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Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch |OT|

Acquiescence

Acquiescence

Member
eXistor said:
Not really, the game eases you into everything. It explains everything as if it were your first rpg. I suppose I'd say: do all the sidequests to minimize grinding. Only go to the next storypoint when you've done everything there is to do.
Click to expand...

Good good good, that's what I like to hear. Cheers.
 
L

laika09

Member
This game seriously frustrates me. I'm in love with the art, the music, the writing... but I can't help but feel that everything else lets it down. Particularly the battle system. This battle system is irredeemably bad in my eyes.

  • Many-to-most spells, abilities and items take way too long to cast and are in constant danger of being interrupted. If an enemy uses an instant-cast 'big' ability (with a cutscene) at the last possible second of your spellcast, the entire thing is nullified. This is awesome when you’re using your last phoenix down or drop of mana to resurrect a party member, sit through the entire five-second waiting period, and then get instantly AE'd and your resurrection is cancelled.
  • On top of that, interruption behavior seems incredibly inconsistent to me. Sometimes a seemingly interrupted spell will land, sometimes it won't but mana consumed anyway, sometimes it's like nothing happened. This probably differs between instant, charged, direct, bolt-type, etc. spells and items, but I couldn't casually determine a pattern and it's not explained, so it's extremely frustrating.
  • Occasionally my target will change seemingly at random, no matter what I do. There will be an enemy at low health, I'll be attacking it, and then... my familiar switches targets. I manually swap it back to the low health enemy, and he does it again. I don't understand.
  • The monster-catching subsystem is unnecessarily overwrought. The obscenely low capture rates of some monsters is one thing, but probably the least frustrating aspect to the system. I get that the 'balance' of abilities between the three characters that leads to only Esther being able to catch monsters, but having to switch to her, select serenade, then select serenade again in the midst of a battle is cumbersome. Several times, in fact, I had a mid-progress monster capture get completely wiped out by an AI character picking up a gold glim and blasting an AE on the monster I was serenading.
  • Which leads to the AI. It's horrid. AI characters do their best to blow through their entire mana pool as fast as possible. You can fix this by telling them not to use abilities, but that just defeats the purpose of conserving mana in the first place.
  • If the character you control is doing any appreciable amount of damage (as they usually are), then you will spend the entire battle as the target of every enemy’s attacks, and thus spend most of your time either running away or dying.
  • Your character or familiar stops moving every time a buff is cast on it. More than once this made me take a fatal hit that I was running away from.
  • Some gold glim abilities seem useless. My favorite familiar's gold glim increases his magic attack, giving me like 50 extra damage on his abilities. Others do close to 1000 damage outright.
  • Summons are
    introduced so late into the game as to be pointless.
  • You can’t see your party members’ MP - ridiculous considering how quickly they burn through it. Beyond that, you can't switch to another party member's familiar directly. You have to swap to that character first, often on the opposite side of the battle field, then to their familiar, even if it was already out. Pointless and aggravating restriction.
  • Considering the game expects you to 'react' to enemy attacks with defend/evade/all-out defense, not nearly enough time is given to prepare for these attacks (and all-out defense itself is not reliable). If you are already mid-spellcast or ability, then you are given no chance whatsoever to defend.
  • Tidy Tears: I can count on zero hands how many times this has helped me. The flow of most battles seems to preclude it from being useful to me. It almost always goes off when at least one person is already dead, and usually right after I've healed myself, as well. I don't think it's necessarily bad that it's unreliable -- I like these sorts of combat 'bonuses', Persona 4 did them well for instance -- but I always feel like Tidy Tears is just there to kick me when I'm already down.

I'm sure some of these are personal failings or misunderstandings, but that I could all but beat the game without being course-corrected is a design failure in itself, in my opinion.

Virtually every complaint could be resolved by using a Dragon Quest-esque turn based system. (Hell, Level 5 made Dragon Quest VIII and IX themselves.) I appreciate that they're branching out and trying new things, but this battle system tries too hard to be modern, action-oriented and all things to all people. The result is a complete mess.

It's disappointing, because everything else is so well executed.
 
Revolutionary

Revolutionary

Member
No, I've noticed that happens on very rare occasion as well.

Also, tidy tears... dude did it WHEN MY PARTY WAS ALREADY DEAD. It was the first time he did it so I had thought he was going to resurrect us... nope. Empty field when the healing effect hit. Good job Drippy.
 
L

laika09

Member
backlot said:
I've never had a familiar I was controlling switch targets on its own. Maybe you were hitting a button by mistake?
Click to expand...

I know it sounds weird, so I was a bit reluctant to include it, but it's happened probably 4 or 5 times that I've noticed. As far as I know, R1 is the only way to manually switch targets, so I was very deliberate to get it to replicate when it popped up again. It's almost as if enemies can use some sort of silent 'Yoo-Hoo'-type ability when another is at low health.
 
I

Iph

Banned
Been playing this for the last couple days. Just the kind of RPG I needed. I think the English VA can be a little stiff/underwhelming at times, but beyond that I can't think of anything to complain about. I LOVE the battle system, bounty hunts and quests. The overworld map is amazing and right up my alley and the whole game is gorgeous and very studio ghibli. Best purchase I've made in a while. :)
 
F

Freezasaurus

Member
cam said:
Been playing this for the last couple days. Just the kind of RPG I needed.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I used to hate level grinding, but its been so long since I've played an actual JRPG that now I quite enjoy it. I enjoy it even more when my Catastroceros punches a boss to death.
 
J

Jugendstil

Member
laika09 said:
This game seriously frustrates me. I'm in love with the art, the music, the writing... but I can't help but feel that everything else lets it down. Particularly the battle system. This battle system is irredeemably bad in my eyes.

  • Many-to-most spells, abilities and items take way too long to cast and are in constant danger of being interrupted. If an enemy uses an instant-cast 'big' ability (with a cutscene) at the last possible second of your spellcast, the entire thing is nullified. This is awesome when you’re using your last phoenix down or drop of mana to resurrect a party member, sit through the entire five-second waiting period, and then get instantly AE'd and your resurrection is cancelled.
  • On top of that, interruption behavior seems incredibly inconsistent to me. Sometimes a seemingly interrupted spell will land, sometimes it won't but mana consumed anyway, sometimes it's like nothing happened. This probably differs between instant, charged, direct, bolt-type, etc. spells and items, but I couldn't casually determine a pattern and it's not explained, so it's extremely frustrating.
  • Occasionally my target will change seemingly at random, no matter what I do. There will be an enemy at low health, I'll be attacking it, and then... my familiar switches targets. I manually swap it back to the low health enemy, and he does it again. I don't understand.
  • The monster-catching subsystem is unnecessarily overwrought. The obscenely low capture rates of some monsters is one thing, but probably the least frustrating aspect to the system. I get that the 'balance' of abilities between the three characters that leads to only Esther being able to catch monsters, but having to switch to her, select serenade, then select serenade again in the midst of a battle is cumbersome. Several times, in fact, I had a mid-progress monster capture get completely wiped out by an AI character picking up a gold glim and blasting an AE on the monster I was serenading.
  • Which leads to the AI. It's horrid. AI characters do their best to blow through their entire mana pool as fast as possible. You can fix this by telling them not to use abilities, but that just defeats the purpose of conserving mana in the first place.
  • If the character you control is doing any appreciable amount of damage (as they usually are), then you will spend the entire battle as the target of every enemy’s attacks, and thus spend most of your time either running away or dying.
  • Your character or familiar stops moving every time a buff is cast on it. More than once this made me take a fatal hit that I was running away from.
  • Some gold glim abilities seem useless. My favorite familiar's gold glim increases his magic attack, giving me like 50 extra damage on his abilities. Others do close to 1000 damage outright.
  • Summons are
    introduced so late into the game as to be pointless.
  • You can’t see your party members’ MP - ridiculous considering how quickly they burn through it. Beyond that, you can't switch to another party member's familiar directly. You have to swap to that character first, often on the opposite side of the battle field, then to their familiar, even if it was already out. Pointless and aggravating restriction.
  • Considering the game expects you to 'react' to enemy attacks with defend/evade/all-out defense, not nearly enough time is given to prepare for these attacks (and all-out defense itself is not reliable). If you are already mid-spellcast or ability, then you are given no chance whatsoever to defend.
  • Tidy Tears: I can count on zero hands how many times this has helped me. The flow of most battles seems to preclude it from being useful to me. It almost always goes off when at least one person is already dead, and usually right after I've healed myself, as well. I don't think it's necessarily bad that it's unreliable -- I like these sorts of combat 'bonuses', Persona 4 did them well for instance -- but I always feel like Tidy Tears is just there to kick me when I'm already down.

I'm sure some of these are personal failings or misunderstandings, but that I could all but beat the game without being course-corrected is a design failure in itself, in my opinion.

Virtually every complaint could be resolved by using a Dragon Quest-esque turn based system. (Hell, Level 5 made Dragon Quest VIII and IX themselves.) I appreciate that they're branching out and trying new things, but this battle system tries too hard to be modern, action-oriented and all things to all people. The result is a complete mess.

It's disappointing, because everything else is so well executed.
Click to expand...

I agree with just about all of these points. I am really enjoying the game but the battle system is a mess. Sometimes it seems like the game wasn't play tested because the oversights are so glaring. Most of the issues can be overcome by steamrolling through with an overpowered Oliver but its shame because there's a lot of wasted potential.
 
D

Danj

Member
What level do you need to be to take on
Rusty's Nightmare
? I already died like 3 times trying it, the FAQs on GameFAQs were no help either.

EDIT: nevermind, turns out the FAQ I was reading was wrong. Also this is a battle where you really need to
make use of the fact that you can run around to avoid attacks
.
 
T

Torraz

Member
eXistor said:
Not really, the game eases you into everything. It explains everything as if it were your first rpg. I suppose I'd say: do all the sidequests to minimize grinding. Only go to the next storypoint when you've done everything there is to do.
Click to expand...

Might be a dumb question, but how do I know that I have done everything that there is to do?
 
D

DarkPanda

Member
Torraz said:
Might be a dumb question, but how do I know that I have done everything that there is to do?
Click to expand...

As far as sidequests are concerned, each town has a local Swift Solutions branch, which contains a job board and bounty hunt list. When both of those are empty, you know you've done all the sidequests in that town. Also, look at your map. Any blinking dots are people you need to talk to for something side-questy.
 
Nose Master

Nose Master

Member
When do you get the basic food upgrade recipes? Going into the menu and manually adding three ingredients over and over is so fucking tedious.
 
D

Defunkled

Member
Why does it take so FUCKING long for healing spells during battle? It literally takes 4 seconds for the stupid aura to surround the character, and THEN they get back the HP. I've had countless characters KO'ed because the healing spell takes a lifetime.
 
J

jiggle

Member
Nose Master said:
When do you get the basic food upgrade recipes? Going into the menu and manually adding three ingredients over and over is so fucking tedious.
Click to expand...
u get ur first list of recipes after completing a girl's request of making her some sword
lady on a boat with fruit basket gives you some more after
 
L

lingiii

Banned
witchedwiz said:
i preordered it in october or september..
was that too late?
Click to expand...

I ordered from Amazon like two days before release or so and only just got my promo code for Griffy yesterday. Dunno what the delay was.

Also: does anyone have a good wiki/resource for familiar metamorphs? I think I'm getting up on dudes ready to go to Ultimate form but I don't understand at all about choosing which of the two or what the level requirements are. Gamefaqs, and a quick search both let me down.
 
A

Aeana

Member
Finally found the time to push through the final dungeon and finished the game last night. Final time was 40:17, did every sidequest except for Derwin's last one. I doubt I'll find time for the post-game any time soon, so I'll put that aside. Honestly, I loved the game. I would love to write a big long detailed post about how I feel about everything, but I just don't have time for that, so it'll have to suffice to say that although the game has problems (some of them major, such as the crappy companion AI), I think it's one of the most cohesive RPG packages released this generation. There have been a fair number of legitimately good RPGs released across all platforms this generation, but the majority of them feel pared back or generally wanting compared to games from previous generations. Few really felt like a complete package to me, but Ni no Kuni sits right in line with those that did, like Blue Dragon, Tales of Vesperia and Xenoblade.
 
J

jiggle

Member
Aeana said:
I think it's one of the most cohesive RPG packages released this generation. There have been a fair number of legitimately good RPGs released across all platforms this generation, but the majority of them feel pared back or generally wanting compared to games from previous generations. Few really felt like a complete package to me, but Ni no Kuni sits right in line with those that did, like Blue Dragon, Tales of Vesperia and Xenoblade.
Click to expand...

shocking Lv5 managed it on their own
although they did have DS version + wkc to practice with
 
A

Aeana

Member
jiggle said:
shocking Lv5 managed it on their own
although they did have DS version + wkc to practice with
Click to expand...

No doubt about it. I didn't think Level-5 could possibly make a good RPG on their own, but they really impressed me, and I certainly have quite a history of Level-5 hate.
 
D

Dantis

Member
Got my copy today.

As I feared, I love everything except for the combat. The story seems a bit childish, but I think that's part of the charm of it. Soundtrack is outstanding. Graphics and art style are excellent. Combat is... Meh.

I hope I warm up to it a bit.
 
J

JollyWolf

Member
Now that I have
the dragon I don't feel like fast traveling. I find it more enjoyable just riding the dragon even if it take a little bit longer. Am I the only one who feels this way?
 
D

Defunkled

Member
Is it just me or is the Rank S part of the Solosseum near impossible? The party member AI isn't sophisticated enough and it just gets me killed.
 
W

WrenchNinja

Member
JollyWolf said:
Now that I have
the dragon I don't feel like fast traveling. I find it more enjoyable just riding the dragon even if it take a little bit longer. Am I the only one who feels this way?
Click to expand...
Youre not the only one, teleporting is for chumps when youve got a freaking
dragon.
 
M

mattiewheels

And then the LORD David Bowie saith to his Son, Jonny Depp: 'Go, and spread my image amongst the cosmos. For every living thing is in anguish and only the LIGHT shall give them reprieve.'
Joe's music in this game is just on such another level. It's so charming but has so much depth and weight to it. Does he do film scores, too?
 
J

Jive Turkey

Unconfirmed Member
laika09 said:
This game seriously frustrates me. I'm in love with the art, the music, the writing... but I can't help but feel that everything else lets it down. Particularly the battle system. This battle system is irredeemably bad in my eyes.
Click to expand...

I agree with each of your points. The battle system really holds back what could have been a truly wonderful game.
 
D

dino1980

Member
This has to be one of the worst purchase I have ever made. I dont talk about the game but instead of the Digital version from Eu PSNstore.

Have downloaded now the 16Gb file that they have like idiots forgot to add. After FIVE hours I finally have everything installed. Instead of meeting a nice game Im meet bye a text that says the following.

Copywright-information is not legal
(80029513)

Try the following
Log in with the account that you used for purchaseing the game. Deactivate this account and activite it again. After that deleate the content and download the files again from the download history.

If this doesnt work contact technical support with the code.

Just WOW it has taken about 5hours to download and install the game on new. I cant take this anymore. Is there anyway to get the game authenticated and working without downloading all the files again?
 
J

JollyWolf

Member
JohngPR said:
Technically it wasn't his fault. First 10 minutes spoilers:
The White Witch sabotages the kart...which is why it falls into the water.
Click to expand...

I know, but I still want to pay him for being
a bully.

mattiewheels said:
Joe's music in this game is just on such another level. It's so charming but has so much depth and weight to it. Does he do film scores, too?
Click to expand...

This was his only video game soundtrack.
 
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