Ni no Kuni

[Todinho]

So Im just gonna paraphrase what I said when I finnished the game 2 years ago:
I could sum up my 35 hours with Ni Nu Kuni in the following manner:
1-5 hours-Wow things looks just like a Ghibli film this is amazing!The character designs are great,we have familiar Ghibli archetypes that will be developed and the music is so good!
5-18 hours-This grinding is getting really boring,I dont understand this pseudo-pokemon combat and why are we still introducing gameplay mechanics!?
18-30-Wow the game is great again! I can explore the world freely now and it`s all so pretty I had forgotten, we have all these different places to go,I finnaly got a handle on the combat and it's actually fun during more challenging fights Im interested to see where this goes!
30-35-Guys you're trying too hard to sell me this story,the game should have ended at least 3 hours ago c'mon wait was that the final boss? Ok then we saved the world I guess.

Needless to say Ni Nu Kuni for me is a game of peaks and valleys,it looks and sounds like a Ghibli movie and that alone was worth the price of admission but the story is very subpar even by other JRPGs standarts with a cast of cliche characters and a plot that really overstays it`s welcome. Gameplaywise the game has some interesting ideas and once you wrap your head around the mechanics it can be a very rewarding but the seeming glacial pacing the game progresses undercuts that especially with the amount of grinding you have to do to get a good party going.While I dont think Ni Nu Kuni is a bad game I find it hard to have a positive conclusion on it,there are plenty of other JRPGs with more interesting storys and fullfilling gameplay and if you`re looking for a Ghibli experience you`re much better off with their films without having to wade through 30 hours of gameplay to get what amounts to one of their weakest work. I wish I could be more positive but hopefully the devs took some lessons and are taking then to the sequel.

[richie_in_japan]

I bought this game in a PSN sale a couple of years ago and had the now notorious problems installing it on a launch model PS3. Some time later I was looking for a game to play with my 4-year -old daughter and remembered I never got round to playing it. We've been slowly making our way through it over several months and having a wonderful time together. She loves the characters, art and story, although the systems are too complicated for her so I do all the combat. She can't read yet, so I also have to be a one-man voice-over cast, channeling the accent of my old nan to get Mr Drippy just right.
I don't think I'd have stuck with it on my own, as I wouldn't have the patience for the grind, but seeing the world they created through the eyes of my child has been a very special experience for us both. I'd recommend it for any parents with young kids.