Do you know what is highly addictive? Crack cocaine.

Do you know what else is highly addictive, but doesn't have depressing, life-destroying consequences? Ni no Kuni.

The first taste sparks the addiction. You start playing and find a traditional JRPG with beautiful graphics and a rousing orchestral score. You dig deeper. You find an entertaining combat system with depth to spare. You find a well-realised game world with entertaining characters. The story is familiar but works nonetheless. You start your quest and, for the first few hours at least, have a simple, fun soiree across a colourful fantasy land. You get used to the game mechanics, fight monsters, level up, buy new equipment and explore the world.

Then you start getting familiars and all hope is lost. Occasionally in battle you can capture enemy monsters and add them to your team. Thus the hunt begins as you start tracking down and trying to capture certain monsters you like the look of. Eventually the switch flips and you think 'Why not catch them all?'. You scour the world hunting monsters with a a burning determination. Hours pass like minutes.

Then you start to level your familiars up. It's fun and easy. As long as they're on your team they'll gain XP, even if you don't use them in battle. So you start to power level weaker familiars by bringing them into battles with higher levelled enemies. almost every battle will end with somebody levelling up. That's your high. That's the fleeting, but glorious. sense of elation your drug habbit affords you. and that's why you continue levelling.

You realise you can feed your familiars food to permanently increass their stats. You start to farm cash to pay for food items. Then you find out your familiars can evolve. Once they get to a certain level you can use an item to transform them into a stronger version, with superior stats and attacks. Once transformed they revert back to level 1, meaning you start to grind levels once again. So you start to evolve all your familiars so you can level them up again. The addiction has you in a stranglehold.

By the time the game springs alchemy on you it's too late. Your addiction has taken you over. Days pass by without you noticing. You haven't eaten or washed or slept. You get fired from your job because you haven't been turning up because there's far too much levelling to do. Your friends and family try to call an intervention, but it's too late. You've almost levelled your Cutpurrse into a Puss in Boots and you have no time to deal with other people. Your life has become about serving your addiction.

Ni no Kuni is my crack cocaine.

I've thrown in something in the realm of twenty hours into it and a lot of that was just me running around hunting down monsters and levelling things up. I spent like half an hour alone determined to get a freakin skeleton in my party. Now i'm trying to level him up to his third form. I complete every side quest and bounty hunt the second it appears and roam the map looking for materials and items for alchemy. All hope is lost to me. Ni no Kuni has me in its iron grip. and, like all addicts, i'm fine with that. Level 5 has done this to me before with Dragon Quest 8, Rogue Galazy and Dark Chronicle, games for those with a love of the grind. They're pretty much my drug dealer at this stage.