Level-5 and Studio Ghibli join forces to make some truly extraordinary magic.
Ni no Kuni's story starts out as stereotypical as most JRPGs do. It begins with a boy, in this case Oliver, who is tasked with saving the world. He doesn't know that just yet. Living in the bustling town of Motorville, Oliver is best friends with an aspiring inventor named Phil and the two of them are working on a powerful racing car. Going against his mother's wishes, Oliver sneaks out of the house and joins Phil to test out the speed demon. An unfortunate mechanical failure occurs, making Oliver lose control and steer wildly into the river. Oliver's mom received a startling vision that her son is in mortal danger, so she raced to the river looking for him and found him drowning. She dove into the river and saved Oliver, but the stress proved too be too much for her heart and she fell ill. Now on her deathbed, she begins to say good bye to her beloved son.
The beginning chapter is told in beautiful hand-animated and in-game cutscenes. It's very hard to not be at least somewhat affected by the game's melancholy opening, but it serves a purpose. It helps you to become attached to Oliver as you see him weep, his tears falling on a fairy doll that he's got tightly clutched. It's understandable if you shed tears yourself, but as Oliver's tears touch the fairy, something happens. The fairy suddenly poofs to life and becomes extremely animated, running off at the mouth a mile a minute. Obviously confused, Oliver asks how this happened, and this is when the story truly begins.
It turns out this fairy - who refers to himself as Drippy, Lord High Lord of the Fairies - comes from another world; a parallel dimension. Drippy tells Oliver that these two worlds are connected, and every person in one world has a soulmate in the other. He suggests to Oliver that there's a possibility of saving his mom in this world by saving her in Drippy's world. That would, however, require something else from Oliver, and that would be to save Drippy's world completely. Feeling remorsefully guilty for being the cause of his mother's death, Oliver wants to save his mom and at the same time do as much good as he can to make up for the one major wrong he's done.
When Oliver learns his first spell of Gateway, he's whisked away to Drippy's dimension. When you begin exploring the overworld for the first time, you get flooded with wonderful memories of just how good JRPGs used to be. The world is expansive and beautiful and detailed, pock-marked with cities to travel to and hidden areas to explore. Dotting the hills and valleys are monsters that you can seem roaming about, so you can choose whether or not you wish to engage them in battle. This is good to know for those who miss old-fashioned RPGs, but don't miss being bombarded with random encounters.
Ni no Kuni's battle system is based on a Pokemon-esque set up of finding monsters, capturing them and bringing them into battle as familiars. The system itself is mostly real-time, but you can pause the action by selecting commands. When you summon a familiar into battle, it takes your place and effectively shares your HP and MP. When you have characters with you, they also replace themselves with their familiars. The problem with the battle system is that it's restrictive at times. Because the familiar is sharing your HP and MP, your own character's stats basically become unimportant. It would have been much more fun if the familiars were able to fight along side you, and that you could call more than just one at a time into battle.
Sadly, the main characters suffer form rather short mana pools at the onset, and artificial intelligence is not very adequate. Your partners will often waste MP on healing spells when you suffered just a scratch, or they'll use familiars in the wrong ways, such as having mage-types physically attack or warrior-types attack when you need to have a defense-heavy familiar tank. You can take over characters at a moment's notice, but seconds are easily wasted this way. It also doesn't help that whoever you change to withdraws their familiar, having you cast it back out again. There are a few spells and actions that take far too long to use when casting, and even using restorative items can take one second too long druing life or death moment. It's far from a horrible battle system, but it certainly has enough idiosyncrasies to annoy you from time to time.
There is a system in place that helps to alleviate the damage sustained in battle, and it's glims. Glims are glowing orbs that sometimes pop out from enemies as they're being hurt, or when you successfully block or counter their actions. Green glims restore HP and blue ones restore MP, and they come in different sizes. The most important glim, however, is the Golden Glim, and these not only completely heal you, but also allow your character or familiar to execute their Miracle Ability. These can greatly turn the tide of a battle, but the only real issue is making sure you get to it first before another character does, or you might have a Miracle Ability activate that you don't want.
Since the game's battle system relies so heavily on familiars, there's a large emphasis on creature collecting. Each familiar is broken down into a genus and has one of four different signs: planet, star, sun, and moon. It basically plays out like Rock, Paper, Scissor, so you need to learn what familiars work best against others. The game contains so many different creatures to collect that it becomes impossible for you to know exactly what set works the best without investing scores upon scores of hours raising them; it's best to use a guide or forum and find out the optimal group right off the bat. Familiars can also be fed, which not only increases their relationships with their masters, but allows them to grow stronger and learn other abilities, or Tricks. After being leveled up enough, they can metamorphosize into more powerful forms.
Aside from collecting familiars, Oliver can also collect a vast array of spells to restore his Wizard's Companion spell book. Some of these are awarded to him by characters in the main storyline, while others are obtained through quests. There's a fair amount of combat spells, but you're better off keeping your MP for healing until your pool increases a notable amount. The rest are for "every day" purposes, such as talking to spirits in town, or manipulating things in dungeons. You also can collect a wealth of formulae for use in alchemy, and you can make everything from food items to incredibly powerful weapons and armor.
As for the dungeons themselves, they are designed wonderfully, but they aren't very long. After you level up to the point where monsters run from you, you can easily run from the starting point to the boss room in just a matter of a few minutes. They also feature some light puzzle elements. You might be wondering how to get to the top of a ledge. Just cast Quick Grow to make a row of mushroom caps grow larger. Icicle blocking your way? Cast a fireball at them and watch them melt. The "Every Day" spells give the game some novel fun, but some spells you obtain may only get a few uses throughout the game.
The main story lasts roughly 30-40 hours, but if you choose to rush through it, you'll find yourself going up against exponentially harder foes and bosses. To really enjoy the game, you'll need to drop by Swift Solutions in each of the game's main cities. These shops not only dole out a list of tasks that citizens need help with, but they also host a list of bounty hunts that you can partake in. Completing tasks and killing monsters for bounties not only allows you to grind your levels a bit more, but grants you stamps on cards that you can turn in for additional perks. These perks include things like increasing the likelihood of glims and dropped items to faster movement speed to the very necessary unlocking of Oliver's potential, which increases both his HP and MP by 100.
What is most enjoyable about these tasks are the side stories that come with them. A large portion of tasks are people who have been broken-hearted. The game's main villain Shadar, also known as the Executor, stole pieces of people's hearts from all over the land. He took such pieces as Kindness, Love, Ambition, Courage and Enthusiasm, effectively reducing the peoples' collective ability for self-improvement. Seeing Oliver seek out those who have pieces of hearts in abundance so he can restore the broken-hearted is heartwarming in itself, because you see this young boy riddled with his own guilt selflessly help others in need. It's a really important emotional element of the game's story, and something that you shouldn't try to skip.
The original Ni no Kuni for the DS ends at a certain point, but the PS3 version has several more hours of content before leading up to the game's final battle. Once you finish that battle, a slew of post-game content opens up. A new list of tasks are posted, and several of these tasks provide closure to several of the game's more vague mentions. There's also a bevy of new bounty hunts as well, testing the limitations of your familiars. These bounty hunts eventually lead up to more powerful bosses you previously encountered, and an ultimate showdown may have you with little chance of surviving. If you manage to overcome these extra challenges, you're awarded with a very special memento from earlier in the game.
Ni no Kuni's gorgeous aesthetics is an example of when art direction meets technical proficiency. The hand-animated cutscenes have that magic only Studio Ghibli knows how to produce, and the in-game cutscenes make excellent use of cel-shaded graphics. Character designs are full of unique whimsy, a clear Ghibli trademark, and seeing them move about freely in the game world is just a delight. Special effects are wonderfully cartoon like, and the battle scenes dance with activity. It's even easy to lose yourself roaming around in the overworld, taking in every single sight you can as the never-ending horizon continues to produce more.
Studio Ghibli is most certainly not known for just its animation; they are masters at sound production. Ni no Kuni displays their proficiency expertly. The Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra has produced some delightful and emotionally poignant pieces, and the sound design has applied these tracks to the game with amazing effect. Every moment in the game, whether its a joyful reunion or an intrepid delve into a dungeon, is matched beautifully with the soundtrack. Sound effects also are well-designed, upholding the game's cartoon-like feel. Enemies poof out of existence and deadly spells hit home with impact. The voice acting is quite remarkable as well. Although Oliver himself is far from Oscar-worthy, it's the supporting cast that is so enjoyable. Steffan Rhodri as Drippy simply outperforms everyone with his hilarious Welsh accent and Brian Protheroe delivers an evilly sinister Shadar.
Ni no Kuni is simply a magical, wonderful, beautiful, imaginative, heartwarming and heartwrenching experience. Studio Ghibli is largely accredited for this acclaim, because as it stands, the game's mechanics are good but a bit short of great. There's a chance you'll become frustrated with the game's battle system, and you may not like spending several hours grinding and trying to find the perfect set of familiars. You may be disappointed by how shallow the dungeons are, even though they are visually appealing. You will, however, be immensely satisfied with Ni no Kuni as a whole. Its fantastic storytelling wrapped around a decent engine makes Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch a game deserving to be in any PS3 owner's library.