Ni No Kuni Wrath of The White Witch Review

Ni No Kuni : Wrath of The White Witch is simply amazing. This game will invite you to explore its gorgeous, beautiful, and colorful fairy tale world. This game was released by Namco Bandai and the result of collaboration between Level-5 and Studio Ghibli. And as expected from Studio Ghibli, the art and the animation is superb, detailed, glorious, and charming. I was immediately interested to play this game because of that actually. It’s been quite a while since I play the game that can give me a deep impression.

As usual, the story begins with a peaceful, ordinary daily life. Oliver went out to pick up his mother’s groceries in the morning, meet up with his friend, and make a promise to meet again in the middle of the night. Unfortunately at that very night Oliver’s joyful and carefree life ended, Oliver’s mother passed away because of a heart attack. Hoping to revive his mother, Oliver embarks on a journey into a parallel world that is Ni No Kuni. And also unlike most of the RPG games, Oliver is not your usual cool and badass hero. Oliver is a kind, polite, innocent, and a very pure 13-years-old boy.

The battle system is very similar to that of the Tales Series, it is real time and your character can move freely around the open space. I think Ni No Kuni battle is rather difficult though especially earlier in the game since Oliver has a weak physical attack. You will get beaten up pretty often by ordinary monsters if you are not careful. But it will get easier later when you got your first familiar. Familiars will remind you of  pokemon. They are the monster you can tame or get through a special event in the game to use in a fight. You can equip them with weapons and accecories, choose the skill they use in a battle, give them treat, and evolve them.

The story is very linear and very predictable but still it is beautiful. There are many sidequests called Errands that you can finish to get a reward like bounty hunting, heal a broken hearted person, fetching items, etc. Broken hearted is the situation where a person lost a piece of his / her heart. Oliver needs to replace that missing piece to heal that person. Each time you finish the Errands you will get your rewards and Merit Stamps. Collect enough Merit Stamps and you can exchange them into Merit Rewards which is can be very useful.

Ni No Kuni world is like it was taken directly from the fairy tale book itself. There is a city ruled by Feline King, milk fountain, dragons, a city full of machine and the developer has done a very good job for the graphic. The graphic is truly wonderful and the game scene will always stunned you added with a catchy, beautiful music that can stirs your heart. This game also allows you to choose between English voice and Japanese voice and with an option to turn the English subtitle on or off.

The Conclusion : I really recommended this game especially for J-RPG fans. It’s been a long time since there’s been a good game like this. Once you played this game, you wouldn’t want it to end and just want to keep playing it.