tips ?