izigame.me

So just a bit of a story building here for me. I do have a bit of bias for this review, those who care about that, it is what it is. NOW with that out of the way, I grew up with the first game in my collection, and it was a game that I played very often!

I wanna start with things I love about Ni No Kuni 2:
- The environment is beautiful! Lots of things as far as graphics go come back in this game from the first one, and things are very familiar!
- The music, OH MY GOD the music is so so good, You have me singing along with every single town soundtrack and the beautiful main sound track on the map is so great, I could listen to it for hours on end (and I did)
- The kingdom building (While its not the best thing in this game) Is cute. its not good or bad, just cute.
- the abundance of gear, I like how many shiny things this game gives you to play with

This is, unfortunately, in my eyes. All this game has to offer.
Now, lets talk about all the things this game doesn't have, compared to Ni No Kuni 1, and where this game has fallen off for me so far (I'm only half-way through)
MY FIRST COMPLAINT: WHERE IS THE MONSTER ENCYCLOPEDIA?!?! I have to look up so many enemies on the internet because there is no in game monster handbook, and that's awful, considering how important affinities and monster types are in this game with the inclusion of the tactics tweaker. It's so frustrating to have to tab out and open up tab to look up a monster every time I have to figure it out.

Second Complaint: The removal of the spell book in place of just pressing A for every world interaction
is this fun to anyone? The first game had a level of puzzle solving and critical thinking. through wrath of the white witch, you acquired spells in the game that you could cast at any time from your spell book to solve a given situation. Even some of your combat spells could be used for world interactions, and it added a level of charm to the game. Completely removed. Replaced with a soulless PRESS A ON THIS FLOWER TO GO HIGHER bullshit. Where was the fun in figuring it out? Where is the puzzle? This wasn't hard, why didn't you just allow me to proceed instead of having me arbitrarily press A? Stopping my forward motion COMPLETELY for something completely meaningless. It makes the game feel hand-holdey, and the exclusion of it makes me feel like the game is challenging my intelligence.

Third Complaint: Combat, holy lord what a complete pile of shit. The slimes, randomly hit you with no warning when your up close. No frames to react, and that's how it is for almost all enemies. You wanna know what this causes? Sometimes your party members just die for no reason.
You wanna know what the first game had to remedy this? COMBAT TACTICS, the ability to make all of your party members defend or all of your party members go all out, or even setting the AI to do specific things like heal with items or focus on healing. It's all gone, and if your party member face-tanks an enemies charge attack, there is nothing you can do except watch them die, or control EACH ONE INDIVIDUALLY. But do you wanna know what happens when you do that? They will just run straight back into danger. Extremely infuriating.
Not only does removing the old all out defense, all out attack system make combat unintuitive, soulless and boring. It makes it feel frustrating and hopeless. Just swing for your life until things are dead. That is this entire game, there is no figuring out a boss, just swing harder and pray.
Absolutely fucking awful combat, in summary. A complete downgrade from the first game
Also no monster taming, which is something just about every other review can tell you. That was the entire draw of the game, that's the reason why people flocked to this game. You removed one of the only appeal this game had besides the ghibli-inspired art-style. My only question is, why?

All in all, this game is frustratingly awful, so many things removed that didn't need to be. The things that were removed ripped the soul out of it. All that's left is the ghibli art style. That's all that remains. It's quite a sad sight to behold.
4th Complaint: I'm not gonna go into detail but 30 hours into this game, none of these characters are developing or improving. They have stayed the exact same since the beginning. I miss Oliver and crew, they all had something to prove. Everything is very 1 dimensional and its all just "We gotta build a kingdom because uh.. this rat guy wants to kill me and oh look this dude from another world popped out of nowhere, guess we wont go into that for 60 hours"
anyways, im old and need a cup of coffee. Just wanted to share my thoughts on the game.
This game is probably a 6/10 if your just looking at it as a standard JRPG experience.

BUT if you compare it to Ni No Kuni: wrath of the white witch, its like, a 2/10 at most.

CHEERS!