Got in about 15 hours over the weekend. Enjoying it quite a lot, I'll get my gripes with the game out the way first.

1. Most annoying thing for me is why is this not fully voice acted? It makes no sense, there are scenes where they talk it fades to black, then its silent and reading, then fades to black and they talk again all in the same scene thats 5 minutes long.

I find this to be really jarring, I dont mind the average people in the town not talking and stuff but this half and half in the in game cutscenes gets to me a-little.

2. The game holds your hand waaaaaay to much. Most of the side quests your told exactly what to do and where to find everything with very little effort and it leaves nothing to figure out. Explanations start getting very long winded, and I often find myself going shut up and hurry up.

3. The side quests haven't exactly been laid out well, I have run into a few quests that feel they came to early in the game or too late. E.g the Spice quest for that kings curry.

You get it before going to fight old smokey, and you can get two of the spice seeds quite easily by going to the volcano, but the third one is across a lava river you cannot get to.

So figured I'll go mission around and wait for the seeds to respawn, after 2 and half hours and numerous dead things later still no respawn. Go the hell in and carried on with the story only to get the bridge spell to cross the Lava later.

It's not that much later but it was still irritating as hell, to of wasted that time waiting for ingredients to re spawn when they wouldn't. Just very bad time to hand out a side quest.

4. The only other gripe I have is the capture rate in creatures, they seem to very random. Some things get captured first try others like the Green Buncher took me 51 tries and an hour and a half of playing.

Those are all my issues with it, and truth be told they are all minor issues that dont really detract from the game except for the voice thing.

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Right Now what I love about this game

1. Story & Characters:

It is nice to get away from the inevitability of the emo story lines so many jrpgs default too this days (even tales of graces to a large degree). The characters are bright and chirpy and so far havent wanted to back hand anyone and tell them to get over it.

The world is rich with content, stories and interesting scenarios, a lot of work went into this and it shows.

Also Drippy is awesome, he steals the whole show .

2. Visuals and Music

This has to be one of the best looking and best sounding games to grace next gen or gaming ever. Everything from style to colours and music just fits together so well, despite the overall cutesy feel to everything the game has still made me go "Oh[censored]" at some of the bigger monsters like the guardians.

Music is just so good, can listen to the tunes it plays endlessly and really helps set the mood for the game.

3. Combat

Combat is a fantastic mix of old school time based, and newer action styled game play. Being able to counter and swop out familiars for skills and stamina makes for a very interesting style of play.

4. Scale

This game is huge and just keeps getting bigger, if I had to type out everything to do here would take an entire forum page. Every kinda old school Jprg from going back to old dungeons to access previously inaccessible area's. The whole pokemon style meta game with taming and capturing, there is just such an obscene amount to do.

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Over all I think maybe I was expecting a-little too much old schoolness to the game, but its an amazing game so far and probably the best jrpg on ps3 as its standing now.

Cant wait to get home and play more lol.

Woofels said ...


1. Most annoying thing for me is why is this not fully voice acted? It makes no sense, there are scenes where they talk it fades to black, then its silent and reading, then fades to black and they talk again all in the same scene thats 5 minutes long.

I find this to be really jarring, I dont mind the average people in the town not talking and stuff but this half and half in the in game cutscenes gets to me a-little.

Only an hour in and this is pretty much my biggest gripe as well. Apparently they lifted the audio straight from the original DS game? That may explain the lack of audio, but they should've just re-recorded the missing bits.

Another minor gripe is really just a testament to how amazing Ghibli is. You cannot replicate their animation, it's just too unique and too beautiful to recreate. So when they switch from full animation to in-game engine, it's a little bumpy I feel, but it doesn't mean the game isn't pretty.
Still think L5 did an amazing job.

@Woofles
It seems the stronger you are the easier you can impress monsters to capture. Still has a very random feel to it.

It's quite easy to wander into an area where the monsters just overpower you like your NOTHING. Luckily the continue/save system is very forgiving

@Teb

I dunno then must be level based, because I was beating those things in 3 hits and they still wouldnt join lol.

@Tiggi

That would explain it then, but yea for a game of this scale you think they would of redone the audio work. Especially as far as I am aware it is 5.1? means they would of had to remux it at some stage.

Tebulot said ...

@Woofles, there is another annoying one comming involving killing a spesific enemy with a specific spell. This ais after you leveled up, so the specific enemy runs waway when it sees you. have to sneak up on the little tosser

Magius
Fighting is interesting. You need to keep on your toes, so it's a bit more involved than the normal turn based stuff. Timers, blocking, random drops, alignments etc makes every battle involved, since you need to be able to switch out characters fast and accurate.
Bosses tend to rip you a new one

Monsters also get very strong very fast. This is good, since it keeps battles interresting and you level quick. Also, when you become powerfull, weaker enemies run away. It's a great feeling to walk through the land you used to fear, swinging your massive wand, watching enemies scatter before you

Thanks Teb, may wait for one of you to trade it in and then get it. I really dislike real time combat in party based RPGs. Only thing that makes Baldur's Gate and the other Bioware RPGs playable for me is the fact that you can pause and stack commands.

Unconfirmed atm, but seems like this game did 140k opening in the USA.
To put that into perspective, it did more than DmC (360) and a little less than DmC (PS3) for recent opening weeks in USA.

So pretty good.

This game is absolutely amazing the sound track the story and the characters just love it I really hope this game will be made in to an animated movie would buy it on day one

Gaaaaa! The bosses are a pain in this game!
I'll beat him tonight for sure! This day must friggin end!

Hey Guys! Just s heads up for those that missed out on getting their hands on a copy Ni No Kuni at launch - The suppliers have confirmed additional stocks for us that should arrive by the 15th Feb 2013 (possibly before) you may place pre-orders for the re-stock HERE

Tebulot said ...

Gaaaaa! The bosses are a pain in this game!

I am praying they get harder, so far I am finding the game waaaaaaaaaay to easy. Not one of the bosses has beaten me yet. Playing on normal, hoping to unlock hard =/

I went on Pokemon master mission last night went all the way back to the rolling hill and ding dong dell area to capture at least one of every creature in that area. My new lead familiar is this little guy:



Little big horn, he hits like a tank and it resistant to physical attacks, so concertrating on making him hit harder and boosting his magical defense. The sore boar is also pretty cool replaced my Lemahl

I probably need to level up a bit.
Sometimes you also get lucky and the boss drops a few golden orbs.
Yeah, Ill just run around some, grind a bit and then try again.
Currently at the boss... at the Littlies

@Teb

I have only done two miracle moves so far I dunno just find if you stock up on the right Provisions, Set Esther to keeping you healed and just defend and counter properly havent been having any trouble with the bosses.

But yea granted I think I a over leveled

I tend to get to boss battles severely understocked in items I also realized my characters have the wrong familiars. The one keeps summoning a level 5 healer-type that I am trying to level, then he gets wiped. So, yeah I need to plan ahead and it will go better

@Teb

Lol yeah, Getting the right Familiars helps a lot, Iv been doing a lot of back tracking so captured a bunch of Familiars, went all the back to the start and leveled them from there.

But yeah stick all your healers with Esther she works with them a lot better than attackers, even some of the magic creatures go better with Oliver.

OK, i'm no where near the rest of you following the posts but i finally got a couple hours in after work.

I also managed to complete all errands and bountys available at Ding Dong Hill and now i'm tasked to go to Al H-something by the desert and i just got through Golden Grove (guardian was an easy fight though ) Clearly not far at all but man i'm loving the combat as it stands at the moment, gotta be quick but all around Ding Dong the beasties just run in fear (as they should !bm)

Wanna get home!!!
Wanna play!!!
!love Ni No!

9 Hours in now and met my first other party memeber. The game seems to really open up at this point . More chracter interaction and the battles are not so one dimensional.

Got an hour and abit in last night, still finding this game waaaaaaaay to easy @_@ To be honest it's not very often I find a game annoyingly easy. Even FFXIII which battle system was nowhere near as cool didnt find it this pathetically easy.

There better be a hard mode lol.

Other than that loving every second of it

I agree with it being too easy and that they spell out everything for you, but it is a family-friendly game so they had to take into consideration that kids would be playing it too.

Collecting familiars would have been easier if you had these.
lol

Corrosive said ...

I agree with it being too easy and that they spell out everything for you, but it is a family-friendly game so they had to take into consideration that kids would be playing it too.

Yeah I suppose so, It's just yea it's a first for me getting frustrated with a game because I am finding it to easy and feel like im being babied