GAME REVIEW: NI NO KUNI

This is the final page of our 3-part review of Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch.

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3

Shadar and Alicia

Shadar turns out to be good in the end. He only wanted the world to have peace, that's why he broke everyone's hearts and tormented that married couple eight fricken times. It is only after beating the crap out of him that you learn the ~tragic backstory~ of how he only wanted to ~protect his town~ and there was ~the war~ and he ~saved the little girl~ and then he was lost to despair and that's how he became Shadar. But before he was Shadar, he was the wizard-in-training Lucien, because of course his name was Lucien.

Also Alicia was indeed Oliver's mother... or at least his mother figure... it's not really explained if she actually gave birth to Oliver, if a dad was involved in the equation, or if Oliver just came into being without ever actually being born from a womb.

So the entire plot of saving Oliver's mom by saving Alicia is a moot point because Oliver's mom is Alicia, and she doesn't have a soulmate because she time travelled into the then-future Motorville and only now do we get a flashback of Alicia in Motorville wearing strange fantasy clothing... somehow this never ever came up before, and how did Oliver not know this? This is a small town where everyone gossips. They gossiped about her weak heart, they gossiped about Myrtle's dad. Surely Oliver must have heard about this? How wasn't everyone all, whisperwhisper she appeared on our doorstep in strange clothing. Or, even if Alicia's arrival was so long ago and the town has moved on to other, newer gossip, once Oliver is seen running around town in a weird fantasy cape, surely someone would have said something?

When we were first playing the game, we thought Oliver was, what, eight years old? Which would have explained how little he understands about the world around him, and would have maybe explained how he doesn't understand that the town thinks his mom is a bit of a freak. But, apparently he's thirteen?!? He did the whole thing at the beginning of very obviously going to be sneaking out... asking his mom like, "So mom, are you going to be sleeping tonight?" He leaves and he doesn't even do the thing with the fluffed pillow. Just... there's innocent and sheltered, and then there's Oliver.

Except it's not like Oliver is said to be particularly innocent or sheltered, according to the plot. Shadar makes the whole point of how OMG Alicia raised him like a normal boy. Shadar shouldn't even be able to know what is a "normal boy" in the other world, and, considering how immature Oliver is, he is very far from registering as a normal thirteen-year-old boy to our eyes.

Is he so impossibly innocent just because he fulfills the role of the Pure-hearted One? But can someone really be considered "pure" if they are completely unaware of the alternative? Oliver is not pure, he's naive and clueless. And is he really even that pure anyway? The moment Phil barely introduces him to his idea of being bad, Oliver goes along with it. Later, Esther is all, omg, Swaine is a thief and that's bad. But Oliver says it is useful! If anything, Oliver seems to be relatively easy to corrupt.

So, all of a sudden, the whole plot of Alicia went this way... and then it is done. Oliver never needs to wrestle with learning that his mom really is dead and that there is no way to bring her back. Oliver never stops to consider that his mother had another secret life and therefore was someone he never truly knew. There is nothing addressing the fact that his mother was a Great Sage, so ha, the entire party is the children of Great Sages (NEPOTISM). Swaine, who we know for a fact had to deal with the death of a parent, has nothing to say to Oliver. We don't know what happened with Esther's mother, but she doesn't seem to exist and maybe Esther would have something to say about that. But nope, none of this is ever addressed. This was the main plot of the game. And there it goes. And it never comes up again.

We think Alicia being Oliver's mother is something that was changed mid-development, because this entire revelation breaks everything that was established in the beginning that then never went anywhere. Early on, Drippy says he had been turned into a doll by Shadar. This is never challenged, so we can assume this is true. We also learn that, at one point, Drippy had traveled with Alicia, and they were close friends. When Drippy was a doll, he still was able to see things around him, hence how he knew who Oliver was. So, as a doll, he somehow did not recognize Alicia? It's presented as if he only noticed the resemblance when he saw a photo of her. Why didn't he recognize her sooner? Also, Drippy is a fairy, and Alicia is super magical. He should have felt the magic or some bullshit.

If Alicia time-traveled to the future, this means that she had whatever adventures with Drippy like 100 years ago or whatever, shouldn't he mention anything about how it's been a hundred years since the last time he saw her? How did the plot not spill out before now?

Also, in the beginning of the game when we were supposed to think that Alicia and Oliver's mom were different people, the entire plotpoint that Oliver's mom played with the Drippy-doll and gave him a voice was either magical coincidence or indeed the cause of his personality when he came to life in Oliver's dreamworld. Now that we know that Oliver's mom was Alicia, and she knew Drippy, this means that she willingly played with the cursed corpse of her friend, and made fun of him by doing his voice. Yikes. And she knew that he was cursed, and did nothing to help him? Was Drippy cursed in which world? We see the cutscenes of Alicia confronting Shadar and time travelling and appearing in Motorville, but Drippy is nowhere in sight, neither as himself or as a doll.

This is broken. They had some other idea going on here, and for some reason went off the rails and broke everything.

When Oliver confronted Shadar, Shadar was all, ooooh, I am you and you are me and if you kill me, you die too, boooo mwhahaha haunted house! Oliver is revealed to be the soulmate of Shadar, or rather... Shadar has eliminated his soulmate so that he wouldn't have that weakness, but this universe runs on soulmates, so periodically a new soulmate of ultimate goodness is generated by the universe to balance Shadar's ultimate badness. Or some crap.

Now, one moment. If not even Shadar can be without a soulmate, to the point where the universe is generating soulmates for him... what about Alicia? If she had time-traveled to Motorville... wouldn't she still have a soulmate????? Is her soulmate dead because it's in the future? But how is the universe not generating new soulmates for her? And in which world would they be generated in?

Also, Shadar makes the point that he has been somehow "eliminating" his other soulmates. But if he can't kill Oliver without dying himself, wouldn't killing all the previous Olivers kill him too?

If your soulmate can't have the common cold without the soulmate in the other world getting wonky, how does Oliver not constantly throw up by merely being related in any way to Shadar?

For that matter, do fairies have soulmates? Cats and dogs and dragons do, after all. Do familiars have soulmates? If so, when Oliver goes around having random encounters and killing the wildlife, what is he doing to Motorville? Is he like, murdering all the butterflies?

Why are the soulmates only in Motorville? I mean, we can believe that the Second World is the magical world connected with this particular town, but don't tell me that the population of Motorville matches that of an entire fantasy world? It's established that there's large cities contained in the magical world, and somehow all of their combined population can line-up with that of just Motorville?

When the game was just starting, it was feeling like this was a non-literal, dream-like, fairytale adventure. Like in the movie version of The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy travels to Oz and meets people who resemble her family and other important figures for her, and then in the end it was all a dream, even though she believes it was true. The beginning of Ni No Kuni seemed to be doing the same thing, so of course everyone important to Oliver in Motorville has a soulmate in the magical world that is a construct of his own mind, and of course his doll is a living fairy with the personality that his mom gave it. But now that this has been confirmed to not be a dreamworld, but indeed a factual parallel universe, it doesn't make any sense.

But anyway, so, will Oliver still confront Shadar if it means that he will die? And everyone all, oh no, Oliver, should we really do this, isn't it scary, I don't want you to die, but Oliver is brave, and Oliver is ready, and Oliver accepts whatever will happen! And so they fight!

And we win, so now Oliver and Shadar are going to both die. Because they are linked, Oliver sees Shadar's tragic backstory flashing before his eyes as he dies, and Oliver learns that Shadar is apparently a sympathetic villain, even though he committed genocide over the fact that he was sad. Then they're both in a white void, and Shadar is like, let me save you from dying. Poof. There, fixed. He literally handwaved it, and that plot point literally went poof. A wizard did it. Just... why did they even bother establishing this whole cheap tension deal if they were just going to poof it away in a moment.

Also, considering that the beginning established that Drippy thought he could save Oliver's mom because maybe her soulmate Alicia was still alive in the other world, how could it be that killing either soulmate kills them both. If that were true, Drippy should realize that if Oliver's mom is dead, Alicia is also dead, no matter how magically sealed by Shadar she is. When Drippy said this in the first place, we thought he was grasping on any excuse to convince Oliver to help, so that then he could bring him on his magical coming of age adventure. So, we thought this could have been a lie. Further along the plot, Drippy says things like, "Come on, we're going to save your mom!", and seems to fully believe this is a thing that will happen. So, Drippy wasn't lying, and this is just a massive, gaping plothole. And one that they made up right here and didn't need to.

If this plothole-pointpoint that both Shadar and Oliver will die was done just to make Oliver able to see Shadar's past, and if they were going to invoke "a wizard did it" anyway to save Oliver, there could have been millions of different ways to achieve this that wouldn't have broken the plot and would have been less cheap. For example, after the big magical fight, there could have been just a boom of magic and now they're in the void talking. Or Oliver could have wondered what is even Shadar's deal, and Oliver's magical powers of pure-heartedness let him see it. Not that these would have been brilliant ways to solve the problem, but they're less bullshit than breaking plotpoints for no reason.

So Oliver lives, and Shadar is alone in the white void, and he looks like a monster, and little Alicia appears and we learn that the girl he saved was indeed Alicia (of course), and then the camera cuts back to Shadar, and he's the beautiful Lucien again.

Dude, dude, no, dude. One of the best best things of anything that Studio Ghibli has worked on is the subtle transitions the characters go through right before your eyes and you don't even notice until Heidi no longer has any life in her cheeks, and Anne of Green Gables is a full-grown adult, and Sophie doesn't look like an old hag anymore. You can't emulate this by just cutting the camera back and forth once.

It would have been better to never show him as a monster at all, because really, what was that about -- it was an excuse to do the thing... that they didn't even bother to do right!

So, we beat Shadar right? End of the game, right? End of... Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Wi.... ah.

Because wait, there's more!

Ending number two, emphasis on number two

This entire part was retroactively added to the game for this PS3 version, and boy if it feels tacked on.

So, the White Witch has been appearing in cutscenes surrounded by an evil council and saying evil things with her evil parrot. And there's also been a little girl with green hair named Pea that only Oliver could see. Shadar was the pawn of the White Witch, and she is unhappy that he turned out not to be evil because he once cared about something and he had a tragic backstory so that absolves him of anything he ever did that was horrible in the meanwhile... dang that Shadar turning out to be good. If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. So just as everyone in the world has gathered for a jolly party in Ding Dong Dell, the White Witch unleashes the Mana.

The Mana looks like ashes, and it turns everyone into zombies, including King Tom who now has terrifying red eyes that do the thing cat eyes do in the camera in the dark and lkahwklhewlqhw and he's going to kill us...

Suddenly Marcassin Ex Machina, and he brings us all to safety on the Delphinus ✽︎, and we learn that all cities above a certain population threshold have all become zombified (apparently Castaway Cove wasn't worth the Mana).

We also learn that Marcassin is the fourth party member now! Gasp! But for no reason whatsoever, you can only have three in the party at a time. Bye Esther!

This actually kinda really breaks things? Because up until now, all of our companions have always been in the party, and that makes a lot of sense. Plenty of games have the fridge logic problem of, what are the other characters doing exactly while the active party is getting their butts kicked, and why is it Game Over if we still have a veritable army of back-up party members in reserve? But so far, this game hasn't had that. This only becomes an issue now, for the final arc of the game.

Up until now, whenever we've walked around on the overworld, we've seen everyone with us: there was Oliver and Drippy, there was even the part where Esther's dad was coming with us (not playable, but coming along), and so there was Oliver and Drippy and Esther and Esther's dad all walking around in the overworld. Nice! Later it will be Oliver and Drippy and Esther and Swaine all walking together everywhere. Nice!

But now there's Oliver and Drippy and Swaine and Marcassin and Pea (who is not playable, but now travelling with us). But... where's Esther??? Just because she's not in the active party, she's not there? They could fit FIVE characters all walking around on the overworld, but SIX, six is just way too much?

And in battle, it's weird too. Up until now, the entire party (of people capable of battle) has always been battling with us. And even Drippy is always shown running around the edges of the battlefield, cheering us on, throwing us glims sometimes, and occasionally doing a healing move to support us. But now Esther is not in the active party, so what, she went to the break room? Where is she? Off playing the harp alone? Why couldn't she also be shown on the sidelines and occasionally doing a healing move for us, just like Drippy?

So, up until now this game has managed to at least visually convey that everyone who is travelling with Oliver is doing their part and being friends, and they're always present on screen. Sure, this is as far as the game goes in conveying it - as we said before, we have trouble believing any of these characters are actually friends... but now, for the end, someone is required to sit out, breaking this whole feeling of the game. That's the second time now they broke a good feeling of the game, the first being the addition of party members at all.

And who are you going to choose to have sit out the last battle? Oliver is required. Marcassin just arrived, and are you not going to use him? This is your only chance to have him in the party! And besides, he's very useful. He's a Great Sage. So, it's either Esther or Swaine. Considering the fact that Marcassin and Swaine are brothers that haven't really seen each other in years, are you really not going to let them be in the party together, running around and supporting each other in battle? Not that the game has any sort of support mechanic, but for the sake of our imaginations...

So... bye Esther. We won't have to see you doing your one damage with the harp anymore. We unfortunately cannot tame any familiars without her in the party, but this is the end of the game, our party is set at this point.

Resident Evil

Now, we are playing Resident Evil. We're going to the cities where everyone is zombies, and healing them with the power of Pea. Drippy tells you that it's ok to knock out a few zombies, even if they were the citizens of the city, it won't affect anything. Still, it's pretty fucked up when you fight them and the label even tells you who these NPCs are. We even fought the two guards from Ding Dong Dell. Nooo!

What was happening in Motorville when everyone was zombies? The plot never addresses this. Of course not. That would be writing.

Anyway, we go through all of this, fix everything by fighting King Tom, the Cowlipha, and... wait, if Marcassin is there, what are we -- oh, just another tank, that's all they could make up.

And Pea retrieves the Plot Device Flowers of Useful Flashback, which quickly brief us on all these plotpoints that weren't weaved through the plot before. She's the daughter of the Wizard King, and had to become queen at a young age, and her council of advisors took control, and she wanted to do something good so she learned the best spell, and the best spell turned out to be the spell that kills everyone. Whoops.

Why was this even a thing anyway? Why was there a spell that kills everyone, and why was Pea under the mistaken impression that it was a good spell? Where did this spell come from in the first place?

Anyway, the spell is of course the current Mana problem, and Pea is responsible, or so she says?

Now everything is back to normal, and so we're at the last round of sidequests and then we can finish the game. At this point, the brokenhearted mechanic is gone, since Shadar is gone. We were waiting for Shadar to turn out not to be really what's always breaking the hearts of everyone, and maybe discover that problems exist no matter what and isn't that the plot of the game anyway, that his mother died and there's nothing you can do, and you have to deal with sadness...? Nope, it was meanie magic, and now it's fixed. And now no one will ever be sad again.

How is there even a profession of being a wizard, which is about balancing people's hearts, if Shadar is the sole culprit behind all of this trouble? Wizards obviously existed before Shadar, because Lucien himself was a wizard. So, are you telling us that the function of wizards is to solve a problem that didn't exist when wizards first started being wizards? No one thought about this, obviously.

And was it really so hard to just make it so that someone is still brokenhearted here and there, and to point out that sometimes you're sad and it's nothing supernatural? The way they did it, it's essentially saying that if you do something that's less than 100% perfect and happy and cheerful and doing your duty, the devil made you do it. Wonderful.

They had this set up, and at the beginning we were so impressed and happy that dealing with depression was a plotpoint... and now it's literally been confirmed to be, if you're depressed, it's the work of the devil, and it's your fault for falling for it. Same with kleptomania. Kleptomania is simply a lack of restraint. It's not a disease or anything.

The last dungeon

Anyway, now that the entire backstory of the White Witch has been revealed in three two one, and Pea is obviously Cassiopeia somehow, we have to do the final battle. Explaining the motivations of the character in the title just needed some quick cutscenes all at the end. We could have been learning about this throughout the entire plot, since we as the player have been seeing the White Witch being evil in her council of evil for the entire plot. But no, the characters don't even know she exists until after the ashes fall.

So now, because the kingdoms have been all struck by the ashes and now they're back, they can be together, and together they attack the castle of the White Witch, which is of course the ivory tower and a castle in the sky, ha ha ha. They do the boom and the bang and we in the meanwhile infiltrate the castle on our dragon... they have the last minute thing of Marcassin being all, bring me with you! What? Of course we're bringing you with us! You're in the party and you're not going off anywhere until we tell you.

So we get in. In there, Marcassin tells us that actually, he knows that the castle is indestructible and magical and the kingdoms' combined attacks are just for them to rehearse their solidarity. How much money do you think went into this war that he knew wouldn't achieve anything? And he says he's no longer a despot? We don't believe him. We need more belief, because the devil.

There's also this thing that the kingdoms once were at war and they're still at odds with each other, but there's absolutely nothing in the game establishing that, and in fact, kinda the opposite? We go to King Tom and he tells us to go to Al Mamoon. We go to the Cowlipha and she has a crush on Marcassin and directs us to him. There's no evidence of any bad blood. Just that they are on friendly terms with each other, actually. So this is jarring.

But ok, final dungeon. At one point, we find a hallway of robots. One of them activates and attacks us. Eek! But then there's another hallway of robots, and one of them activates and attacks us. We knew that was going to happen. This is repeated about seven times. It's not a spook if you already know it's coming every single time...

Why not go play Dead Space to learn how it's done? Or like any other horror game? Or any other better game for that matter?

Anyway, on the way there, it turns out that the mysterious stranger with unclear alliances who has been maybe helping us all along... is actually a staff. Like, a reanimated staff containing the spirit of Cassiopeia's dad. Somehow. We're not making any sense, because it doesn't. This is not explained. Whatever. He gives Oliver himself, which is the end of the game staff. All that about the Mornstar for nothing, take the Astra. If he was the end of the game staff, why did he not give himself to Oliver before, instead of that time-travel nonsense for the Mornstar?

We learn that Cassiopeia's entire council was entirely imaginary. Except for her dad. Who was somehow magically real and unreal at the same time, and couldn't actually help her. He just had to do subterfuge in her imaginary council. He couldn't think of anything better? The Wizard King of Take Heart and Give Heart couldn't do anything to help his daughter lost to the depths of depression, except pretend to be a spy? Well, to be fair, it is better than Esther's dad ever did... He was also a wizard, and instead of helping her, he sold bananas.

Wizards in this game suck...

Besides, Lucien was a wizard too, and he got depressed and became Shadar. But he was a wizard, and should have been equipped to realize that he was getting lost to despair. That's like a professional therapist getting depressed and not being able to recognize the signs in their own life, when they would be the most trained and equipped to realize something was wrong and to seek the help they need. Instead, this is the professional heart balancer getting so depressed that he wants to drag down the entire world with him. Just... what the fucking hell.

If he hadn't been a wizard, this wouldn't have broken everything, but they had to make him a wizard too so that he could handwave Oliver not dying.

Anyway, back to the White Witch. She runs away into her inner sanctum with her parrot. We had one last minute thought of what's the deal with the parrot -- he had been shown in the flashback as being young Cassiopeia's pet. Was he her Familiar? Is he going along with her schemes to try to help her too? How does he talk? -- NOPE he's imaginary too, and literally vanishes from the game, and the White Witch even laughs at you for not realizing he was fake too. Though, doesn't she not realize he's fake, since this is all her delusion, and if she knows it is a delusion, then it can't be a delusion, that's the definition of a delusion?!?!?

What happened to the writers!? Who died, and who did they hire instead to so hackily finish this story?!

The final boss fight

First we fight The White Witch herself, and she does magic with her finger. Which looks cool, but considering that she is Nazcaan, for her, it's like writing the letter B and doing the spell like that. Just something to keep in mind.

Anyway, she's easy to defeat, because this is only her first form, of course. She says something about how, ah, Oliver is strong, just as the prophecy foretold.

Now, hold on a moment. This prophecy thing has been since the beginning of the game, with Drippy all, oh wow, Oliver must be the Pure-Hearted One. What is this prophecy, exactly? Who foretold it? Is this prophecy just that the good-half of Shadar will show up one day? Some prophecy by the way, if that is just how this universe works. This is like the prophecy of, "If you throw the ball up into the air, one day, it will fall back down." What fucking prophecy is that? Or is it something deeper? Nah, it's just, what's the reason for this, uh, a prophecy, yeah. It even kinda undermines the plot because, at least we thought the idea here is that Oliver is coming of age and learning to be true to himself (offscreen), but then to have it be, he is successful because prophecy -- just, fuck you!

So, because Oliver is strong because of the prophecy, the White Witch needs to bring out her stronger form. She's some sort of six-legged chimerical centaur, manticore, sphinx thing with three tails and no meaning. Why does she have this form? Is this the shape of her despair? Is this just what you could look like when you're really really magical? Is this the full extent of her power? It can't be her true form, because we're going to see that in a moment.

Usually this sort of thing is explained in SOME way. Like it's really the true form of the powerful creature that was just pretending to look humanoid. Or maybe it's because the villain merged powers with some magical creature or McGuffin. Or because they have the power to become anything they want and for some reason they chose this fucked up monster. Or maybe it's the true reflection of their heart, and whoops, it's ugly. Or SOME junk is said to explain why there's another form of the final boss. And usually this is clearly handwavy, but it is at least something to go on, and they are at least trying.

But here, they didn't even bother. The White Witch becomes a giant thing of mismatched feet with a creepy chest-mouth, and we have no idea why.

This second form is harder, not too hard, but just the battle ends up being long and grueling.

Then she is defeated, and is back to looking humanoid, and we learn that Pea is like the soulmate of Cassiopeia, but not really her soulmate. She says she was born to help her, somehow, and also she's like the embodiment of her innocence or something... it's not really clear. It's maybe the same as Oliver was to Shadar, but maybe different because then Pea and the White Witch merge, and Oliver never had the option to merge with Shadar, he just let Shadar die... And anyway, now Cassiopeia is back to being her true self, and her depression over accidentally killing everyone and then going off on a homicidal power trip for 4000 years is completely cured, and there will be no lasting implications for any of this. But before we can really celebrate, possibly the most pointless end end boss battle appears from nowhere for no adequately explained reason.

The final final boss fight

One two-part boss battle ago, it was fully established that the council of the Zodiarch didn't actually exist, but were a delusion of Cassiopeia's mind. But now suddenly they are back to fight us in the form of a giant version of the mask of the White Witch with giant horns that spews out little eyeball monster satellites that look like the cores from Portal 2, and it's oh no, they've lived so long in Cassiopeia's mind and have been fueled by her magic so much that they have taken on a life of their own, kinda sorta like the concept of the familiars themselves, but not really, because this is a giant gross monster thingy of hatred and... none of this had a reason to exist or to happen. Cassiopeia's parrot has been around just as long, maybe even longer than the Zodiarch, but the delusion-parrot doesn't come to life. Why are the Zodiarch here? Or, why isn't the parrot also here as an ally?

Regardless of why we have to fight this thing, this turned out to be one of the hardest boss battles that Rosy has ever played (we say Rosy, because Rosy did all the battles in this game, because this game is only one player). The difficulty is not so much a function of challenge, but rather just because, like all the other bosses in this game, it just has so much health, and you can only do so little damage to it, and the battle drags on for so long, and the longer it takes for you to whittle down its health, the more opportunities the AI-controlled characters have of going off and sabotaging your efforts.

The worst part of this all is not that the CPU-controlled allies are just not being helpful enough. No, it goes very much beyond that. For one thing, which has been a problem the whole game, is that they waste resources. As we mentioned earlier, if they have MP, they will use it, whether or not it is the right time, or in any way effective, until they run out of MP. You could set the allies to not use any magic at all, but we don't want them to never use magic, we just want them not to waste it! And so, if you were expecting to switch to another character at a critical moment and use their healing spell, now you switch to them and you can't do the spell, because they have no MP. Also, while the CPU-controlled characters are low on MP, they will go around and take all the blue glims they can get their hands on. Which means that the player character can't get those glims if they were counting on getting them to be able to use a useful spell like Evenstar and actually accomplish something here. But, no, Swaine is off getting the MP to keep doing his stealing move for no reason, since there is nothing to steal.

Also, whenever any character does a magical move where they get a whole animation showing them using the move, it interrupts whatever you or any other character was doing. So Rosy playing as Oliver might have just been about to pull off Evenstar, but then we cut to Marcassin's familiar doing whatever magic move it decided it had to do just then -- and Evenstar is interrupted. Or, using the healing item is interrupted. Or, at this point in the game, we had Oliver with the Astralynx familiar, which learns Upsy-Daisy, which takes a long time, but, omg, it is the resurrection spell. This is very important in this battle. Because, however useless or counter-productive the CPU-controlled allies are, we need them to be alive to 1) be alive to resurrect Oliver in case something goes wrong, or 2) to be another target for all the eyeballs to focus on, so they are not just all always attacking just Oliver. So, we go through the trouble of bringing out the Astralynx, which can't take too many hits, to be able to use the resurrection spell, which takes a long time, and partway through all of that, suddenly Marcassin is doing Thunderstorm, which, thank you, but now Swaine is still dead, and now the Astralynx can't use Upsy-Daisy again until it recharges, which takes a long time, even though it never even managed to use it fully. And now Marcassin got killed too, and now we're all dead, and Marcassin, this is all your fault.

Dear Game Designers Everywhere: nothing is more frustrating than when a theoretical ally who is completely out of your control fucks you up. There's no way to control all the characters at the same time, so the others deciding to do things that mess you up is pretty much the most frustrating thing that will happen. If we make a misjudgment and do the wrong action at the wrong time and that was the critical point after which everything went downhill, that's our fault. Or if the enemy does something that throws us off and leads to our demise, well, that's the game. But here, we have our supposed friends "helping" us and making us all die. Argh.

During only this battle, Cassiopeia is also a CPU-controlled ally of sorts. You have no means of controlling her or even setting what she does, but she also can't really die, so, that's the trade off. She also has the power to use Ashes of Resurrection, which is her special resurrection move, and she is the only character who learns any resurrection spell unless you happen to tame the right familiar (at least so far in our playthrough). ...Hold on one moment. Is Ashes of Resurrection what the Mana spell was supposed to be? Cassiopeia expected the Mana spell to be magic that would heal any ailment. Here she is using a move that is curing even death. But she was wrong, and the Mana turned everyone into zombies until they all were dead and she was alone and her entire civilization went extinct. What is this move she is using now? If she had the power to resurrect people, why did everyone die? If it is the same spell, why is it working now? How is she even daring to use it? What is going on?!?

In any case, you can see Cassiopeia using this move, which helps keep everyone alive during this battle. However, you can't ask her to use it. So you might be running around as the last party member standing, and going, please, please Cassiopeia, do your thing! And ...she doesn't even try, and you die, Game Over, and restart from the very beginning when you are facing the first form of the White Witch.

So, don't count on Cassiopeia doing the move at a critical point. You're better off using a Phoenix Feather yourself when the situation is really dire.

But sometimes, you will see her start to use the move, so then it's fine, right? Nope, she might get interrupted somehow, and it's hard to tell if she is doing the move still (which, understandably, takes time), or if she was interrupted and gave up. So you might see her doing the move, and be waiting for someone else to stand up... but it never happens, and you die, and Game Over, and restart from the very beginning when you are facing the first form of the White Witch. Waaah.

So, even if Cassiopeia could do the resurrection move to help you, and even if you see Cassiopeia starting to do the resurrection move to help you... you can't count on it. You have to take care of things yourself. Which is a bummer, because you then waste time, effort, and resources resurrecting people when theoretically, you could be spending that time and effort fighting the Zodiarchy and saving the resources for a more dire situation. Very painfully, you may use a Phoenix Feather yourself to resurrect Swaine, only to then see the mystical glow of Ashes of Resurrection surround his already fighting form. Sigh.

This battle would probably be easier if Cassiopeia wasn't there to misleadingly make your feel like you have her help. And having Cassiopeia there just really highlights how weird it is that Esther is nowhere to be seen and doing nothing useful.

This could have been more forgiving if the final boss just had a little bit less health, or at least if it let you save in between so you could start at the Zodiarchy again if you died, and not have to go through the two forms of the White Witch all over again. Which are not really particularly hard, just time-consuming, and we've got better things to do than to just prove our gamer cred over and over.

Ni no Kuni treats you like a baby the whole game, and we thought that maybe part of it was that the developers were trying to create a good Baby's First RPG. But then the final boss is like, you gotta do it as a grueling marathon. Which way is it?! Is this the first RPG you give to a little kid, or is this something you beat the hard way for the cred? You can't make a game that does both!

Denise can tell you right now that if this was the first RPG she played, and if she died on this boss and had to start over from so far back (which is pretty inevitable given how your allies are all working against you), she would be very discouraged, and probably just declare the game beaten and feel like she's not very good at games. Something like this did indeed happen to her. Among the first RPGs she played was Dragon Warrior III. She got all the way through the last dungeon, and was facing the final final boss, and then died. And to try again, she would need to fight her way through the entire dungeon again. She was pretty discouraged, so that was the end of that. At least she had already played Pokémon and a few other games at that point so that she didn't just feel like she was bad at every game - she just thought she was bad at classic RPGs.

But anyway, after wasting a few hours failing to defeat the Zodiarchy a few times, we went back out of the Ivory Tower, bought every good equip item and dessert for our familiars our money could buy, and battled a few Tokotokos, which are the monsters that give an inordinate amount of experience that everyone exploits for easy grinding. We discovered the Tokotokos by ourselves while we were trying to catch the baby Astralynx, since they are found in the same area, but later in checking something online, we saw everyone else talking about the trick of grinding against the Tokotokos, too. We're kinda lucky that we just liked the look of the Astralynx and wanted to train it, and the Astralynx just so happens to learn the resurrection move, which makes it super useful, and we happened to learn about the Tokotokos all in the same place. Lucky us!

After that, we went through the Ivory Tower again, and this time all the enemies fled from us, so we clearly passed the level gate. Sigh. The boss battle wasn't too much easier, but it was a bit more reasonable.

We are so annoyed that this game pretty much forces you at certain points to go back and grind. That's never fun, and that should never be a requirement. You should only ever be underleveled if you are just charging through the main quest and avoiding battles -- essentially, you should only be underleveled when it is your own fault. But we went and did every single sidequest in this game. We got the experience points from fighting every optional boss monster for every bounty. We even took the time to go catch and train the Astralynx because we wanted to. We leveled up a second Shonky Tonker to become the Trumpy Pumper, because we didn't know that a quest where we needed the other split evolution was coming, and we had made our first one into a Honky Tonker, so we got all the levels from doing that. What we are trying to say here is that we've gone above and beyond what would have been the minimum progression of playing this game. We should theoretically be over-leveled for spending all the extra time that we have. But here we are, somehow underleveled and being required to go back and grind against the monsters of excessive experience points, as if we were cheating the game, but this is just for basically progressing and finishing the game. There's nothing else left for us to even do in the game.

In any case, Rosy did indeed finally manage to defeat the Zodiarchy after a few more tries, and now the game is over!

Epilogue

Cassiopeia tells us that her depression is fine now. Esther has a few PSA-ish lines of taking it one step at time, which is good, but incongruous with how everyone is acting like everything is perfectly fine now. There's no talking about how this is going to be hard or require healing over time. Just, depression is one (admittedly long, but just one) boss fight, and then it's over and you are cured and you don't have to worry about it anymore, and you can just fill the world with flowers and happy. Yes. Flowers. That's literally what she says she's going to do after the end of the game. Plant flowers.

So, the credits roll, and then we see Oliver open a gate in the sky. He flies around Motorville on a broom. Broom? What? Why? Just to reference Kiki's Delivery Service and the previous game that never made it out of Japan. He then goes back into his empty house all, I'm going to be ok mom, because I know you're watching me. The End.

That's it?

In conclusion

It's like the developers wanted to have the plot of, Oliver has to deal with his grief, but they never fucking did that. They just said that he did. And the rest was just the shallowest take on what is a Studio Ghibli movie. Oh, they're charming because someone rides a dragon, right? No, they're charming because Howl. Everyone likes Howl. Let's put Howl in this game. Oh, and Lupin III, down to the green jacket appearance of Castle of Cagliostro. And a terrifyingly large witch, right? Someone riding a broom? That's all the ingredients, put them together, and here's a masterpiece... No. That's not how it works.

What is so important in a Studio Ghibli movie is the characters. And the subtle things. And this game's weakest suit is the characters. And nothing about it is subtle. They set up the entire plot for it to be a coming of age adventure for Oliver in which he deals with his grief, they made him go through the trials, they made him learn that Alicia was his mom, that Shadar was his soulmate... and none of this matters, and there is no character development through any of this.

Partway through, we would have said that this game is not as good as it started, but it's worth playing. Just don't get your hopes too up. But, by the end, the thing is this: ultimately, everything that it promises either fails, falls apart, or isn't there. All the things that are introduced turn out to be mostly pointless, and not because they're subtleties, just because they're completely inconsequential to everything else once the plot moves on. For example, we thought that Take Heart and Give Heart were going to be part of a big arc about battling depression. Not only did it never go there and stayed shallow, this plotpoint just evaporated when Shadar is defeated. It's gone. There's the whole thing of rescuing the dragon, and it's just for transportation. The familiars are said to be born out of the characters' hearts and represent them, but they are just battle proxies. The characters never even talk to them, the familiars don't reveal anything about their owners, and they aren't even acknowledged by the plot after they're introduced. If you played the game without familiars, it wouldn't be incongruous with the plot.

What happened to the characters?

Drippy could have reverted to being a doll again by the end of the game, for how important he wound up being. We never really learn what was his deal or what actually happened between him and Alicia; it's not like there's an arc of his changing relationship with Oliver, since his relationship with Oliver never actually changes; we don't see at all what Drippy's relationships are with the other party members... Drippy was a big presence at the beginning of the game, but by the end, he's just there making fun of Oliver, and, by extension, making fun of the player. You know, maybe the party really should have just abandoned him on the island of fairies...

Then Esther... We spent a lot of time trying to figure out what exactly went so wrong in her case and why we couldn't manage to like her no matter how much we would have wanted to, and we think we have a clearer idea now.

First of all, as we already said, Esther got a really bad introduction. At the beginning of the game, we were going around as just Oliver and Drippy and the little team of familiars. Then Esther is introduced, and we save her, and then she is just dropped on us, she's in the party, where did that come from? It feels like she is intruding on our game for no legitimate reason and demanding our attention when it's not like we were that interested in her to begin with.

Once Esther is in the party, the game tells us that now we can switch from Oliver to instead control Esther. But why? There's never really a reason to, except when we want to catch a familiar or when we need to make sure she uses her (then-useful) healing move. But otherwise, Oliver is the one with the useful spells. Oliver is the one with the familiars that we were introduced to at the beginning of the game and had become attached to. Suddenly there's Esther and her penguin and there is no reason for the player to care. Besides, you can only be control one character at a time. And switching between them is not exactly easy -- when you go to switch, the camera jerks, and they recall their familiar, interrupting anything they might have been doing. So then you need to re-send out their familiar and resume doing anything useful. But in the meanwhile, you died. You actually don't want to be constantly switching characters.

Later on, Esther only gets new support or healing moves, while Oliver gets all the cool spells. And Swaine only gets support moves. For the most part, if you have to use the human-specific abilities, you're using Oliver, until Marcassin shows up. He's a useful option too, but that's for three minutes at the end of the game. But Esther gets absolutely the shortest end of the stick for so many reasons.

In any other game, the healer character is notable and important, since they are the character that helps keep you alive, so the player has to give some level of attention to them. However, in Ni No Kuni, healing moves are everywhere, and everyone and/or their familiar can get a healing move. And the ones that Esther gets are not in any way better or more special than any of the other healing moves. Esther really only was the designated healer for one brief point in our game, when she learned the then-best healing move of our party. But then about five minutes later, Oliver also learned a healing move that was just as good, and so Esther's moment of glory was over.

So, if Esther isn't really the healer, what is her role in the party? Except for catching familiars, Esther doesn't have a function that isn't entirely redundant, and in fact, she has less functions than the other characters. Oliver can do decent damage, and he can also do healing and support moves. Marcassin has a versatile arsenal of spells as well. Swaine steals, and has a few special support moves, like poisoning the enemy. But Esther gets nothing but catching the familiars, which doesn't even matter once you settle on your team.

And even when you want to catch a particular familiar, it's not like Esther can actively do anything to help you catch that familiar. You just have to wait until the random number generator decides that you can attempt to catch a familiar (based on the catch rate percentage of each familiar), then switch to Esther, and hit the button.

And, of course, there's the problem that she has no character. Really, nobody in this game has much, but she has the least.

With Oliver, Swaine and Marcassin, we lament what could have been. There are premises to their characters that are never explored. With Esther, there's nothing. They shoved every female character trope onto her, so she has to be the sister and the mother and the love interest and... that's plenty gross on its own, but then Esther never had an arc. And never had a character. They didn't even pair her off as they were teasing to, for which we would normally be happy for, but in this case, there was a thread here that was just completely dropped. She had a crush on Gascon, and that had no repercussions on her relationship with Swaine, and... that's it. We also never see her develop a relationship of any kind with Oliver, even though they apparently could do the Trial of Friendship five minutes after they met each other. And she never even talked with Marcassin. At the very end when everyone is talking with cured Cassiopeia and giving her advice, Esther gives this meaningful gaze to Marcassin, as if to signify that they understand, having gone through thick and thin together... what the fuck, Marcassin has only been in the party for fifteen minutes!

Swaine time-traveled to see his dad die and all that stuff, and this had absolutely zero impact on his character. He also reunited with Marcassin for the first time in years, and that also never had an impact on either of their characters.

Marcassin apparently thought he was ugly and was the despotic ruler and all that stuff, but as soon as he's cured, he's the nice prince Howl that everyone likes, and believe us, ok? That's his whole character, and he won't get any more. He's handsome and competent. That's literally all his character. And he never has a struggle with all the terrible things he's done or what happened to his brother or anything.

The three kingdoms were fighting, supposedly, and now they're all friends, supposedly!

Shadar is just handwaved away, and the White Witch is only relevant in the last two hours, and then cured. The end.

Alicia doesn't make any sense.

Phil? That would have been ripe for something, he's the friend bully who feels responsible for Alicia's death and it's just, he lost his ambition. We can't believe it.

And, last but not least, Oliver, who managed to get written out of his own game focused on his development. Somehow. But it's not like they were busy writing other things that became more important than the main character as it often happens, they just stopped writing everything.

It's not often that we come out of a game without a single character that we can really like. Even other games that we've torn apart, like Eternal Sonata and Tales of Symphonia, there's usually at least one or two characters that strike us and that we can like better than the rest. This one, we can't even like Oliver.

So, this game is just very pretty, has a nice beginning concept, and that is all. That's the only good thing we can say about it. In the cases of both Eternal Sonata and Tales of Symphonia, we complained about a lot of things, but said that if nothing else they were fun to play. Ni No Kuni isn't even that. The battle system is broken beyond belief, and is frustrating for all the wrong reasons. You keep slamming into the level gates and getting destroyed, and all of your allies are working against you. Some familiars just aren't as good as some others, and the final battle mechanic is just playing with six types of spells that ultimately are all the same - spells only do things like one enemy or area, and that's the whole variety. It wasn't fun to play. It was even boring to watch. It also succeeds at the unthinkable of having free-roam battles be grueling and boring. Usually being allowed to hit buttons makes a game at least a little exciting. Not in this case.

Just go look at screenshots of this game, and then go watch a Studio Ghibli movie instead.

Final thoughts

What a disappointment. When we started playing this game, we thought this was going to be good, and we were happy to be playing a game that finally isn't shit, so refreshingly good!... and then, halfway through, it just died. It was like watching a trainwreck: there was a train, it was going in the right direction, and then it derailed. And then it fell off a cliff. And then into the lake. And then it exploded. What happened? Did they get a good writer for the first part of the game, and assigned the rest to a toilet? Did someone have ideas, and then were ruined by committee? Did someone die? Or did they figure the beginning would draw us in enough, and then it doesn't matter?

Ni no Kuni is like... instead of actually telling you a story, it says, "You know, he went on a magical journey, and, well, you know how it goes." No! Tell us the story! We mean, yeah, we have an idea on how the story goes, but that doesn't make Ni no Kuni a good storyteller. And even if we can guess that Oliver goes on a magical journey and makes new friends and grows as a person as he learns to deal with his grief, we want to know how Oliver grows on his journey, how he becomes friends with all his new friends, how he develops his courage and belief and all that... but Ni no Kuni is just, "well, you know how it goes."

Yes, we can be here making headcanons for everything this game should have done but didn't do. But that's not right. The game as it is doesn't give us a whole lot to anchor our headcanons onto. We'd have to essentially make up everything ourselves, and at that point, are we still talking about Ni no Kuni, or are we just talking about our own ideas? We can fill in the blanks, but we can't love something that is nothing but blanks. We bought this game to enjoy its story, but Ni no Kuni tells us, write it yourself. We like writing, but not when we are nestling in to listen to someone else's story!

"Ni no Kuni, Ni no Kuni, tell us a story!"
"Well, you know how it goes."
"Ni no Kuni, if you didn't want to tell us a story, you could have just said so instead of wasting our time."

Because that's how we feel with this game: that we wasted our time.

Maybe we'll do like Shadar and destroy the world in despair. But then we'll get a three-minute redemption revelation in which we're excused of everything because we only wanted good games and then this happened.