Review/Old Man Yells at Clouds - Ni No Kuni 2: Revenant Kingdom

Every so often I seem to find myself looking at the reception some games get and feel as if either I or the rest of the gaming world has gone absolutely insane, and I can't quite put my finger on which one it is. In this case, it's Level 5's Ni No Kuni 2. Currently sitting at an 85 on Metacritic and here I am thinking this game is just not good in most regards. I open the review as a way of saying that I seem to be part of a very small minority for my views on this one.

Ni No Kuni 2 sees a young child named Evan build up a new kingdom after his father dies and he is forced to escape from his own kingdom. After founding Evermore with the help of Roland, the president of a real-world country who died in a missile strike and awoke in this world, they plan to unite the world under one banner and stop an evil man from reviving an ancient country with his dark powers.

I understand the story is supposed to be a sort of fairy tale, but the problem is how much detail you get on how the world operates. Fairy tails tend to keep things very vague and not go into much detail, but with a massive RPG, you kind of have to work out the little aspects of the world you are exploring. In order to enjoy this plot, you seriously need to shut off parts of your mind and just accept all the things that are happening. A seasoned real-world president being able to just shrug and help a child rule a nation, hiring on a guy who bet his entire forest on a game of dice as your financial adviser, and so many things like that. The longer the game goes on, the less sense the things your characters to make.

That's not even getting into how much of the story, specifically Roland, just doesn't matter. There is so much plot that could have been cut from this game and absolutely nothing would have been lost, everything could have proceeded exactly as it had without it. Throw in a few instances of time travel shenanigans, and the story becomes a bit of a mess. I'm not saying it doesn't make sense, it does, there is just so much goofiness and pointless nonsense going on I can't begin to get invested in any of this.

The game is also filled to the brim with pointless fetch quests, especially once you get your airship. You need an item off the world map, fly there, grab it, warp back, and turn in the quest. There are so many quests like that, even without the airship making things easier, that just involves you moving back and forth from point a to point b. You do all this to gather more people for your town, which in and of itself is a bit of a bore to deal with.

As you gather people, build facilities and upgrade them, your kingdom becomes greater. There is a passive material gathering component, crafting, upgrading spells, and learning passive abilities like improved money gain from combat among other things. At first, it's not a bad idea, but it's overly bloated. You eventually get up to four or five of each type of gathering building (Ranch, Farm, hunters, miners, etc.) and you have to staff and upgrade them separately, rather than just have one of each you can staff and upgrade. There is a lot of menial stuff to keep track of in regards to your Kingdom Building, and all for some pretty basic and boring things.

Combat is probably one of the games stronger aspects, though if you are a bit of a veteran of the action RPG genre you realize in no time at all how easy the game is to make it through. Once you access the tweaking board to choose what kind of buffs and resistances you can get with little effort you can set yourself up to be almost untouchable. At level 60, for example, I had no issues fighting mobs of 100+ level enemies in one of the optional sections of the game. I'll avoid spoiling how to do this, but as I said it's not entirely hard to figure out for anyone with experience. Unless I go out of the way ti gimp myself, the game offers no real challenge.

There are also times the camera and targeting can feel a bit off. You have an 'auto-lock' that will lock on to an enemy, but that just seems to lock the camera. You will still move mostly towards the nearest enemy, so despite the high paced action, you don't always feel like you are entirely in control of your actions. This is pretty minor and can be easily adapted too though.

If there is something I can't really criticize at all is the music and visuals. The game looks and sounds great, and there really is an incredible amount of charm in the games aesthetic. A lot of great looking places, some great monster and character design, and music that is always on point.

In the end, I just don't see the praise this game has been getting. The combat, while fun, doesn't do anything all that special, the story suffers in many ways, and the game is full of quests and activities that feel like they are just there to pad out the runtime of the game.