Ni no kuni: Wrath of the white witch PS3 / Ni no kuni: The jet black mage DS

['Press Start']

Starting to be able to kill creatures I shouldn't using the stone tablets attack draw trick 'Yoo Hoo'. Then Turbandit's hot cloud thing and good poundings from a few mites.

Leveling nice and fast now! Taking the grind out of the grind!

Also, I killed a

->Open Spoiler<-

Toko (green tree looking this with staff) and I leveled up 2 levels! are these like Final Fantasy cactus in the exp department?

Must resist MGS: Rising or this game is history.

['Press Start']

->Open Spoiler<-

Killing tokos on the Island with Seed sprites and Oliver's base mites walking around makes you level up 2 levels per fight if you are below 25. 1.5 level per fight after and so on. Got to level 30 in 15 mins from 24.

Cheap tactic for a cheap game!

[danholo]

Yeah chase tokos near perdida and you'll overlevel quick. My dino was taking 1-2 dmg at the last boss... Except that attack chaos was devastating.

[Sketcz]

Where is this island? Is it the one just North of Teeheeti? I've saved just inside the cavern north of Hamelin, and frankly I can't be bothered to play anymore.

Level 5 are utter bastards with the amount of tedious backtracking they force you to do, without any kind of warp magic or fast travel in sight. It took bloody ages navigating the walkway maze into the haunted caverns.

I really do not like this game.

Also:
CRAPPY STEALTH SECTIONS!

What is this? 1999 again, where every game has to shoehorn stealth into itself somehow. I put up with this crap in Ocarina of Time, but I was a teenager back then, and it was OoT. That kind of crap doesn't fly any more. Took me around 10 attempts to get past.

The story has also gone a bit weird stupid. How exactly did I

->Open Spoiler<-

end up travelling back in time

?

I think I'll put this on my shelf for a while. When I'm come back to it, perhaps some power-levelling will ease the pain. Maybe knock it down to Easy level too. I really just don't want to put up with it any more.

How much further after Hamelin before they give you warp magic? I cannot face any further long treks over precisely the same ground I covered five minutes ago.

It's obvious Level 5 didn't have the budget to create more areas, so they make you walk over the few they did make, dozens and dozens of times.

[danholo]

I think your complaints are a bit of stretch, and exaggerated... That 'stealth' section takes you 2 minutes...? You get the "Warp" (Travel) magic shortly, after Hamelin. The fact that you're also guided constantly by a star on the map should make it very easy. I didn't find myself having to backtrack at all... except to do 'errands' and such. If you don't like the game, at least complain where it's due. The errands are boring but backtracking I didn't find at all.

[Sketcz]

The problem, because I'm getting bored I'm starting to rush. Hence failing the stealth sections over and over. And once you start making mistakes and restarting, the inclination is to rush even more.

[importaku]

The story has also gone a bit weird stupid. How exactly did I

->Open Spoiler<-

end up travelling back in time

?

Thought it was pretty obvious even when i was playing it in japanese, if you paid attention to the rune he was casting you would have known exactly what spell it was. The book is there for a reason LOL

The excuses on why this is a bad game are getting pretty weak, so a tiny part that requires sneaking, and because it was something different to the rest of the game that they somehow shoehorned it in? Seriously never try playing dishonoured or you'll rage so bad

In nearly every RPG out there, there are fetch quests. There isn't that much backtracking in ninokuni, nowhere near the level people are going on about.

If you're not enjoying it you might as well just stop, obviously not your kind of game.

[Sketcz]

Thought it was pretty obvious even when i was playing it in japanese, if you paid attention to the rune he was casting you would have known exactly what spell it was. The book is there for a reason LOL

I don't recall seeing a rune being cast. Oliver just walked out of the prince's room, some mist appeared, and POOF! It happened.

[Fader209]

I think your complaints are a bit of stretch, and exaggerated... That 'stealth' section takes you 2 minutes...? You get the "Warp" (Travel) magic shortly, after Hamelin. The fact that you're also guided constantly by a star on the map should make it very easy. I didn't find myself having to backtrack at all... except to do 'errands' and such. If you don't like the game, at least complain where it's due. The errands are boring but backtracking I didn't find at all.

Seconded. I do believe that Sketcz has been spoilt by Xenoblade :P
Was I the only one to turn off the guiding star on the map? It felt a bit linear being told exactly where to go all the time so I opted out for that & explored by myself.
Got my first final evolutions the other night, very exciting! I went for a Flourongo & a Sugarplum Sprite

[Guts]

Thought it was pretty obvious even when i was playing it in japanese, if you paid attention to the rune he was casting you would have known exactly what spell it was. The book is there for a reason LOL

The excuses on why this is a bad game are getting pretty weak, so a tiny part that requires sneaking, and because it was something different to the rest of the game that they somehow shoehorned it in? Seriously never try playing dishonoured or you'll rage so bad

In nearly every RPG out there, there are fetch quests. There isn't that much backtracking in ninokuni, nowhere near the level people are going on about.

If you're not enjoying it you might as well just stop, obviously not your kind of game.

Well it's Sketcz's thing to over-react about everything and now that Noobish has disappeared (possibly imploding because of the high over-reaction levels), he has to work twice as much in the over-reacting & whining business!

Btw. Loving the game at the moment, just reached Al Mamoon.

[importaku]

I don't recall seeing a rune being cast. Oliver just walked out of the prince's room, some mist appeared, and POOF! It happened.

Hmm you might be right, maybe it's on his return, he definately casts it as you see a cutscene of him drawing it & it glowing in the air. Might be just my memory then, it has been a while since i played that part in the ps3 ver.

[importaku]

Just seen the manzai routine in english, my god they really did go all out with the translation effort. The english version retains the exact same comedy feel as the original, i giggled all over again at the english version

[Sketcz]

Yeah, the localisation is perfect. I like the British accents for all the characters, including the Welsh one for Drippy. It adds a kind of... old fashioned folklore feel to it. But that's the thing, I'm enjoying the cut-scenes more than the gameplay which separates them.


My disappointment is because I wanted to like this game. I sincerely did. I read all the previews, watched videos, followed comments on the JPN release. I bought it on release day, then waited eagerly for its delivery. I wanted this (possibly) to be my GOTY.

Btw. Loving the game at the moment, just reached Al Mamoon.

It's about here where the game falls apart.

Come back after reaching the next two or three towns, and tell me you still think I'm over-reacting.

As PSTB said:

->Open Spoiler<-

Just came from the desert palace to get the boat at the sea side. Not allowed on the boat until you get a letter from the palace queen! Trundle back to the desert palace to get the letter. Arrive at the palace, can't get in need to warp back to the home town to spend over 5 minutes watching something utterly pointless. Learn what food the fat queen likes, go and give it to her, still no letter as you need to fix her broken heart. Speak to the person right beside her and he says go and find someone in town who has the heart piece she is missing. Go to the other end of town, am told I need to go back to the person right by the fat queen as he was the person I needed all along. Do some pointless spells, sort the queen out and get the letter, trundle back to the sea side

That has to be the worst bit of padding I have seen in an RPG for a long time.

Bloody hell. Read his paragraph again. I have seldom played an RPG which procrastinates so much. In the original Suikoden you'd murdered your own father by the 4 hour mark! The game was wrapped up by 15 hours, encompassing 108 different characters. That stuff was slick as rain on a duck's backside. Even ignoring older games, the Yakuza series on PS3 is akin to an RPG, with levelling and random battles, and despite the optional padding the main story flowed pretty well.


I just don't feel like trekking backwards and forwards over enormous distances for trivial things. It's gotten to the point where sidequests require a piece of heart found in other towns - and the trek between towns is MASSIVE. After getting some heart to fix the people in Fairy village, I had to leave Hamelin, trek across the continent, avoid enemies, board a ship, travel the entire vertical length of the map, land on Teeheeti, waltz up the hill through the jungle, sort the quest inside the village and then do you know what I had to do?

I had to make the entire journey in reverse, down the hill, onto the boat, up the entire vertical length, onto the shore, through the hills, and back to town.

Anyway, I've decided to shelve this in order to play some other RPGs. I'm not convinced this is my fault. I love the RPG genre. Perhaps I have been spoiled by Xenoblade. Next on my list are Mario RPG and Albert Odyssey on the Saturn. I'll try them and see how I feel.

[importaku]

If you have no patience then mario RPG is going to destroy your ass lol, hours of tedious grinding are going to be ahead for you.

[nakamura]

It's games like this that make you realise how damn good the first 12 Final Fantasy games are. No grinding needed to complete the main stories. They can be enjoyed by everyone. The grinding is left for the hardcore to kill the mega bosses and to find the most rare items.