This is a freakishly long review, I apologize in advance. But I feel compelled to write every word here. I was persuaded to buy the game based off of the hundreds of 5 star ratings that have been given to this at best average game. And I have to admit, I have never been more let down with a game (well maybe FF13). Before you stop reading this long review, know that I completed the game, and all side quests except the master alchemist side quest and any others that occurred after it. I tried so hard to like this game, but as the game progresses it just becomes boring, frustrating, and unrewarding. I'll try to address the main aspects of the game, but overall the game has unique visuals, but falls flat in every other way for anybody over the age of 12. I wish this review was on amazon before I bought it because it would have deterred me enough to not buy this game.
Graphics, 10/10
The game is a cartoon or JRPG, it is meant to be cartoony / anime and the developers did an amazing job. I have no complaints with the graphics, but for anybody on the fence about buying the game, know that it is a cartoon and be prepared for what you are getting into. I am only giving it 10/10 because the graphics achieve what it was meant to achieve. You will not find FF style graphics or any amazing cut scenes in this game. Because the game is not meant to have movie style graphics or realistic cut scenes, I am forced to give it 10/10.
Cut Scenes 8/10
The developers really wanted to immerse the player in the world they created so well. The first 30 min of the game is essentially a cut scene. Very little to no action by the player is required during this time other than run here, go talk to this person. With the game being a cartoon, there is almost no distinction between in game battle / travel and cut scene. Because the game is a cartoon it is again hard for me to give a 10/10 rating for the cut scenes. They are pretty, some are better than others, but not once was I never amazed by the cut scenes.
Battle System, 3/10
Typical time based FF7 era battle system, except you get to only control one character at a time. Many reviews are stating the combat system is a hybrid real time and turn based combat, it's really not. You put in actions in the menu when your character is ready, the action is performed, then you wait till the menu comes up again. You will eventually get to have a party of three characters (even though there are 4 playable characters in the game...). Each character in the party can have up to three familiars ready to fight for him. You can equip the familiars and human characters with different equipment i.e. weapons, armor, and accessories. You are only able to control one character/ familiar at a time. And the only unique thing about the battle system is that you can at any time switch between familiars under your character or switch to any other human character. But when switching it cancels the action they were about to perform.
So imagine you are controlling esther (human healer character) and you tell her to heal oliver, who is casting his mornstar spell, which takes a long time to cast. The other idiot character died (because he was trying to heal himself with a spell) and you need to heal him quickly, so you switch to oliver. Instead of letting oliver finish casting the spell it goes to the menu and cancels the action he was about to use. This becomes frustrating when you have characters dying a lot in a big boss fight. So you may ask, just pay attention and switch after he uses his abilities. While this is true, some of the battles become frantic, and you need to switch to a certain character to perform a certain ability or use a certain familiar and you can't see that he is about to do a big spell or you just can't wait. Also because the battle system is real time based, every character performs their action at different times, so any time you do switch you are guaranteed to cancel an action. The only action that is not cancellable is attack and using an item. When a character attacks, he runs up to the bad guy and does a number of attacks over the course of say 5 seconds. If you switch to a different character, then just the last portion of the attack is cancelled and it's not as big a deal.
Now what's worse is that enemy abilities and spells can cancel your spells too. Many may be thinking, oh well there are a lot of games with battle systems like that, you get hit really hard and your character gets staggered so it makes sense that he has to do the start his action all over again. But no this is different very different. The most common ability in the game employed by enemies is the "ear splitter" ability. Every familiar or character casting a spell will get cancelled and you'll have to try again. Oh but wait there's more, these enemies usually come in groups of 3 and they all use the spell... regularly , so every second or so all your characters' abilities are cancelled. This requires you to just walk up and attack them instead of using a spell to quickly dispatch them all. Also there is no regard for your level related to the enemies. You could be a level 70, beaten the main story line, and are on your way to do the weird mad hatter cat / black orb quests and get stopped by a group of level 5 ruffians in the beginning are of the game that all use the "ear splitter" ability. Guess what, every time they use the ability, it cancels your ability, even though it may do 5 damage to your characters...
AI:
The AI of your characters is not the best, not terrible but certainly not great. Left to their own devices they quickly go through their mana, by casting ability after ability. In a large boss battle this is great (if the ability doesn't get cancelled), since they smack it as hard as they can, but in normal fights leading up to the boss they don't change how they operate. So you are forced to make them just use regular attacks all the time, or remove the big costing spells from their familiars. Otherwise you are forced to hope that the AI heals you when it's supposed to, or cast the correct ability. The AI will not take into consideration any enemy weaknesses, oh I'm fighting a fire thing, I could pull out my manta ray to use a water ability, but instead I'll pull out my own fire bird thing and make it use fire abilities every turn... gee thanks for wasting all that mana. So then the solution to that is to not bring a fire familiar with you in a spot where you know fire monsters will be. But that requires you to level up too many different types of familiars to combat any potential type of monster in a certain area. And it's just unnecessary as the battles are not hard, just frustrating.
All the facts outlined above force you to play a certain way (attack all the time), and makes the battle system so redundant, and boring. You get into a fight, what do I do, just attack them, don't bother casting a spell or anything.
How to win any Battle:
I didn't have any problem with any of the bosses except for the jelly fish boss and shadar. After the shadar fight I realized that I just need a bunch of items, and I can win any fight no matter what. This is because items are used instantly, no delay, can't be canceled. Healing spells can be cancelled (especially the better ones). So the boss battles become incredibly easy by the end of the game. They do their big spell, I quickly switch between each character to use the appropriate healing potion, and then I take an action. For the final boss battle, you need to do 3 things, use healing potions, mana potions, and have oliver cast astra every chance he gets. While many will probably consider this to take the fun out of the battle system, it is the only way for it to not be frustrating. Otherwise you are forced to hope that the AI heals you when it's supposed to, or cast the correct ability. Which just results in you taking control of each character to heal people cause the AI does the wrong thing all the time. I promise you if you ever lose a battle it will not be because the enemy was exceptionally challenging, it's just cheap and frustrating due to your AI, and the stupid way actions are cancelled. For anybody who disagrees: try to beat the final fight against the three golems in post-game without using any items.
Note that healing items are somewhat expensive, and I was never able to fully load out each of my characters everytime I got to a new town with new weapons and armor. Consequently, I never bought items, my money was for equipment only. So I decided to save items that I recieved through quests and combat, and only use them in dire circumstances. However, once I got to shadar, I was like, "hey this is the last fight might as well use all my stuff i've been saving". And then I easily won the battle without any difficulty. In addition, once you get access to shadar and everything that happens afterwards, you will be rolling in the money and can buy as many healing and mana potions as you want. So to summarize, if you ever get to a boss you can't beat, instead of level griding just buy a few healing potions and you'll be amazed at how much easier the fight becomes.
Familiar / Team Composition / Strategy
Ok so there is a lot of information online about the "ideal" familiar composition. You need a strong fighter, a spell caster / healer, and a tank. Well guess what... you don't. Why because the best thing to do in any battle is to just attack.
Tank:
All familiars have a certain amount of time the can be out for. Once that time is up you have to switch, so you switch to a tank to just wait till the other familiar is ready again and to mitigate damage while you are waiting. But hey how about you just switch to another fighter guy so you can keep doing good damage to the enemy. People will say the reason you switch to a tank is to get you some armor while you wait for the AI to heal you or you have the tank heal itself with a spell. Well if the AI heals you, you are lucky, if your tank's healing spell doesn't get cancelled you are luckier, but why not just switch to the human character, use an item and avoid the uncertainty of whether or not you'll actually get healed then go right into the next fighter while the other fighter recovers?
Another reason is people will say the tank will allow you to absorb the enemies' big attacks. Most fighters have the defend ability or evade which is essentially just as good or better if you have good reaction skills (evade completely evades the attack), and all human characters have defend. Consequently, there is no reason to have a tank familiar.
On to the offensive casting familiars:
Well this is simple, they are squishy usually have no defend ability unless you make them learn it, and their spells can get cancelled, and in late game the only spells worthwhile are oliver's... So don't waste your time leveling up a spell casting familiar just to realize it dies easily, consumes lots of mana, deals less damage than oliver, and is unreliable due to character switching and enemy abilities... Consequently, there is no reason for offensive spell casting familiars.
On to the defensive casting/ healer familiars:
Same reason as the offensive familiars, also note that items are more reliable and fix you faster... Consequently, there is no reason for healers.
On to fighters,
Good damage, defense, they usually have the defend or evade ability, and most have some form of useful AOE abilities as well. So save yourself some hassle and just use the fighters. No thought needs to be made into an effective team composition.
Familiar Stats
All familiars have 2 final forms, each with their own unique abilities. You can usually infer what types of abilities one will have depending on the description for it in the wizard book. However, what the game does not tell you is that one final form may be twice as strong as the other at level 70. This is because one version of the final form gains stats at an exponential rate, and the other is linear. This is very important information to know and sadly cannot be found out anywhere except online wiki pages. There should have been sections in the wizard book detailing which one is stronger at what level.
Last Words on familiars and battle system.
People say the dino familiar breaks game difficulty. Well it doesn't, at all. People are dumb. People will say looky looky it has the highest attack value in the game. Well guess what it has one of the lowest attack speeds in the game and it misses a lot since it uses axes or hammers. So it'll effectively do the same amount of damage as any other fighter during it's attack phase. What you'll find is that it really doesn't matter what familiars you use. Just that you use fighters and that they have defend / evade ability.
Plot (spoiler alert) 5/10
Boring, predictable, and actually does not make sense when you think about it (not too big a deal but funny). Here's what doesn't make sense:
Oliver's mom is a great sage of the other world (fairy world), she decides to stop shadar (bad guy) by finding his soulmate in our world (if your soulmate dies you die to). But she finds out that shadar killed his soulmate in our world so he cannot be defeated. So Oliver's mom goes into the future, while there she finds out that the world's not so bad with shadar, but still decides to find his soulmate (cause they get reborn???) and she travels to our world from the future to give birth to oliver who happens to be shadar's soulmate. After certain events oliver decides to go into the "other" world but instead of oliver going into the future of the "other" world he arrives roughly 10 years (my guess) after his mother in the other world went to the future.
Other than the part that doesn't make sense, the plot is for children. Once you get into the "other world" you get the feeling that you can't wait to explore it. But the more you progress with the story, the more it lets you down with predictable events and uncreative twists and quests.
The ending is completely predictable. Oh big surprise shadar was once a good guy who was turned to the darkside by an evil woman. Oh but guess there's an even better twist... the evil woman herself was just trying to do good too, but she was turned to the darkside by an even more evil group of people. Wow!!! There are two giant twists in the plot!!! This is amazing!!!
Because the main character is a kid, his conversations are at that level of intelligence. Do not believe the other 400 five star reviews saying that the story is amazing. Read a book, any book, and you'll find a better story. Or play any other RPG and you'll also probably find a better story.
The only redeeming character in the entire game is drippy. The developers should have just made drippy the main character as he was the only character with any real emotion or memorable lines.
Other Thoughts:
As you progress you get better and better methods of travel. You even get a car eventually.
Post Game Playability: 4/10
There are lot of things to do, but there are really no unique quests. The most unique one is finding all the golems that you have seen throughout the world. There are more bounty quests, alchemy quests, fix my heart quests. e.t.c. but nothing really unique that doesn't seem tedious. But by this time I lost hope in the game and was simply working towards the platinum achievement. At least I was until I got to the final alchemy quests. Alchemy deserves it's own section:
Alchemy: how I hate you. 0/10
So there is this amazing feature to the game, you can combine items / components in a pot to get equipment and better items!!! Sounds great! However, it is horribly implemented. Throughout the game you unlock new pages of your wizard book. There is an alchemy section in the book that tells you what to combine in the alchemy pot to get what. So you look through the book and find a cool sword you want to make. Well that sword requires components that you can't get until you can fly. Ok well lets make the one down from that, well by the time you find the required components to make that sword you can buy just as good ones or better. You will never be able to make armor or weapons that are of better quality than you can buy, or find by defeating a boss. Ok well post game I should be able to make everything since I can fly and get to any area to find the required components... Guess again. The master alchemist quest has you make an axe, two of the components to the axe cannot be harvested from locations in the game. They can only be found by stealing them from a certain creature in the spooky mountain place where you find mornstar. A quick search online tells me that people have spent up to 8 hours trying to steal this item from the creatures over and over. That is not fun, I don't want to do that. And when I found that out, that was the last straw, I became fed up and quit, and traded in the game.
Replayability 0/10
I have no intention of ever playing this game again, and is unfortunately the second game I have ever sold. (FF13 being the first which holds the record for worst mainstream RPG ever in my opinion). The tedious and annoying battle system, no strategy or thinking required, alchemy is wasted, quests are repetitive, story line is laughably predictable and childish are all just reminders on why to never play it again.
Sound, 7/10
Meh nothing amazing. The game has some nice music but nothing to write home about.
Last Annoying things,
Drippy tells you a thousand times, oh this person is heartbroken, you need to find some X to heal his heart. You find X and come back to the guy, oh Oliver heal is heart by giving him X. Wouldn't it have been better and more interesting if he didn't tell you what you had to find. Make you actually read what the guy needs? That way some thought has to be put into how to fix him.
Final words,
Don't be fooled by the hundreds of 5 star reviews. This is not a game for adults. There is nothing unique in the poorly implemented battle system, no strategy is required with the battles or team composition, the plot is childish, and there is no replayability. Do yourself a favor and do some research for the game on other sites and read what the people are having issues with. You'll find that many of them are frustrated and bored out of their mind while playing this game. I realize that my review makes it sounds like it is a terrible game. You can play the game however you want; you can make a team composition of spell casters fighters and tanks. That is your choice, my problem with the game is that it does not require or reward you for making a more balanced team. The game instead punishes you due to its battle system. The game is not terrible, it is entirely playable and has some charm, but there is absolutely no reason for this game to get higher than 3 stars. So my words have been harsh to get this point across.
Buy this product as Renewed and save $1.78 off the current New price.
Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch (Renewed) $12.99
(1)
Works and looks like new and backed by the Amazon Renewed Guarantee
(1)
Works and looks like new and backed by the Amazon Renewed Guarantee
Frequently bought together
- +
- +
Total price:
To see our price, add these items to your cart.
Choose items to buy together.
Customers also search
Page 1 of 1Page 1 of 1
Videos
Page 1 of 1Start OverPage 1 of 1
Videos for this product
1:17
Click to play video
Ni no Kuni--Ding Dong Well Teaser
Merchant Video
Videos for this product
2:16
Click to play video
Ni No Kuni--Trailer
Merchant Video
Videos for this product
4:55
Click to play video
Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch - Trailer 5
Publisher Video
Videos for this product
3:57
Click to play video
Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch
Merchant Video
Videos for this product
7:59
Click to play video
Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch - Trailer 2
Publisher Video
Videos for this product
7:04
Click to play video
Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch - Trailer 1
Publisher Video
Entertaining and mentally stimulating.
Reviewed in the United States on March 18, 2019
Purchased for game variety. My 3 and 5-year-old boys needed something else to play. My Goal was to find something with depth to help them develop skills of following directions, problem-solving, and reading. This was a good choice. The waypoint star for primary mission tasks is a great crutch for my boys who would likely struggle knowing where to go. The extra/side/bonus missions don't utilize the star and will provide more focus and attention when they are ready. There is an excellent story worth following and is engaging enough for my 5-year-old who will read about 80% of the words just fine and is learning fast. To win on normal, battle strategy learning is quite intense.To make the game better, I would say that the feeding of pets is time-consuming and tedious. The benefit of doing so is stronger pets which are needed if you play in normal mode. I am glad you can get away without it by using the easy mode.
Reviewed in the United States on March 18, 2019
Images in this review
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
Top reviews from other countries
gaetano invernizzi
Five Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on May 19, 2016Color: Playstation 3Verified Purchase
Gaius
Could of been my Favorite
Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on April 18, 2018Color: Playstation 3Verified Purchase
Amazon Customer
It appears to be a used game
Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on December 11, 2022Color: Playstation 3Verified Purchase
Iskander
La Magia de los Videojuegos.
Reviewed in Spain 🇪🇸 on February 19, 2014Color: Playstation 3Verified Purchase
Charles
Pretty game, strangely addicting.
Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on May 27, 2014Color: Playstation 3Verified Purchase
