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Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch |OT|

Platinum get!

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Terrible phone shot sorry.

That was a lot of work, a lot of grinding but I really enjoyed the game despite initial frustrations. At some point I'd like to play it again and explore more familiars rather than just relying on a couple, and I never used any of the human characters in battle except Oliver and a stealing with Swaine. I would also start farming stuff earlier whilst just playing, I let a lot of familiars go early because I didn't want to use them, and didn't forage a lot either - there could've been a fair bit less grinding at the end had I started early with a lot of this stuff.

Great game though, not perfect, (the battle system ranged from frustratingly limited to 'just press x' dull) but hugely enjoyable and recommended. Loved it :)

Welcome To The Club! It was a lot of grinding, but I loved this game so much! We better get a sequel on the PS4!
 
Thanks guys, I would love a sequel too. I have that feeling to go back and play it again, I don't say that about many RPGs after just finishing them, usually need some cool off period with something totally different. :)
 
Just started playing this properly yesterday, did about three hours and I'm in the first town. Been doing quite a lot of grinding around the countryside; I love exploring the map so much. My four year old daughter loves it too, and it's generally a pretty safe game to play around my kids. I told her that the witch stole Oliver's mum away and he has to go to the fairy world to rescue her.

I love the visuals and humour too. Mr. Drippy is one of the best sidekicks in a long time.
 
Finally finished it. I am now convinced that the battle system was specifically designed to piss people off.
Still enjoyed it a lot though.
 

Dibbs

Member
Finally earned the familiar trophy after a few days of no gaming. Still got that alchemist trophy left and some other along the way. The goal of the alchemist trophy is to create 120 unique items right?
 
Finally earned the familiar trophy after a few days of no gaming. Still got that alchemist trophy left and some other along the way. The goal of the alchemist trophy is to create 120 unique items right?
Yes. The ones you haven't created yet have a '?' instead of a picture of the item on the recipes page, which is handy.

For this, and in general when catching animals and finding ingredients, I used pen and paper and had a big list of where things were and how many of the item I needed etc. It felt nice to be so old school :)
 

Seanspeed

Banned
Just started playing this properly yesterday, did about three hours and I'm in the first town. Been doing quite a lot of grinding around the countryside; I love exploring the map so much. My four year old daughter loves it too, and it's generally a pretty safe game to play around my kids. I told her that the witch stole Oliver's mum away and he has to go to the fairy world to rescue her.

I love the visuals and humour too. Mr. Drippy is one of the best sidekicks in a long time.
I'm pretty much exactly where you are - 3 hours in, in the first town!

I typically don't like this kiddy-style anime look, but the game is quite beautiful, mostly thanks to the environments, I think.

The music is great so far. Charming and catchy.

But most of all, man, the RPG elements are just hitting all the right notes for me. Unless the game takes a huge nosedive somewhere, I'm pretty sure I'm gonna love this.
 

Seanspeed

Banned
2nd impressions for the zero people that probably care:

About 7 hours in and I'm still having fun, but a few doubts are creeping in. Aside from bosses, it seems pretty easy to just bash the hell out of enemies with one of my familiars and that's that. There's a good amount of different regular enemies, but they mostly all feel the same. Some are slightly sturdier than others, but other than that, there's no real change of approach for any of em. This whole star/moon/sun/planet system seems totally unnecessary at the moment, but I'm hoping that this means that things do get more difficult later on, where systems like that need to be taken into account.
 
2nd impressions for the zero people that probably care:

About 7 hours in and I'm still having fun, but a few doubts are creeping in. Aside from bosses, it seems pretty easy to just bash the hell out of enemies with one of my familiars and that's that. There's a good amount of different regular enemies, but they mostly all feel the same. Some are slightly sturdier than others, but other than that, there's no real change of approach for any of em. This whole star/moon/sun/planet system seems totally unnecessary at the moment, but I'm hoping that this means that things do get more difficult later on, where systems like that need to be taken into account.

I finished the game never understanding those star moon thing signs. Battle is really easy except for a few bosses. Further on, you will have to change your tactics a bit mainly by knowing when to go full on and when to defend.
 

Seanspeed

Banned
I finished the game never understanding those star moon thing signs. Battle is really easy except for a few bosses. Further on, you will have to change your tactics a bit mainly by knowing when to go full on and when to defend.
Huh, ok. Seems this is very much a 'my first JRPG' sort of game that is good for kids then.

I'm still enjoying it, but I perhaps need to reign in my expectations for how much depth the game will have.

Could have probably done with a higher difficult setting.
 

Ilúvatar

Member
I finished the game never understanding those star moon thing signs. Battle is really easy except for a few bosses. Further on, you will have to change your tactics a bit mainly by knowing when to go full on and when to defend.

Yeah the symbol system is pretty much useless and can be ignored, except it determines which drops you have to feed familiars to metamorph, of course. During the entire time playing the game I only saw one Planet and a handful of Doubles.
 
Doesn't each party member have a certain affinity with a different kind of familiar?

When I started I assumed I was going to have to look at the type each creature was and plan out which familiars to use to combat them - kind of like water beats fire, fire beats earth type of strategy - but if that kind of thing is in the game, I certainly didn't need or notice it. There were times I had to go farming for star crystals and stuff because I seemed to have tons of star familiars and very few planet ones.
 

Ilúvatar

Member
Doesn't each party member have a certain affinity with a different kind of familiar?

When I started I assumed I was going to have to look at the type each creature was and plan out which familiars to use to combat them - kind of like water beats fire, fire beats earth type of strategy - but if that kind of thing is in the game, I certainly didn't need or notice it. There were times I had to go farming for star crystals and stuff because I seemed to have tons of star familiars and very few planet ones.

Yes, every party member has affinities for three types of familiars, which grants a 10% stat boost I believe. It's nice if you can align them, but pretty negligible.
 
Just finished it.
Lack of anime for ending was disappointing. :/

Fun game overall.

The whole "Take/Give heart" for sidequests was kinda pointless.
Probably sounded like a good idea on paper, but the end result was terribly dull.
 
Apologies for bumping an old thread, but I was hoping gaf may be able to help me out. Somehow this game never got on my radar until a buddy recently recommended it to me. After watching a couple videos, the traditional jrpg gameplay and art style really got me interested.

My problem is that I'm ocd about my game boxes. I like my games library to match when stacked side-by-side. It seems that everybody is selling the greatest hits reprint version of the game now with the hideous red label. Is there anywhere I can go to buy the sweet original white boxart with the black label? I mean other than ebay?
 

Ilúvatar

Member
Apologies for bumping an old thread, but I was hoping gaf may be able to help me out. Somehow this game never got on my radar until a buddy recently recommended it to me. After watching a couple videos, the traditional jrpg gameplay and art style really got me interested.

My problem is that I'm ocd about my game boxes. I like my games library to match when stacked side-by-side. It seems that everybody is selling the greatest hits reprint version of the game now with the hideous red label. Is there anywhere I can go to buy the sweet original white boxart with the black label? I mean other than ebay?

You could possibly look into purchasing from Gamefly? They might have original run cases.
 

cjp

Junior Member
Considering getting this for £4.94 in the EU Easter PSN sale. Seems like such a wealth of content that I can't pass up on for that price.

Only question is, what do I delete for the 44GB of space that I'll need?
 

XBP

Member
Should i grab this for 15$ (new)? The art style of the game seems amazing but various comments on poor story and gameplay are putting me off.
 
Should i grab this for 15$ (new)? The art style of the game seems amazing but various comments on poor story and gameplay are putting me off.

I'd say it's definitely worth 15$. The story isn't like crazy amazing but I found it to be fairly good, it has childish themes but treats in a fairly adult way, kinda like the movies. As for the gameplay, it's alright, it has annoying little things to it but it's not bad enough that it ruins the game imo, balance isn't particular good but that doesn't matter too much unless you look up guides and such and otherwise it's a fairly standard jrpg. While it wasn't without faults, to me the good outweighted the bad by a large amount and I didn't regret buying it even when it was full price.
 

XBP

Member
I'd say it's definitely worth 15$. The story isn't like crazy amazing but I found it to be fairly good, it has childish themes but treats in a fairly adult way, kinda like the movies. As for the gameplay, it's alright, it has annoying little things to it but it's not bad enough that it ruins the game imo, balance isn't particular good but that doesn't matter too much unless you look up guides and such and otherwise it's a fairly standard jrpg. While it wasn't without faults, to me the good outweighted the bad by a large amount and I didn't regret buying it even when it was full price.

Thanks for the reply. That sounds good enough so i've ordered it. The lack of excellent JRPGs during last gen is rather sad to be honest. I'm pretty sure this trend will continue in the current gen as well. sigh...
 

Mikey Jr.

Member
Thanks for the reply. That sounds good enough so i've ordered it. The lack of excellent JRPGs during last gen is rather sad to be honest. I'm pretty sure this trend will continue in the current gen as well. sigh...

Its a great game at $60 and I would have no problem recommending it.

$15 is a no-brainer.
 
Just completed it a while ago. Honestly never thought I'd complete it, I dropped it several times after playing few hours.

Story is quite predictable and simple, but loved the execution. Music and art are simply amazing. While I enjoyed the game a lot, I had a few serious problems with the game. Mainly gameplay related.

First and the most annoying being, during the battle the screen suddenly changes to a cutscene when a strong attack is used by enemies. That completely ruins the pace of the real time battle. Honestly it would have been great if we are able to pause in between battle, that will add lot of tactical depth.

Second, familiars. There are so many families and none of them look impressive. Apart from naming them and feeding them we have no other interactivity with them. Yet we need to use them a lot in battle. That felt lame, especially for an RPG where you have to experience role playing feel.

Hopefully if they make a sequel, they should try to make it more turn based combat and remove the goddamn familiar system.
 

prateeko

Member
Hey guys, I started this game a while ago, got busy, and have not been back to it in a while. I wanted to sit down and play through but I don't really remember tips and tricks for the battle system. I just got to a city in the desert and have a few familiars but I'm not doing well in battles and was hoping someone wouldn't mind giving me a refresher since starting over would mean hours of work...
 
So I'm bumping this thread to say my recent viewing of this game has caused me to go out and buy a PS3. Just for this game.

:D

It's level 5, had an amazing soundtrack, is Ghibli related. That's enough for me. Did I do gud?
 
So I'm bumping this thread to say my recent viewing of this game has caused me to go out and buy a PS3. Just for this game.

:D

It's level 5, had an amazing soundtrack, is Ghibli related. That's enough for me. Did I do gud?

Yep enjoy, it's a cracking game. Really hope they follow it up with something on the PS4.
 

RPGCrazied

Member
Anyone else replaying the first cause of the sequels announcement yesterday? Hope it brings in some new players too.

I sure am!
 

prateeko

Member
Anyone else replaying the first cause of the sequels announcement yesterday? Hope it brings in some new players too.

I sure am!

I got to a desert area and stopped. I may just start over but I remember having some mild frustrations with the combat since I wasn't picking up on the nuisances.
 

zeox

Member
Never finished the first. Last place I reached was the faerie island, is that near the end or should I just restart.

It's pretty early on to be honest. I just finished up with this area now after starting over, and my clock says 14 hours played. I'm doing every task I can so you can definitely get there a lot earlier
 

Spacedeck

Neo Member
I'm on my first playthrough for this game. I'm level 25 at the moment and just beat the first boss at Hemelin. I'm using the first familiar you are given, and also the two DLC. During the fight though, Drippy mentioned about using electric familiars. I don't have any currently.

Should I use metamorphosis as soon as it becomes available? For my familiars and also my companions? I do try capture every familiar, when I'm given the chance.

Also, should I stick to a few or try level everyone up?

I have fallen in love with this game.
 
I'm on my first playthrough for this game. I'm level 25 at the moment and just beat the first boss at Hemelin. I'm using the first familiar you are given, and also the two DLC. During the fight though, Drippy mentioned about using electric familiars. I don't have any currently.

Should I use metamorphosis as soon as it becomes available? For my familiars and also my companions? I do try capture every familiar, when I'm given the chance.

Also, should I stick to a few or try level everyone up?

I have fallen in love with this game.

not sure about the DLC familiars, I stuck with the main one throughout the whole game, he is very strong for the first 2/3s and then slows down/others catch up...definitely try to get a variety or types..storm/dark/fire/water/etc. but also key is to be aware of their sun/moon/star alignments. youll want to keep those varied too if possible, and be aware which you're using when fighting enemies...youll slowly keep chaning up your team as you find new familiars and realize which ones are stronger and your go to fighters with certain skills...you should keep guys all around the same levels i'd say... though there are 2 enemies later in the game, that really mess with the balance if abused because they give such a high amount of exp (though it really helps/speeds up leveling so less grinding)...

also, i would say hold off on evolving guys till they max out on levels. make sure you have one or two that can heal

I ran into a ray-like creature later in the game i think which i loved. he was a tank.


Never finished the first. Last place I reached was the faerie island, is that near the end or should I just restart.

not near the end. i dont think it's halfway even.
 
I'm on my first playthrough for this game. I'm level 25 at the moment and just beat the first boss at Hemelin. I'm using the first familiar you are given, and also the two DLC. During the fight though, Drippy mentioned about using electric familiars. I don't have any currently.

Should I use metamorphosis as soon as it becomes available? For my familiars and also my companions? I do try capture every familiar, when I'm given the chance.

Also, should I stick to a few or try level everyone up?

I have fallen in love with this game.

Maxing out before metamorphosis will let you get more stats, tricks & trick slots.

Still doing it early doesnt make main game stuff much more difficult but i hear post game content can become quite a pain. I only levelled a few personal favourite familiars and i was fine.
 

Spacedeck

Neo Member
Thanks guys. I did read that the level cap is at 99? Isn't that a long time to wait to use metamorphosis? By the time you have a few level 99's, won't you have completed / near the end of the game?
 

mstevens

Member
I put this game on hold about a year ago and just picked up where I left off. I'm at the point where I just unlocked the
flying dragon
. Luckily the game is very straight forward, so I was able to remember what I was doing when I quit.

Are there any good familiars I can go chase down at this point? Right now I'm using:

Oliver - Mitey, Monolith, Clinketyclank Mk 2
Esther - Lubber Cub, Big Horn, Strongo
Swain - Dumbelemer, Iron-Man, Catpurrse
 
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