Ni No Kuni - The jrpg with Studio Ghibli art

I seem to remember reading that there's an HD rerelease of Yakuza 1 and 2 that should have released in Japan by now... no clue if we'll get it here, though.

Also, seconding the purchase of Okami HD. It's a damn fine game.

It's not the graphics really, it's the way the inventory is handled and other interface quirks that are just super annoying if you've played the later installments. Yakuza 2 actually looks really nice on an emulator.

Reviews of Ni No Kuni have hit, apparently as of yesterday. I was just thinking about ordering this. I'm glad to have some reviews to consult first. I thought you guys would be interested as well.

SpazioGames sure seems to like it.

The Eurogamer, Edge and IGN reviews convinced that this is probably a game I should own.

Pretty much every review I've seen so far has been some variation of 'Buy this game it is awesome oh my god can't live without it.'

Needless to say, I'll be buying it on the day of release if I can.

Arg! I was hoping this game would suck, so I wouldn't have to get a PS3.

My order is in at Amazon along with an order for the guide. I always like having a guide for games like this. I've converted over to digital for most of my reading and information needs, but for some reason I just love having an actual physical strategy guide to consult on lengthy RPGs.

Yeah, completely sold on it. I just pre-ordered it.

This popped up on my radar (as release is imminent!) just in time to get in on the restock of the Wizards Edition (their name for their collectors edition). That thing sold out in a matter of hours.

I'm looking forward to it :)

~C~

I ordered the special edition from Namco a few months ago rationalizing it as an early birthday present for myself. Good to see that it's getting great reviews, which makes all the extra stuff just icing on the cake.

Major game retailers should release game on Friday instead Tuesday.

Luckily there are quite a few mom and pop game store around where I live.

When are the special editions shipping?

According to the note on my order it says that they should ship on or after the release date. From the forum they are using a company called Digital River and that people aren't happy about that.

I was kind of worry since it's an E rated game it's going to be super easy.. it's not.

So far it's a much more twitch + action based of Pokemon...

Is the twitching interesting at least? I made it through the demo but found the tactical dimension a little confusing. Like, I didn't understand the advantage that the summon offered (and doing it accidentally definitely got me killed with the boss), and I didn't understand what there was to the fight other than running around gathering crystals in order to keep your magic raining down and hopefully do a special attack.

It's actually pretty complicated once you get start collecting familiars. since there is the sign system + elemental system. I really enjoy the collecting part,

I don't like the twitch part much, the game doesn't pause unless you are switching characters(it immediately goes back to real time as soon as you are done switching, except you don't have access to ability wheel for about half a second). so it's annoying as hell trying to get multiple characters to block at same time(you get an all defense/all attack button pretty far into the game though). your other AI characters will not even attempt to block any big spells normally. I kind of wish they have a pause button so you can queue up action for different character and then unpause to start the action again.

you can't see your other party member's mana bar at a quick glance, so I always lose track whether or not I didn't get a heal because they cast the heal slowly or they are out of mana, which means I constantly have to either bring up use provision or tactic or switch to see how much mana they got left.

the game force you to micromanage in real time, So far twitch combat system bad, everything else good.

there are certain fights where using your character is better than using familiar, since Oliver have access to a much bigger spell arsenal than most familiar, but familiar tends to have much better defense/attack, right now my mite(the starting familiar) have around 110 attack and 120 defense, Oliver only have 50 attack and 60 defense..Also familiar can move and attack much faster than your character. most familiars can equip weapons, you can get weapons with elemental types, I have one with a storm type on a spear, and basically every single hit is a critical vs robotic enemies.

Oh yeah crystal is important, since it refills mana and health in mid combat, the chance of monster dropping crystal goes up by a huge amount if you deal critical damage or if you block monster attack or spells, hitting monster with a spell they are weak against almost guarantee a crystal drop.

The game's tutorial is actually very nice, and you can find those information in the wizard book as well. the book contains a lot of non-gameplay related stuff too which is interesting to read as well.

Isn't everything that's in the book available in the digital version that's within the game?

I think so, I don't have the physical book version. the digital version is kind of annoying to read though, it's like a pdf file.. ZOOOOM in, ZOOOM out.

Jim Sterling's review over at Destructoid is very interesting. He loved the game and gave it a 9.0, but he spends some time being clear about the amount of time it demands:

This is putting me off a little bit. The only JRPG I ever crammed a lot of hours into was FFX and that was back at a time in college when I had little else to occupy my time. I don't know if I can drop 40+ hours into a game or even want to if a significant amount of that time can be classified as "grinding." I know I'm going to want to play Dead Space 3 when it hits in two weeks and it's doubtful I'll have finished Ni No Kuni by then. The release schedule doesn't really let up after that either and I still have games from the holidays to finish. Hmm. Maybe it'd be better to hold off on this for now.

-never had problem with gold
-never had problem buying revival item, never needed one.
-grind is almost non existent as long as you do the side quest for bounty hunting.
-the game encourage you to spend your money as much as you can since when you die, your choice is either reload a save or take 10% hit to your current gold, and restart at almost the same spot.

for me, some of the con of this game

-take forever to walk anywhere for the first half of the game.
-unable to issue all defend or all block for first half of the game
-friendly AI is stupid, I set them all on do not use ability now. (FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY, why can't I change tactic outside of the combat, and even in combat, you can't change tactic unless you are controlling one of human characters).
-certain familiar are just flat out useless.... I have one melee familiar that has 1 accuracy.. on a range of 1-100+...
-certain party member pretty useless too..his whole job is help me carry 3 more familiars, (I'm looking at you Swaine...)
-a lot of boss mechanic eventually goes boil down to block big attack, and then control your highest damage dealer and kit the boss around battle field while rest of your team member beat on it's back. the aggro system is very similar to most MMO, heal cause big aggro so does dealing damage.
-some of the side quest is really bland? you get a lot of side quest basically just heal someone's brokenheart, usually goes like "this guy need more Love, and by golly the dude standing next to him(like 2 feet away), have tons of love to give, wooo" repeat those quest like 50+ times.. yeah...
-I can't really connect with any of the characters in the game, maybe it's just studio Ghibli, I really don't care much for their stories and art style. I'm just glad Level 5 is on board, since I love dark cloud 2, and so far I think Dark Cloud 2 is better than Ni No Kuni.
-Also Drippy yell TIDY way more than Oliver screaming Neato..

My order was cancelled by Digital River because of a problem with the credit card and now I'm not sure if I'm going to get it or not. I complained to them and they put in a support ticket for it but who knows. Supposedly Amazon UK may get in a few copies so I may go that route. Does anyone know if the PS3 is region locked or not?

it's not.

I did attempt to cancel my Amazon order with the idea of ordering the game later in the year. I was too late. Since it is a game I want to check out, I'm going to keep it and play as much as possible, while trying to mix in impending new releases and games from last year. We'll see how that goes!

For pre-ordering the guide, Amazon sent me a link to a PDF preview of the guide that talks about the basics of familiars. I thought you guys might want to check it out too.

I'm very interested to see if people still love this after 15 hours or so -- our reviewer, who luuuuuuuuurrrrrrrrrrvvvvvvs JRPGs in all their forms, had serious enough reservations with the content after that point to mark it down all the way to the bottom of our scale (I kid; y'all review scale haters can suckit) and has been paranoid about getting hated on for it.

Her review text isn't out of whack with other reviews I've read, even if the 7.0 she assigned is the lowest on Metacritic at the moment. The Destructoid review linked above goes to some lengths to acknowledge the grind the game puts players through. Obviously I'll reserve judgment until I get to play it myself. Morons that haven't played the game are going to fixate on that 7.0 and crab before even playing the game themselves, but I hope the reviewer doesn't really let that get to her.

Is this online somewhere?

this Gamasutra article contains some of that particular review. Adam's coworker basically have the same problem with combat system as I do..

Also I discover something really odd/stupid. So later in the game you have access to 2 easy button, All out attack and All out defense which you can use to order everyone to go all out attack or all defend..
Those 2 button helps a lot.. at first I realize when I do all out attack, the party member I set to not use ability will actually cast spell.. which isn't a big deal, more damage is good, I rarely use all out attack unless bosses get stun or something..Last night I was fighting a fairly tough boss fight, I decided to use all out defense when boss is casting his ultimate spell. my healer character decides to instead just defending, it's better to cast magic defense up on all my party member.

It happens over and over again, instead defending, she takes out a familiar and cast magic defense up and the boss basically 1 shots her every time with his spell. Apparently all out attack and all out defense will overwrite whatever tactic you have set.. and all out defense doesn't mean hit defend button...

The usual place.

Thanks, I didn't remember where you write.

HOW DARE YOU SIR, HOW DARE YOU

(nah, I just really don't want to come across as a link spammer so I don't always link stuff by default, no worries)

Andrew Fitch's EMG review, (I can't be the only shocked to find out that EGM is still a thing, right?) mentions that the game has an Easy mode built in. A quick Google search didn't reveal any real details on that mode as compared to the Normal difficulty. I'm thinking of playing the game in Easy mode to hopefully lessen the grindier aspects, but I was wondering if anyone know what the differences are between Easy and Normal.

the grind really isn't bad at all in normal difficulty.

there are a few out of way places with easy mob that give 10x the normal experience, so you can level up very very fast if you are underleveled.

like average xp per battle is 300, those enemies give 4000, and later 8000 Per enemy.. you gain 2-3 levels a fight.

Bah, ClubNamco fails me. I got in on the Wizards version (yay) and ordered two day shipping. However it won't get to my house until Monday because they didn't bother to get to the UPS drop off until today. UPS shows they printed the label yesterday.

Sigh. I was really hoping it would be around for the weekend. Oh well, first world problems I suppose.

~C~

Yes. Finally at the house. The magic book is ridiculously cool! I hope I never have to use Digital River again, supremely frustrating.

Sorry Cougar, maybe you'll get lucky and get a Saturday delivery.

In the same boat here.

After many phone calls and much hoop jumping I have finally, successfully re-ordered this game. I got the email today telling me that the game has shipped.

FINALLY my husband will get his late birthday gift.

I NEVER want to deal with Digital River again.