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 On 03/31/2013 at 12:13 AM by Halochief90 See More From This User » |
After 56 hours of playtime, I was finally able to put Ni no Kuni back in its jewel case this month. It’s a really good game, but it is not the best JRPG this generation. It is however better than the JRPGs I have played recently (Blue Dragon, Trails in the Sky). Ni no Kuni is Dragon Quest VIII-lite. It’s a lot smaller and less ambitious but it’s also slow-paced, has an enjoyable battle system, and is quite the looker.
The optional bounty hunts were my favorite part of the game as they both provided a challenge and took advantage of the battle system. The dungeons were quite enjoyable and easy-going though I do wish they were bigger like DQVIII’s in which they often felt too big to explore completely. The story was a little disappointing. It started off strong but in the end it seemed to try and achieve a Ghibli-like whimsy and didn’t quite pull it off.
I actually liked the story I had predicted better! The main character Oliver, grieving over the death of his mother, creates a fantasy world to escape into his mind. This starts with his stuffed animal named Drippy springing to life saying ‘Oliver is a powerful magician and can bring his mom back by going to the other world.’ Oliver’s elaborate fantasy goes even further to creating second versions of everyone in the real world. Then there’s his long-time imaginary friend Pea, who has no connection to the other world. Eventually, Oliver breaks from his fantasy finally realizing his mom is dead and there is nothing he can do about it. Oliver is diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and schizophrenia. The End.
It would have been some dark stuff. More along the lines of Grave of the Fireflies than Spirited Away!
I have been spending the rest of the month playing Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time. It’s basically more Sly, and that makes me happy. In some ways, it’s a better game than the old Slys. The levels so far feel a lot more confusing and harder to navigate, but at the same time that means by the time I’m done with the levels I’m not bored of them. I like that most of the new characters are basically a different version of Sly because the levels are still built around Sly, and that naturally makes him the best character to use.
I don’t think it is better than Sly 2 or 3, but I can say right now it is definitely a worthy game in the series and Sanzaru did a great job capturing that Sly Cooper feeling!
Lastly, I found the Vagrant Story soundtrack for quite cheap so I had to buy it. Playing this soundtrack makes matches of Halo feel so much more bombastic. Now if only Yasumi Matsuno and his groupies would make another epic!
Love Sly, wish I could play the newest.
That Ni No Kuni ending you alluded to ... not sure an E-10+ rated game is ready to give a kid PTSD and auditory hallucinations at the end. lol But it would be an interesting story. I have yet to see Grave of the Fireflies.
That story is not for E10+ but I'm sure that can hidden from ESRB! I heard the only thing ESRB does in their screening process is ask for clips of a game's most offensive material.
Grave Of The Fireflies made me break down & cry when I saw it during my two years in college. I thought I was "down with it" and "BAD" but that animated movie proved what I should have known all a long. That I'm a sensitive wussy-man!
Yeah, I had the ending of the movie spoiled for me many years ago. It wasn't until I actually watched it that I realized they basically tell you the ending in the first five seconds! And of course, my inner-wuss could not be withheld!
I read that the author of the book that Grave of the Fireflies is based on made the story basically for redemption. He felt responsible for his own sister's death from starvation during WWII.
Grave of the Fireflies was just so sad.
I agree with you about Ni No Kuni not being the best RPG of this generation. I like what I've played of it, it's a beautiful game, but not the best out there. I think Lost Odyssey may be my fave for this generation.
My favorite RPG this generation would have to be Nier. And that may have a lot to do with the fact that it feels like a RPG from the PS2! Lost Odyssey is somewhere up there as well.
Only just played VS on, it's a very solitary rpg, Still hacen't bought Ni No Kuni but at this point may as well wait for it to get cheaper, right?
Grave of the Fireflies is a very manipulative piece, but i know it comes from a good place, didn't make me cry... but i wasn't happy
Vagrant Story is indeed very solitary. I went in expecting something like FF Tactics or FFXII and it was this complex dungeon crawler. In the end, I liked that it was completely different from those other games. Not being tied to the FF brand meant they could really experiment here.
Also, I like how everyone here has commented on Grave of the Fireflies!
No No Kuni, I don't know when I will get to it. I will eventually. It might consume a lot of my time. Sly Copper is not easy for me to get into. I am not a big fan. I will try to get through it at some point. I just played through one short portion, basically stopping when finally going through time to Japan.
Right now I am playing Bioshock Infinite and its incredible.
That's odd, I found Sly Cooper incredibly easy to pick up and play. The short intro section is my least favorite part of the game as it is mired in tutorials. I can't blame you for pushing Ni no Kuni and Sly for later though; you got a lot of games to play. I can't wait to finally try Bioshock Infinite!
Bioshock Infinite was and is incredible. The ending is pretty incredible and there is more than one huge twist at the end. It is also amazing in more ways than one. I love the gameplay but a game that give me a big twist at the end is often what make games like this talked about in discussions.
Mind-blowing twist? Reminds me a lot of the infamous twist in the original Bioshock!
Ni No Kuni is a game I must try. I have read so many good things about it. 56 hours! Now that is commitment. Remains to be seen if I can pull that off.
56 hours is a long time. I can only think of one game that I played recently that I put in that much time into (Dissidia 012). I did the majority of the optional content though. I would say the story content is probably less than half that length.
Yeah Ni No Kuni is on my wishlist at the moment. I'm going to wait for a drop in price so i'm thinking i'll prob end up buying in the next 6 months. 56 hours is a nice length of time as far as i'm concerned. Anything over that for me begins to get tedious for a lot of games
I preordered it for $50, which is about the price it is sitting it at now a few months after release. Wait a few more and I'm sure it won't be hard to find for $30. As I said, in the comment above, 56 hours is with the optional content. Not too long if you got a lot of games to play and not too short if you go off the beaten path!
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