Still playing Ni No Kuni 2. About 1/3 to 1/2 of the way through the main campaign, depending on how long the remaining chapters are. It seems to vary. Plus I'll still have the DLC stuff after that.
I did rush through a bit of the main story to unlock things without bothering with sidequests. It doesn't lock you out of them if you're pushing ahead that I can see. I spent today mostly doing sidequests without progressing the main story, and got a lot done, mostly relating to the Kingdom building part of the game.
I quickly turned off the English VA. Not because it was bad, but because English doesn't match the very Japanese body language of the characters, and that was bugging me. What little I heard of the English VA was decent though, and I would have put up with it had Japanese voices not been an option.
It's a neat little mashup of gameplay types, lots of content. Collecting things is very much a big part of this game, and the DLC adds quite a bit, including a bunch of post game content and a level cap raise. I'm aware of this because it gives you the quests about halfway through the game and one of them recommends lvl 120, where as the original cap is 99.
The story is...stupid, but whimsical and fun despite it. You spend most of the game running around as the boy king being a naive idiot who should be getting taken advantage of a lot more often than you do. It works out, and you end up forgiving people who you really shouldn't, but again, this seems to be geared towards being friendly to a younger audience than what I usually play.
The happy go lucky tone is kind of infectious and works for the silliness involved. As a game, it seems somewhat self aware of that.
The action RPG part is probably the part I like the most. It's basically a Tales game on that front.
Combat encounters aren't super annoying. Enemies near your level are aggressive and will chase you down if you get too near to them. Enemies below your level will ignore you, but you can still attack them if you want. This is useful if you need specific materials from certain enemy types.
The Kingdom building part is a bit tedious, but still worth doing. It essentially works like a mobile game, but not quite as drawn out. You build things, use them to research things, and build up currency and items at timed intervals. It's not unreasonable, and you should move along at a fair clip if you're dropping by between quests. The fast travel system makes that less of a chore.
It has a separate currency and requires that you gather NPCs as you play, usually by doing sidequests. Leveling things up as early as you can is worth it, as the kingdom provides bonuses, makes things easier to find, unlocks more powerful gear and magic, and gives you a regular supply of materials for upgrades.
It does effectively cap you, as you need a certain number of citizens to level the Kingdom up, and you can only obtain so many before progressing the story along. If you're playing normally you should have built up everything and still have enough to upgrade nearly everything at least once by the time you're actually able to do so.
The skirmishes are a nice way to break things up a little. They require little strategy and are basically a rock paper scissors kind of matchup game more than a real strategy. You run around a battlefield surrounded on four sides by groups of soldiers, each with a different color and attack style you can rotate around you. You run into groups of other soldiers who are strong or weak against certain types of attacks. It's kind of like Pikmin in a way, but not quite so involved.
Farming for the Kingdom building currency is the easiest way to beat them as you can buy buffs, but you shouldn't really need it, at least not for the first several levels anyway. Still, if you want to steamroll through them, it is easy to do by just frequently visiting and gathering up enough of the currency to buy all the upgrades and just destroy the opposition with little effort.
Farming anything in this game isn't particularly hard. Every character I have has the rarest level of equipment [it drops more frequently on expert]. I haven't actually needed to buy or craft anything but consumables. There are a ton of consumables, but only a few are useful.
There are also a lot of what seems to be randomly spawning chests that provide consumables and gear on the world map. There are some that are static as well, and certain ones that require a spell you can't get until around ch 4-5 to unlock.
Mostly the things I've been spending materials on are the collectible "pet" things called Higgledies that run around on the battlefield and provide various buffs, and upgrading spells.
You can craft them in a building in your Kingdom, and each is unique. You also find stones and interact with them, and they'll give you a simple riddle. Provide the correct item and you'll get a new Higgledy.
It also takes a long time to really open up. Which isn't that unusual for JRPGs. The pace is decent outside of grinding, which is necessary, at least on Expert difficulty, which I'm playing on. I've died twice in total, once in the first dungeon when I was still figuring out the mechanics of the combat system. The other time when I poked a lvl 50 mob with a stick when I was around lvl 12.
That's not because I'm particularly skilled, but rather my familiarity with this type of game and the fact that it seems to be made intentionally easier as for a younger audience.
Graphically it's downright beautiful. Stylized, but well animated. Each area is distinct and the monsters are well designed without being too cute.
Definitely recommend this one to fans of JRPG games, particularly action RPGs like the Tales series.
I did rush through a bit of the main story to unlock things without bothering with sidequests. It doesn't lock you out of them if you're pushing ahead that I can see. I spent today mostly doing sidequests without progressing the main story, and got a lot done, mostly relating to the Kingdom building part of the game.
I quickly turned off the English VA. Not because it was bad, but because English doesn't match the very Japanese body language of the characters, and that was bugging me. What little I heard of the English VA was decent though, and I would have put up with it had Japanese voices not been an option.
It's a neat little mashup of gameplay types, lots of content. Collecting things is very much a big part of this game, and the DLC adds quite a bit, including a bunch of post game content and a level cap raise. I'm aware of this because it gives you the quests about halfway through the game and one of them recommends lvl 120, where as the original cap is 99.
The story is...stupid, but whimsical and fun despite it. You spend most of the game running around as the boy king being a naive idiot who should be getting taken advantage of a lot more often than you do. It works out, and you end up forgiving people who you really shouldn't, but again, this seems to be geared towards being friendly to a younger audience than what I usually play.
The happy go lucky tone is kind of infectious and works for the silliness involved. As a game, it seems somewhat self aware of that.
The action RPG part is probably the part I like the most. It's basically a Tales game on that front.
Combat encounters aren't super annoying. Enemies near your level are aggressive and will chase you down if you get too near to them. Enemies below your level will ignore you, but you can still attack them if you want. This is useful if you need specific materials from certain enemy types.
The Kingdom building part is a bit tedious, but still worth doing. It essentially works like a mobile game, but not quite as drawn out. You build things, use them to research things, and build up currency and items at timed intervals. It's not unreasonable, and you should move along at a fair clip if you're dropping by between quests. The fast travel system makes that less of a chore.
It has a separate currency and requires that you gather NPCs as you play, usually by doing sidequests. Leveling things up as early as you can is worth it, as the kingdom provides bonuses, makes things easier to find, unlocks more powerful gear and magic, and gives you a regular supply of materials for upgrades.
It does effectively cap you, as you need a certain number of citizens to level the Kingdom up, and you can only obtain so many before progressing the story along. If you're playing normally you should have built up everything and still have enough to upgrade nearly everything at least once by the time you're actually able to do so.
The skirmishes are a nice way to break things up a little. They require little strategy and are basically a rock paper scissors kind of matchup game more than a real strategy. You run around a battlefield surrounded on four sides by groups of soldiers, each with a different color and attack style you can rotate around you. You run into groups of other soldiers who are strong or weak against certain types of attacks. It's kind of like Pikmin in a way, but not quite so involved.
Farming for the Kingdom building currency is the easiest way to beat them as you can buy buffs, but you shouldn't really need it, at least not for the first several levels anyway. Still, if you want to steamroll through them, it is easy to do by just frequently visiting and gathering up enough of the currency to buy all the upgrades and just destroy the opposition with little effort.
Farming anything in this game isn't particularly hard. Every character I have has the rarest level of equipment [it drops more frequently on expert]. I haven't actually needed to buy or craft anything but consumables. There are a ton of consumables, but only a few are useful.
There are also a lot of what seems to be randomly spawning chests that provide consumables and gear on the world map. There are some that are static as well, and certain ones that require a spell you can't get until around ch 4-5 to unlock.
Mostly the things I've been spending materials on are the collectible "pet" things called Higgledies that run around on the battlefield and provide various buffs, and upgrading spells.
You can craft them in a building in your Kingdom, and each is unique. You also find stones and interact with them, and they'll give you a simple riddle. Provide the correct item and you'll get a new Higgledy.
It also takes a long time to really open up. Which isn't that unusual for JRPGs. The pace is decent outside of grinding, which is necessary, at least on Expert difficulty, which I'm playing on. I've died twice in total, once in the first dungeon when I was still figuring out the mechanics of the combat system. The other time when I poked a lvl 50 mob with a stick when I was around lvl 12.
That's not because I'm particularly skilled, but rather my familiarity with this type of game and the fact that it seems to be made intentionally easier as for a younger audience.
Graphically it's downright beautiful. Stylized, but well animated. Each area is distinct and the monsters are well designed without being too cute.
Definitely recommend this one to fans of JRPG games, particularly action RPGs like the Tales series.
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