Ni no Kuni Wrath of the White Witch™ Remastered

The opening to this game is almost text book in inability to deliver an engaging experience and frankly, flat out incompetence. Five five feet. Cut-scene. Walk five feet. Cut-scene. It never ends. 2 hours into the game, It is still forcing me to walk five feet. . . cut-scene. The story within those cut scenes is extremely boiler plate. It would be serviceable if was in service to game play, but it's the focus in a languid and beleaguered way. Just in terms of competent writing, you need to cut down what's here significantly or write better. Yes, they did get Studio Ghibli to make cut scenes and those are charming, but even those are clearly from the same story board. If this was repacked in some way and you told someone this was a Ghibli movie, they would call you a liar. Everything is obviouis, slow, and boring. But what about that game play when it does happen? The combat system is very older RPG which a little bit of freedom of movement and extra systems tacked on. It feels like unnecessary clutter-- busy work in the fight to make it feel more complicated or keep the player busy. I would have preferred pure turn based just to shave down the nonsense I need to keep track of. Even systems like being able to move and dodge attacks while you select your own isn't meaningful, because the game is not that hard. Are there positives? Sure. The game features a pokemon-like system of obtaining and training new critters. These are fun and are functionally the same as new playable character in combat, they aren't implemented in any meaningful way, in fact, I'd say it's pretty clunky with a stamina system that forces you to continually change them out with each other and the human characters. There's a tiny amount of exploration. Tasks to do. The larger exploration and goals are not what I'd call robust. The graphics can look nice at time. I was impressed by the towns especially. There was some weirdness to the cutscenes. The game functionally has 3 art styles. The main game, the 3d cut scenes, and the ghibli animations. The 3d cutscenes stand out as wonky and unusually poorly done. There would be weird lighting changes that clash with where you just were in the 3D game world. So that's a lot, but I really don't have a lot of positives to say. It's what looks like a ridiculously high budget game with zero aspirations, attention to detail, or inspiration. 4/10 at best.

Whilst I will always recommend this game to people, I cannot recommend the Steam version of it. I had a bug where it wouldn't allow me to save. I tried a handful of fixes and none worked and eventually I had to give up due to this. Additionally, the performance wasn't great at all. I was constantly lagging, and I very rarely get lag on games I play. If you're interested in playing, get it on console instead if that is possible for you. It's such a beautiful game and it holds a lot of happy memories. Just don't get it here. Edit - I'd like to add, because someone decided to make assumptions, I'm not on a laptop. I'm on a pretty good PC that can run games that are a lot bigger than this one, like BG3 on the highest graphics with absolutely no lag. Also, my main issue was the fact the game literally does not save, that has nothing to with whether or not I'm on a laptop. I could've gotten by with the lag, but it was the fact I literally couldn't close the game or else I'd lose all my progress as saving didn't work.

I could see the potential of the battle system...that said. In 35+ years of gaming. This game has one of the WORST implementation of the enemy encounters possible. Formulaically time wasting. There is no run button, speed of movement is literally locked behind quests. Each area has near impossible to avoid enemies in the DOZENS, that respawn. You might have to go through 90 freakin' totally repetitive battles, for a dungeons, when you are already properly the level. The way scaling works, you cant prep for the next journey. The EXP works per boss, so no over-leveling. It would take all day, when by the next area what would take 8 hours would be done in 3 battles. I timed the old smokey level, and like 10 minutes was legit loading into and out of the countless battles that you cant avoid, due to the narrow terrain. I uninstalled out of pure boredom. Sad I can see an interesting game, and even what looks like a potentially fun battle system. but when you are bored to death by unavoidable repetition with no need for actual skill or thought (I assume later, but...) Even for a game, it's kinda insulting to someone's time, as it kas just pointless padding with literally no variable where it is actually beneficial.

出个中文会死啊！！！

I tried to like this game so bad but it just isn't fun for me. I'm just getting to the point where I am hitting the waters and discovering more parts of the region so I'm just realizing I have a lot more cut out for me but hopefully it gets better. I feel like the only way you would like this game is if you're a Studio Ghibli fan and wanted an exclusive story in this style that you can only get from a game. If you ever wanted to play through a Studio Ghibli, movie this is your game. But as a Pokemon enjoyer, someone who's played every gen and enjoyed Digimon Story games like Cyber Sleuth, someone who's played Temtem and Palworld, this is far from my favorite creature collector/battler game. I don't like the battle mechanics even after playing for 10 hours it's hard to get used to. The bosses are super annoying. Also the catching and transforming your familair aspect of this game is a pain. Imagine Pokémon if they give you your first 3 Pokémon and don't give you Pokeballs until the 4th gym or so. Imagine playing Pokémon for 10 hours and they're like "yeah you gotta fight these monsters but you can't catch antthing yet. Use the one creature we give you. We'll have a couple more for you soon before we let you start catching." I do enjoy the art style. The art style and the creature designs so far might be my favorite aspect of the entire game especially the Boss Designs although battling them felt like a pain. The areas before you get to the boss are so formulaic and repetitive. The whole gameplay loop gets old fast. I was so excited when the girl was added to my team and the idea of the battles becoming a little easier/faster got me hype but Did after that the more characters that were added on to my team made the battles more chaotic and all over the place. Idk. Thought this game would be really fun but its really borong and slow-paced. It feels I'm watching a long Ghibli movie or series that I have to do tedious chores in between episodes. I'll continue to play for a while but I hope I can finish it soon to complete the story at least.

I played this on the PS3 when I was a little kid, I remember it being good to me but forgot the game entirely. Wanted to experience the game again and see if i’d like it after all these years so I bought it, and this is easily one of the best games i’ve played. I forgot they used to make good games like this that feels ‘handmade’ with care if you know what i mean, missed playing games like this.

Full disclosure, I'm pretty sure I got this game as a gift a while back. The presentation of this game is top notch, I'd say. The art and music are wonderful; the voice acting for anyone who isn't a child is generally pretty good. Some of the familiars seem a little bland, but many of them have good designs. I think the story (or what I played of it) was at very least interesting enough to make me want to keep playing after I realized I wasn't having a great time. But after toughing it out a little longer, I think the bad mechanics weigh the whole thing down. The combat is generally a drag. The AI on the party members is inept and they seem to spend more time dead than alive. It seems like most familiars just aren't very good and you don't even get a real choice of which ones to train. Once you've found some serviceable ones, evolving them send them back to level one so you have to grind them back up to usability again. I don't really take issue with fetch quests, but most of this game's sidequests are pretty uninteresting. It feels like they could use the take/give heart mechanics and the use of spells in the overworld to present more interesting obstacles, but instead they don't.

I know it's not a proper review begining but i just quitted at the very end for a cheap shot. The story has been dragging on for long enough with at least 15h of "inflated" unnesscesary traveling and lenghty combats. I've beaten the game but the game just went "Nope, see the 1cm hp bar remaining on the final boss? yeah, let's chain op attacks on your full health team, massacre the 2 with lowest max health and double strong attack the last one as it tries to heal and protect itself from death. I've beaten the game and you can't say otherwise but a massive F*** you to whoever designed that chaotic boss fight and for whoever die has to restart the previous boss's 2 phases. just NO! I've had enough of such cheap shots. Now onto the actual review. It has a LOT of minor issues and minor positives. It may even be used as an advice guide in what to expect and where to invest your time and efforts into. Positives: - There's a crab you can help :) - It has a complete "guide" and lorebook with all the creatures displayed. - It has a lot of points where you could use the wrong spell and it prevent any MP loss and consequences if not done correctly. - Did I mentioned you can help a crab? :) Neutral : - Enemies you "recruit" will almost certainly be found elsewhere evolved, you don't need to get a good team early, just pick whatever seem good or fun at the moment, evolving them resets their level to 1, which means you better wait for late game to build your team once you have access to most final forms. - The main protagonist is supposedly 13 year old. yet look like he's 7 and often acts like he's 4. Pea, a character who literally looks like a 3-5 year old is only a few inches shorter. Idk about you but a young child shouldn't be close to a young teenager in size. (normally) - The system of "affection" is almost pointless since it barely add anything for how much time you gotta spend feeding them only to get a few points here and there and is rather costly. You need to farm for world resources and enemy drops to upgrade the food so it's even worth your time at all. Only upgrade their weakness if it's really low and problematic, like accuracy. - The music is a bit unfitting. Too "powerful" when unneded at multiple places. I feel like they should've made a dozen more tracks with less budget. - Early on, there's too much cinematics and I understand the frustration of a few negative reviews I've read reporting this issue. But for some it might feel like they putted more efforts and budget than usual, which can be a +. Negatives: - Accessories almost serves no purpose for how weak they are, don't even check up on them unless you need something like accuracy because your big hitter keep missing. - I bought the game because the protagonist was a wizard but his overall effectiveness is reduced to a healer past the middle of the game for how surprisingly weak he is despite his stats saying otherwise. - Accuracy and evasion stat is a joke. Very high dodge chance is maybe 10% against an average accuracy foe, 30% against a garbage accuracy and 3% against a foe with high accuracy, what's the point of evasion and accuracy if it barely matters outside of buffs and debuffs. - Skills used by familiars are WAY TOO COSTLY and should heal or damage twice as much for how expansive they are. - Esther's ai is built to completely burn her MP for no valid reason. Her ai isn't coded to check the difference in stats and check on enemy health because she'll activate buffs when the fight is ending. - All allies will do the minimum no matter their role and when given the order to defend or attack, it seems to only check physical attack and defense, rather than checking for attack speed as well as the enemies' defense (low defence = fast attack is better, high defence = slow powerful attack is better... When ordered to defend, they'll switch to their familiar with the highest physical defense and start blocking (if they can) but once the block window is finished, they often just sit there instead of avoiding enemies and repeatedly get struck, which means they're just not doing anything productive. And when on the offensive, they often stop attacking and reposition themselves for no good reason, which lowers a lot their potential dps. AND SOMETHING TERRIBLE TO MENTION IS, THEY SOMETIMES KEEP THEIR WEAKEST PHYSICAL ATTACKER AND GO FULL MELEE WHILE DOING 1 DMG PER STRIKE. - Alchemy ingredients aren't easy to come by and almost serves no purpose other than food to maximise the potential of your team. - Some spells serves almost no purpose at all, some are only used by certain side quests and others who are only used once and only bloat the spell list (like "Conjure familiar" which couldv'e been used to get familiars instead of the low chance recruitement system. It would have been used to summon familiars with a "currency" for which every monsters drop a certain currency like their type (sun,moon,planet,etc.) and with that currency, would allow you to either summon a random one of a certain type for cheap or a precise one for maybe 8x more. - The mix of real time and turn based combat mechanics doesn't mix well. It's unresponsive, clumsy and very easy to get punished because some powerful attacks are only prepared in a mere 2 SECONDS! You have to cancel what you're doing, maybe switch familiar just to block a massive hit. and some others just take a lot of time and attack 5 seconds after the notification, which makes "dodging" familiars risky no matter your skills and is rather memory based. AND REMEMBER, ALL THE COMBAT ACTIONS OUTSIDE MOVEMENT AND TEAMMATE SWITCH IS SELECTED VIA A COMMAND WHEEL, THERE'S NO QUICK IMPUT OUTSIDE DEFENCE AND OFFENSE COMMANDS FOR YOUR OTHER TEAMMATES. On a final though. It definitely has minor problems scattered everywhere but I'll keep it a positive review because it doesn't make it a bad game.

My gambling addict friend said if I post a review on Ni no Kuni Wrath of the White Witch™ Remastered and it gets 350 likes and 150 Awards that he will buy me a case of beer, some vodka, and bottle of wine.. So I'm just gonna leave this here