Ni No Kuni: Level 5's magnum opus!!

The current generation has had some very interesting trends from downloadable content, system updates, digital distribution and retro 2D gaming highlighting the horizon. Perhaps one of the biggest talking points of the entire generation has been JRPGs. The genre had two bumper decades when the number of games on consoles used to decide the console wars. SNES, PS1 and PS2 had some of the greatest ever JRPGs which gave incredible popularity to these systems. The HD generation was a different kettle of fish. Large production teams and higher budgets meant game companies needed to have block buster titles. JRPGs weren’t given priority like they were in previous console cycles. That led to the false perception that the genre was died or dying. As the generation hit its stride the number of JRPGs slowly started to increase. It’s thus fortunate that some quality games started to roll in onto consoles in the form of Tales of Vesperia, Lost Odyssey, Final Fantasy XIII and Xenoblade Chronicles. Hence this brings me to Level 5’s magnificent Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch!  A traditional JRPG made in the mold of some of the classic games of the SNES era but with all the bells and whistles of an HD generation! Ni No Kuni is the prime example of how a traditional JRPG can turn heads in the new generation.

A couple of years ago when Level 5 unveiled Ni No Kuni for the PS3 after the success of the Japan only DS game of the same name it was clear that Level 5 meant business in giving the HD generation its best traditional JRPG which it required. 2009’s Lost Odyssey was the only game which acted as flag bearer for traditional JRPGs and while it was a fantastic game in its own right, it was a sinfully overlooked. But Level 5 took it upon itself of not only making a great JRPG but to make sure it sold a few copies through aggressive marketing. Coupling itself with the animation giant Studio Ghibli, it crafted a deep RPG with some of the most astounding visuals and art style to grace a gaming console. Screenshots and trailers looked great but seeing the game on a proper TV was something else! So finally after 8 wonderful months of playing non-stop I have finally reached the end credits. Incredible is a word that comes in mind when talking about Ni No Kuni!!

In the following paragraphs I will be jotting down things which I liked about the game and things which I didn't:

LIKES:

Make no mistake, Ni No Kuni ranks as one of the most beautiful and colourful game ever created! The game looks gorgeous when in motion. The level of animation fluidity is outstanding and the vivid colours almost ‘bleed’ off the screen. The towns and dungeons are spectacularly rendered and visiting any new place was an awe-inspiring experience. The current generation has given us some amazingly realistic and mature looking games which blurred the lines of the uncanny valley, but Ni No Kuni is one of the rare games that seem to have bucked this common trend with this colourful bonanza! Level 5 partnership with Studio Ghibli was an inspired one as the studio was responsible for the amazing art style of the game. It was truly like playing a Studio Ghibli movie.!That in itself was a surreal experience and which definitely made the game stand out from its peers! I will be very surprised if the game doesn't win any awards for its visuals and art design.

Level 5 has earned its stripes in the JRPG industry as a seminal game company and the game play of Ni No Kuni once again shows how much the company and its founder Akira Hino understand what makes JRPGs click. The battle system is a hybrid of real-time and turn-based mechanics in lieu Grandia, Xenoblade Chronicles and Valkyria Chronicles. The battle system uses the whole Pokémon/Persona mechanics of using monsters to do all the battling. I know that a lot of people were put off by that and I too have never been a Pokémon fan but Ni No Kuni borrows that feature quite smartly. I finished the game with 90% of the familiars I captured in the first 20-30 hours of the game. What makes the combat involving is how tactics have to be changed on the fly especially during boss battles. The stiff difficulty kept me on my toes. Don’t let the cute exterior fool you into thinking that the game is easy as it’s not.  I had to have good levels and good equipment to overcome tough monsters and bosses!

The length of the game was very satisfactory. It took me 62 hours to finish the main story and 90% of the side quests and bounty hunts (which there were quite A LOT of). As soon as the game finished I found myself back in the game world with new side quests which were tough and complex and an ultimate secret boss (whom I am still trying to fight with, having to go through a long series of hoops). There is also the coliseum to compete in. So basically the game can easily take 80 hours to fully beat.

The sound productions were top notch. Studio Ghibli’s alumni Joe Hisaishi produced the entire sound track which was epic and yet very heart warming. As his first foray in games Hisaishi-san did a fantastic job as his work easily rivals that of Nobou Uematsu and Yasunori Mitasuda. The voice acting has got to be one of the best this year. The last couple years has seen British voice actors coming to the fore: Xenoblade Chronicles, Pandora’s Tower and The Last Story had some amazing voice work and Ni No Kuni once again follows the trend. The entire British cast was pitch-perfect esp. the main antagonists but  the best performance was by Mr. Drippy, The High Lord of High Fairies and Oliver’s trusty side kick, who had a thick Welsh accent which was just wonderful. More games should have Welsh accents as far as I am concerned! The rest of the cast were right up there although I did feel the ‘weakest’ performance was of Oliver as it sounded too sweet and innocent. Guess that is what the aim was in the first place!

Oliver’s journey after his mother death was quite heart breaking and poignant. His quest to bring back his mother from another realm was a very effective plot hook which kept me going on ahead. Not many games have the courage to have such a depressing back ground yet Ni No Kuni wore it as a badge of honour  Yes the plot isn't a complex or epic but had enough charm to pull at the heart strings. What backed up the good plot were the characters; Oliver, Esther and Swaine weren't the most fleshed out main characters but I always felt close to them and egged them up on their perilous journey. The relationship of the 3 heroes really took the simple plot and made it very personal.

While the game was truly fantastic there were just a couple of things which did not sit in well with me:

DISLIKES:

The most glaring negative was the amazing voice acting. As I mentioned before the voice work in Ni No Kuni was quite strong, but there was so little of it! In this day and age a game of Ni No Kuni’s pedigree should have been fully voiced. Namco Bandai was in charge of the English localization and I just feel they may have cut corners. I mean Namco Bandai’s own JRPG franchise: Tales games are 90% voiced yet Ni No Kuni had very little voice work! Sure it isn't a deal breaker but I think more voice acting would have certainly made the game more immersive.

Level 5 was clearly inspired by the SNES era as it lovingly recreated it for the HD era in Ni No Kuni, yet the plot narrative still retained the old school feel. What that meant that sometimes the plot took a back seat and that kind of killed off tension of the plot. Once again this doesn't really affect the game on a whole but it would have been nice if it told the story in a proper way.

Lastly the ending was very VERY disappointing. Without going into detail to avoid spoilers the ending didn't do it for me. I am sure many of you guys will disagree but for me the game’s ending lacked the ‘oomph’ I was expecting.

Ni No Kuni will be fondly remembered in the years ahead as the game which not only stood against the dreaded perception that traditional JRPGs were dead but did amazingly well sales wise. Even the harshest critics of the genre warmed up to the game and its fairy tale aesthetic. Level 5 should be lauded for its effort as it created the company’s second best game (after Dark Cloud 2). The current generation will be remembered for a lot of mature games and themes but Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch will remain the darling of this generation with lush visuals, solid game play, top notch audio and a beautiful setting. If anyone is looking for a deep and fascinating JRPG experience then Ni No Kuni fits the bill perfectly. My rating: 9.3!

My most anticipated RPGs of 2011: Day 6

The Last Story - Wii - TBA:

The name Hironobu Sakaguchi is synonymous with the brand Final Fantasy, as its creator Sakaguchi has been at the helm of some of the best games in the series, as well as being the executive producer/producer of countless others. His reputation was built on an unwavering stance of providing extremely polished games to the players and the will to bring something new to the plate. But when the failed movie venture, Final Fantasy: Spirits Within in 2000, came out to massive amounts of negative reviews, he voluntarily left SqaureEnix to make a new company named Mistwalker.

Since then the company has made a few solid if unspectacular RPGs for the Xbox 360 and the DS. But with the The Last Story the company is aiming for something substantial, but what is more important that Sakaguchi-san is the director of the game after a span of 19 years!. His last game as a director was Final Fantasy V for the SNES, so you can see The Last Story is quite an important game for the RPG genre. The Wii may have been an odd choice for a game for this caliber, but with the Japanese release early this year to some really good press it is a clear indication that the game and and console of choice was indeed inspiring.

The Last Story may very well be the last game from Sakaguchi and so the game seems to have pulled all stops and is set to give a great RPG experience. The game uses a variant of the turn based/ action RPG mechanics and twists it in a new direction. It is a huge departure from the turn based system which Sakaguchi specializes in and in the case of The Last Story this translates in huge expectation of RPG players on a whole.

While the setting of The Last Story is reminiscent of awesome games like Final Fantasy XII or Vagrant Story with strong medieval influences, but it still has stamp of a master who knows and loves his trade and it will be interesting to see if whole product is as polish as Sakaguchi older games. Oh yeah the game also sees Nobou Uematsu as the music composer which is always an awesome thing and we can expect the same high level of compositions Uematsu-san is know for.

The Last Story still awaits an official announcement for an English version but very recently there have been rumbling of an announcment soon, but till the E3 arrives its still all up in the air. The Last Story is very easily the last big game for the Wii and if it strikes gold then Wii will end up having one of the best RPGs in years. I really hope the game does get a English version and is as good as the hype!

Game of the Year 2010!!

1:

Final Fantasy XIII (PS3, 360):

Final Fantasy XIII was the game I enjoyed the most this year. When I bought my PS3 a few years ago, this was the game which proved the push I needed to plunk the dough for the machine. Fast forward to 2010 and the lead up to the release date was a bit of a frenzy, but the moment I popped the game in the PS3 and the introduction started playing, I was stunned into silence. Here was a game which I had waited for 4 years, was finally mine and for me the wait was well worth it.

Final Fantasy XIII's tale about a band of heroes who have been cursed by the gods and their ordeal in trying to fulfill their goals has all the moments one find in a top tier JRPG. The narrative was really strong, I mean SquareEnix's risky move to streamline everything was also felt in the plot. Unlike previous Final Fantasy games where the story would take it time to develop, in Final Fantasy XIII the plot is fast paced up to the point where I was overawed pretty much the whole game by the roller coaster ride of a plot. Sure the complexity of the storyline from previous games is missing, but the new focused approach is still refreshing, esp in the JRPG genre. By the time the end dungeon loomed over I was emotionally exhausted and right now I cannot wait for the conclusion of the intriguing sojourn.

Final Fantasy XIII is the greatest looking game ever made. No question. SquareEnix has outdone itself in the graphics department as I have never seen a game this beautiful. The attention to detail seen on the characters is mind-bending as the animation and facial expression are phenomenal to say the least. The background of all the locales are exquisite to gaze upon be it the sterile yet foreboding environments of Cocoon, or the vast and wild fields of Pulse, the visual are astounding. The art design of Final Fantasy XIII is just as vivid and totally over the top. Lightning's and Sazh's military outfits, or the unreal look of Vanille's dress are very impressive. The archeiture of both Cocoon and Pulse look fantastic as does the monster designs, but what took the cake was the Sari which Fang supports. Name any game where one of the main character wears a Sari.


What makes Final Fantasy XIII so strong artistically is that the art designs are pretty much original in nature. Most games this year had a template ready from the start for e.g Mass Effect 2's space theme or the Wild West of Red Dead Redemption. In Final Fantasy XIII the brain child of Tetsuya Nomura is at the forefront and all the artistic touches were wonderful, and this little fact makes this game artistically unbeatable.

The other aspect of the presentation which was pretty much flawless was the score, in fact I deem it as the best this year. Many fans of Final Fantasy were bitter when they heard that the veteran Final Fantasy composer Nobou Uematsu was not involved in XIII, but for me the day I heard that the guy who composed majority of the tracks in Final Fantasy X (Masashi Hamauzu) was the main composer for this game I was overjoyed and knew for a fact the score will be great.

I dunno about other gamers but Final Fantasy XIII evolution of the ATB system was a stroke of genius. ATB system is inherently kinda slow but in this game that little annoyance has been taken away completely as the battles are very fast and intense. Final Fantasy XIII system is the upgraded versions of the systems found in X-2 and XII, which I thought were a step in the right direction and in Final Fantasy XIII that system strikes the perfect balance. And then you add in the Job system which you can change mid battles brings about in amazing strategy in battles. The RPG mechanics are solid in this game as always the case in any Final Fantasy game along with customization options for weapons. All these makes for a fine game steeped in RPG tradition, presented in a new perspective.

In the last post I mentioned that Mass Effect 2 was one of two which I would think about constantly, the other game was Final Fantasy XIII. Even when not playing the game I would be thinking about particular battles, how to use the Job system effectively or just thinking about the plot. This game had me pegged like crazy.

As I near the end of this piece there are a couple of things which have bothered me no end concerning Final Fantasy XIII. Yes Final Fantasy XIII isn't the greatest game in the series, but it definitely among my top 10 Final Fantasy games (6th out of the 25 games released thus far in the series), but as a stand alone RPG this game is really incredible. I mean whats there not to like. You have a really involving story line, jaw dropping presentation and a very solid battle system. This a very polished JRPG and if you pit this game against other games in the genre this game will be quite high on my list.

Hence this brings me to my other point of contention. I feel it is very unfair to the game and the developers of the game to always compare Final Fantasy XIII with previous Final Fantasy games. I mean every game is very different from the other. Many elements found in one game is absent from the other, so why put the game through a ringer. As I said as an RPG this game is really amazing and I implore to the fanboys to stop hating the game. I think the fanboys only want Final Fantasy games to be made in Final Fantasy 7 mould (a game which may not even feature in my top 10 Final Fantasy games!!), and that I think is totally pointless. Play the game as its meant to be played, as an RPG!

And so 2010 comes to an end and with it also one of the greatest gaming years ever. Having played a load full of awesome games from many different genres, Final Fantasy XIII emerged as the best of the lot.

So we say adieu to the year 2010 and wait impatiently for the new year to roll in and all signs already point that gamers will have a ball in 2011!!