Every now and then, I like to think about my favorite video game of all time, which is Guardian's Crusade. It could just as easily be the nostalgia that makes me like it so much but I loved everything about it. I loved the characters, the toys that you summon to fight for you, the gameplay, and the world. Sometimes I like to look for games that are similar to that game so that I can relive those good old days. I recently discovered that the game Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Which not only is pretty similar in a few ways, but apparently a really good game too. It's also a game that already had for a while so I figured that it wouldn't hurt to try it out.

For no reason in particular, I was already heavily invested in the Ni No Kuni franchise long before I even decided to play the games in the first place. A couple years ago, I saw that the digital copy of Wrath of the White Witch was on sale in the eshop and I was hearing really good things about it. It was cheap and I liked what I saw with the graphics and gameplay so I decided to pick it up with the hopes of eventually playing it.

Then at some point in 2020, I saw that sealed copies of Ni No Kuni II Revenant Kingdom were selling for only $5 for PS4 at Gamestops that were closing down so I picked it up. Then in September 2021, the game released on the Switch as an expanded Prince’s Edition so I picked up that version. Fast forward a year to September 2022 and I still hadn’t launched either of the two games on the Switch.

On the surface, that’s not out of the ordinary. Owning two games in a franchise doesn’t really count as being heavily invested in a franchise. You see, the two games were the normal mainstream games, but by the time I actually told myself I might like the games, I actually had so much more. For starters, you need to know that Wrath of the White Witch isn’t 100% the first game in the franchise.

On the surface, it’s easy to think that this version is just a port of the PS3 version but the PS3 version itself is actually just a better version of the DS version of the game. The DS version of the game goes under the title Dominion of the Dark Djinn and was only ever released in Japan. Oddly enough, I’ve had the original Japanese DS version for more than a year before my first time playing Ni No Kuni and it’s always been one of the most prized pieces of my video game collection.

In 2021, I was at an anime convention and there was this really cool booth that sells thousands of game soundtracks and imported games. Out of the thousands of items, I was captivated by this one really cool looking box even though I had no idea what it was. Not only was it the original Japanese DS copy of Dominion of the Dark Djinn, it was the collectors edition. The collectors box itself was fantastic and inside the box was a sealed copy of the game and an absolutely gorgeous hardcover artbook that had more than 350 pages of drawings, notes, and info.

At this point, I had no idea what the game was about and I couldn’t read any of the book since it was only in Japanese but the whole thing cost just $45 and I knew I had to have it. Then earlier this year, I found another collectors edition item at store in my city that sells cheap Japanese items. This time it was the English collectors edition of Revenant Kingdom for the PS4. I didn’t need the game itself since I still had my $5 PS4 copy, but this item simply spoke to me too and it was listed as $60 which looked like a good price. It turns out the store couldn’t find the disc so they let me have everything else for only $20.

There was a steelbook, a big artbook, a plush, soundtrack, making of DVD, paper diorama, and a big figure that moved. I didn’t know what any of it was or did, but I loved it. At that point, I had this massive Ni No Kuni collection that I actually really liked, despite the fact that I never played any of the games before. So when I went “wait, this might actually be a game that I really like?” I knew I had to start getting invested in the game itself.

GAMEPLAY

The thing that really told me that I would like Ni No Kuni and that I should start playing was the gameplay, specifically the combat and the familiars. For starters, it's one of those RPG's where you have a full party of creatures that will battle for you but you are also doing the attacking as well. I love these kinds of games significantly more than your standard turn based RPG. There isn't even a huge advantage to these kinds of parties, but I find these to be way more fun with the variety.

I also really liked the entire familiar system, which are the creatures in the game. It's very much like your average monster catching game like Pokemon, Digimon, Nexomon, and Temtem, but with a unique evolutionary system. Also for the sake of your sanity, I'll be using a lot of Pokemon terms because things like evolving will be way easier to understand than something like metamorphosising. Everyone knows how evolving works in Pokemon though right? The only thing about Pokemon is that evolutionary lines can be a bit chaotic.

Some Pokemon have one form and don't evolve at all while others can have one or two evolutions. Then you have a couple of the exceptions like Eevee and the Ralts evolutionary lines. But what if every Pokemon evolved like Ralts? That's exactly how things work in Ni No Kuni and I thought that was a really cool concept. You see, there's a lot of familiars in the game, I think more than 60 base ones in total. Every single one has an evolution but it doesn't stop there because each one also has a second evolution. The twist is that for the second evolution, you get to pick between one of two final forms.

So every single familiar in the game has three different evolutions in their line. Their levels also reset each time that they evolve so they can keep getting even stronger. I think this is an amazing combination because it allows for you to come up with a ton of possible familiar parties and allows you to train them as much as you want. This really helps when it comes to strategy. On top of that, you're putting up your familiar party alongside your own party and this just adds even more to the amount of party customization you can do. The battles themselves are pretty easy though. If you're strong enough, you could button mash the attack button until you win if you wanted.

Familars and the ability to heavily alter your part are the biggest part of customization, but there are many other aspects to this category. A lot of people know that I absolutely love games that have a ton of customization options and Ni Not Kuni is no stranger to the concept. Just like how there's a massive familiar system that can be greatly customized, there's also a lot of ways to customize your character and party. The big way is with weapons. Having your familiars do all the fighting for you is great but being able to fight with a large assortment of swords and wands is a really nice touch.

In total, there are eight different types of weapons to choose from which includes swords, wands, pistols, spears, hammers, axes, daggers, and harps. Each type has a decent list of options scattered throughout the game with a grand total of more than 90 unique weapons to choose from. They're all going to boost your attack to some extent while some of the obvious ones like wands will also boost your magical attack. A select few weapons might also end up boosting things like accuracy and evasion so there's never a shortage of weapon availability.

But then there's also a bunch of other ways to customize your character and even the familiars because you also have things like accessories and clothing options. Accessories give a variety of different boosts and between fangs, scales, patches, and medals, there are more than 40 accessories to get your hands on. Then you have clothing options. There's stuff like gear, headgear, armor, cloaks, and shields to weight down your character while there are also clothing options for your familiars. Just like with the weapons and accessories, these all give off a bunch of different boosts to your stats.

These aspects ended up really speaking to me. Between all the customization options, the really in depth familiar system, and good party involvement in combat, I thought that the game would end up being lots of fun and I was right. After playing for like two or so hours, I was already having a lot of fun with the gameplay before I even started focusing on things like the story, sound, and visuals, which were all really good.

GRAPHICS

The first thing that really stands out the first time that you play, as it should, are the graphics. In the years that I've known of Ni No Kuni, I've seen a lot of images and some short videos of the game and what it looks like and I always thought that the art style was really good. I always thought it was a good looking style with a lot of charm. But then when I actually started playing, I was introduced to the animated cutscenes, regular animations, and the world. I thought it all looked phenomenal.

Thd obvious main talking point for Ni No Kuni's graphics are the animated cutscenes. The first, and probably only thing that you really need to know is that these scenes were animated by none other than the legendary Studio Ghibli. But here's the thing, they didn't just casually animated these scenes as if they were a small side project, they put their soul into it. Each of these scenes feel like they could be ripped straight from a full Studio Ghibli movie. They all look and move beautifully. There's also a ton of these scenes too, just in the prologue alone there were a handful.

Then you have a the regular cutscenes. You can tell that these are the games standard graphics but they all look really good as well. If you were to take all the scenes that were fully animated, you would get the equivalent amount of content as an entire episode of an anime and it would look amazing. If you took all the regular cutscenes, they would still look great and you would basically get yourself an entire movie. So much praise for just the cutscenes alone, there's still so much more going on when it comes to the graphics.

For example, all the character models, scenery, and movement are full of detail, color, and life. Everything you see is full of charm and it's all incredibly smooth too, which makes the game really fun to look at. The actual world itself is also beautiful and has a really nice feel to it. during the first couple hours of my playthrough, there were so many times where I would be running around the overworld and I would be impressed by how cool everything looked. It all really looks just like a well made painting.

There's also a ton of other small things to talk about when discussing graphics such as the combat animations, battle views, and character/familiar designs. There's a lot to take in when it comes to graphics. There are so many games that are much bigger and have way better graphics but for what Ni No Kuni is and is trying to pull off, the graphics are nothing short of amazing. I also think it's really impressive that a game of this size that looks this good was originally developed for the PS3 and DS.

SOUND

As for the sounds of the game, my biggest piece of praise has to go to the voice acting. The game had a ton of voice lines, they were all done really well, and most importantly, they all felt incredibly natural. For example I immediately fell in love with Drippy just because of the voice. Many of his lines were amazing because of the content and humor but the accent and the way that the actor delivered the lines really made Drippy sound great. The same thing could be said about Oliver too. In the case of Oliver, there was no spectacular delivery but everything sounded real.

I ended up looking up who the voice actors were and the first thing that I noticed was that there wasn't a single voice actor that I recognized. The next thing that I noticed was that the voice actor for Oliver was actually someone who was young. Then I started liking the voices even more after this because it started clicking as to why all the voices sounded so real and natural. It wasn't just Drippy and Oliver, many of the other characters had some really good voices, even ones that didn't have a lot of dialogue. They all sounded really good.

I thought the rest of the sound aspect was pretty good as well. I didn't like the music as much as I liked the voice acting, but the game had a pretty solid soundtrack. There were a few really good songs here and there as well as a few that were pretty emotional. One thing that I noticed waa that the soundtrack was composed by Joe Hisaishi, who served as the composer for many of the movies by Studio Ghibli. So not only was the amazing animations done by them, but the music just so happened to be one of their main composers.

I did really enjoy the soundtrack as a whole but for me, the music was second to the phenomenal voice acting when it comes to the sounds of Ni No Kuni. I didn't really care for the generic sounds of the game like what happens when you're battling so I'm not going to talk about those because the entire section is truly carried by just the voice acting and sound. When you take into account everything that the graphics and sound has to offer, the two create a really nice atmosphere in a game that's a lot of fun to play. The game looks and sounds great and both aspects get a 9 out of 10 from me.

STORY

There's a lot to say when it comes to the story and there's going to be a handful of spoilers because I can't really talk about how good the story is without giving away a few early spoilers. The first thing that you should know is that the game is an Isekai. If you don't know what that is, you don't watch enough anime. As A whole, the story of Ni No Kuni is pretty good and can be very emotional at times, packing quite a punch in the prologue. In the prologue, you get to run around your hometown as Oliver and your friend tells you that he's done working on something that resembles a car. That night, the two of you leave the town in order to drive the "car" for the first time.

But things don't go as planned because Oliver crashes the car into a river due to external forces that are best to explained in the game itself. It doesn't appear like Oliver can swim but luckily his mother finds him and gets him out of the water. That right there is a few minutes of really intense storytelling and it's made even better by the fact that the scenes are fully animated by Studio Ghibli and fully voiced as well. It just gives scenes like this a lot more emotional weight. But it ends up getting even more emotional because Oliver's mother dies. That's a lot to process for what's considered to be just the first half of the prologue.

In the second half of the prologue, Oliver is mourning and then meets Drippy, who tells him about the other world and that Oliver needs to help save the world. Initially Oliver doesn't want to but he's told that he might be able to save his mother by defeating the person viewed as the main antagonist at the time and finding the person who is the other worlds version of his mother. Oliver opens a portal to the other world and then he officially begins his adventure. All that happens in just the prologue and everything that happens in the main story is pretty on par with a grand adventure.

Story wise, the remainder of the game has a lot of dialogue, lots of well written content, and a ton of really good humor. There's a lot of emotion throughout the story and plenty of pretty dark themes are explored. The story as a whole is really good and it's very easy to fall in love with all the characters, even the bad ones. Ni No Kuni is a game that really wants you to get invested in its story and it's worthwhile. When you take into account the visuals and music and then add in what the story does, this game really is nothing more than a playable Studio Ghibli experience. Story gets a 10 out of 10 from me.

ADDICTIVENESS AND DEPTH

While I did really enjoy the gameplay and the combat system with the unique familiar layout, the highlight of the game after playing for a few hours had shifted to be the story. I was still having a lot of fun with the gameplay and combat but I was enjoying the story so much that eventually the game kept pulling me back to push forward a little bit at a time simply because of how invested I was in the story. Out of all the games that I've played on the Switch, I would say that Ni Now Kuni was top 10 when it came to story and I kept wanting to inch closer and closer to the end just for the sake of completing the story and seeing how it all wraps up.

But other than that, there wasn't really much else going on. I wouldn't exactly say that it's a game that you would want to play again and there isn't really anything that you can do once you beat the story. Even though you can excessively level up your familiars and there's probably close to 300 different ones to collect, the game is the complete opposite of something like Pokemon. There's no competitive teams, no battling, no trading, no reward for obtaining every single familiar. It's all a matter of whether you personally want to do it in your copy of the game.

Yeah, if you're a completionist and want to collect every single familiar, you'll end up getting many extra hours out of the game. If you're just the casual player, you'll still get like 30 to 50 hours out of the game and get an amazing experience during your playthrough. In my case, I didn't bother with obtaining every single familiar, I don't think I even made it up to 100 in my playthrough. All I did was collect and train the ones I liked along with the ones I thought I could beat the game with and I had a lot of fun along the way between the gameplay and the story.

If you are the kind of person who wants to do everything, you can easily push close to 100 hours of playtime because there's really a ton of things that you can do in the game. For starters, I already mentioned the hundreds of familiars that you can obtain and train as well as the many customization options between the weapons, accessories, and gear. But that's really just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to depth because there's still a ton of other things that you can do such as side quests, bounty hunts, alchemy, and more. It's very easy to tack on many additional hours of playtime that are tacked on beyond the story and grinding.

The first additional thing that you can do are side quests, which are known as Errands and bounty hunts in Ni No Kuni. There are almost 150 in total and offer a wide variety of different rewards for completing them. Some of them can only be accessed after the game as well but at that point the rewards are kind of pointless. Then you have alchemy which is basically the games crafting system. There are a ton of items that you can find or buy that are used to create all sorts of food, weapons, and other items. Alchemy ends up being really important to the game because many of the stats and effects of the items that you create are very useful.

You can basically do as little or as much as you want to do in Ni no Kuni. If you want to just complete the story and be done with it, you can still spend like 30 hours and it will be a great experience. If you really want to focus on all the extra things that you can do in the game, It could end up being easy to cross 100 hours. Addictiveness gets a 9 out of 10 while Depth gets a 10 out of 10.

DIFFICULTY

The game is really easy. Even though it's real time based and also allows for you to move in the middle of battle, you can get through battles by just spamming the attack button and not even looking at the screen If you're stromg enough. Getting to the point where you're strong enough to do that isn't too hard either because you just need to grind by battling as many familiars as you can or getting useful items. I wanted to enjoy the combat and focus on the story so I was glad that the game wasn't hard though I'm sure that there are ways to make it more challenging if that's what you really want to do. But if you're worried about whether or not the game is too hard, you can relax.

FINAL THOUGHTS

I'm really happy that I finally gave the game a chance. Personally I think it's currently one of my top 20 Switch games out of the more than 600 that I own because it has fun gameplay and a really good story. But just as importantly, it's a Studio Ghibli movie that's masquerading as a game with it's visuals and music.

Ni No Kuni is a great game, with a lot of value, and usually tends to be a really good price. The game is normally listed in the eShop for $50 but the price constantly dips to under $20 and you can usually find a cheap physical copy too. I would definitely say that the game is worth it at the full price because you can easily get enough hours out of it to make it worthwhile but if you can wait for a sale, you should. When I picked up my digital copy of the game, I think I paid like $16 and I've seen the price drop to below that many times since then. If you can find it for under $20, you have to pick it up for sure, my overall grade for the game is going to be a 9.3 out of 10.

Graphics 9
Sound 9
Story 10
Addictiveness 9
Depth 10
Gameplay 9
Overall: 9.3/10