With games like the Dark Cloud duology, Dragon Quest VIII / IX and the Professor Layton series, Level-5 have established themselves as one of the most talented game developers of our time. They always put a lot of love and thought into their games and it always shows. The Lead Designer, President and CEO of the company, Akihiro Hino, is a huge Studio Ghibli fan and always wanted to make a game with them. It wasn't easy, though, since one of the co-owners, Hayao Miyazaki, doesn't like video games. One day, however, Mr. Hino and his staff went to Studio Ghibli to give everybody there a presentation on what kind of story they wanted to tell, and about the otherworldly feel they wanted the world of the game to have. Impressed by how much passion Mr. Hino felt for his work, Miyazaki decided to allow this once in a lifetime collaboration. Ni no Kuni is a love letter to traditional JRPGs from the golden age. Let's take a look:
The Story:
This game tells the story of a young and innocent boy called Oliver, who finds a magic being called Drippy that helps him open a portal into another world so they can search for something very dear to him. The story is wonderful, masterfully balancing humor and drama thanks to great writing. All the characters have very strong personalities and a lot of charm. As is the norm for a Level-5 game, Ni no Kuni has a very charming sense of humor that cleverly uses plays on words and character traits to get laughs. Throughout the game you'll learn more and more about this new world and the secrets of the people orchestrating its demise. Every sub-plot has a great payoff resulting in an incredibly satisfying narrative.
Overall it's a fantastic story with fantastic characters.
10/10
The Gameplay:
Ni no Kuni is an homage to various famous JRPG franchises. It has the large and explorable world map from classic FF games, a combat system that mixes FFXII with Tales and a monster-catching mechanic reminiscent of Pokémon. One of its noteworthy unique mechanics, however, is a magical locket. In this world, the villains, in order to keep people from defying them, remove certain emotions from people's hearts, leaving them completely unlike themselves. It's your job to save the people by taking bits of a certain emotion from a person who has it in abundance and giving it to people lacking it in order to restore them to their properselves. This will happen not just in the main story, but in side-quests, too, and it's the primary way of interacting with the people of this world. Speaking of side-quests, they're numerous and very rewarding, as they present you with great items, alchemy formulas and money. One in particular, in which you help the ghost of a dead wizard find out who he was in life, is very satisfying.
But the most well designed aspect of the game might just be the combat system. When you find a monster on the field, you enter into a 3D battle area where you can move freely and run from incoming attacks in Tales style and select your action commands in real-time. Cycling through the menus, however, stops the action like in the old school ATB system from classic FF games. What really makes the combat system great is its philosophy of rewarding and punishing players depending on how well they play. Everytime you use the "Defend" command to block any incoming attack, the enemy drops HP and MP recovery orbs. Exploiting elemental weaknesses deals more damage, and using specific strategies that depend on which enemy you're facing can stun it so that you get time to heal or attack even more. Every time you sucessfully perform one of these tasks, you increase the chance of a golden orb appearing on the field, which unlocks a special attack that deals massive damage. So to sum up: The brilliant combat system punishes players who try to brutally force their way through the game with longer battles, but rewards methodical players by making their lives easier.
The only real gameplay issue I can find is that catching monsters is for the most part luck-based, which makes catching specific monsters you might want more of a hassle than it needs to be. Fortunately,the game doesn't require that you catch more than just a few of them, so it doesn't hurt the experience.
Overall the gameplay is excellent. It's diverse and has a ton of depth while remaining user-friendly.
9.5/10
The Audio:
Studio Ghibli contacted renowned Japanese composer Joe Hisaishi (Known for making music for all of Hayao Miyazaki's movies) to consider working on the game. After also being impressed by how much passion Level-5 had for this project, he decided to accept. Every track in this game is catchy, epic, powerful and always fits the situation it's used in. The music was performed by the famous Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra and it sounds absolutely wonderful. The vocal theme, "Pieces of a Broken Heart", is performed by the composer's daugher Mai in the Japanese version, and Archie Buchanan in the English version. Both of them sound absolutely beautiful. The voice acting is also exceptionally well done. Every actor handles both comedy relief and dramatic moments very well.
10/10
The Graphics:
Studio Ghibli working on the visuals of a video game is basically the dream of anyone who loves animation and gaming. Well, we can stop dreaming, because it's true. The hand made FMV cut-scenes look exactly like they were taken from one of their movies. The in-game cutscenes also look absolutely gorgeous, making the best use of cel-shaded graphics since Wind Waker. As usual with Level-5, there's an incredible attention to detail with character animations, graphical effects and backgrounds, which are absolutely filled with pretty things to look at. Character design is also very Ghibli-esque and monster design is the best I've ever seen. Every monster in this game is charming, cute or just cool looking, which makes it hard to resist capturing them for your party.
10/10
Ni no Kuni is a masterpiece. It's the wonderful result of a collaboration between two studios that are absolute masters in their field of work. If you have ever enjoyed a JRPG in your life, give this game a chance. You'll be doing yourself a massive disservice if you don't.
Final Grade: 10/10
Thank you Level-5 for this wonderful game :)
