I take the 25th anniversary of Level-5 as an occation to speak about Ni No Kuni. While Level-5 does for sure a lot creative games, Ni No Kuni is for me the best franchise of them. (I played Wrath of the White Witch and Revenant Kingdom) Have you played these game and what do you think about them?
On of the big seeling points of the Franchise is the artwork, that got inspired by Studio ghibli productions. That probably the reason i even start to play these games. Even the world building is something that could be out of a ghibli movie.
The gameplay of the different games couldn’t be more different. Level-5 likes to change their battley system in their game, so Wrath of the White Witch is more a variation of a ATB monster catching game while Revenant Kingdom is a straight action game. Nino Kumi Wrath of the White Witch is a game with one of the most unique battle systems (Until we got Yokai Watch 4), but at the same time Revenant Kingdom can’t be more plain and generic.
While it seems the critic about Revenant Kingdom is better than Wrath of the White Witch, i would say Wrath of the White Witch was a far better game. Revenant Kingdom was a lot about building the Kingdom and travel to other Kingdom with their different conflics and that was alright, but was nothing i could play endlessly. Wrath of the White Witch has much more funny dialogues and better told story. Also the battle system was much more fun to play. The Action gameplay of the second game was just not appealing enough, there are far better one out there. While Revenant Kingdom is a good game, i was a bit disappointed about it.
Netherless of my disappointment about the second game, i would like to see a third mainline game.
I want to write something about story and world building, but i just don’t get it properly together anymore.
I completely agree with you on WotWW being the better game compared to RK. I was never really invested in RKs story and despite the opening being absolute bonkers, the whole thing with Roland isn’t adressed nearly enough. The gameplay felt mostly like button spamming.
WotWW for sure wasn’t a perfect game either, but I really liked the characters and the gameplay was interesting. I liked the whole monster collecting thing it had going and the last few bosses were just completely awesome. Although the battle system showed most of its cracks during the boss battles, I fought most of them without my comrades or monsters. Just dodging and casting spells.
I’d love a third game with a more refined version of WotWWs game play.