In case you haven’t noticed, GameXentral has been a bit wary about using the term “Japanese RPG” within the past year or so. With experiences like The Last Story, Xenoblade Chronicles, and Dark Souls eroding our preconceived notions about role-playing games from the East, the term “JRPG” is rapidly losing the meaning it once had — especially now that American creations like Costume Quest, Cthulu Saves the World, and Penny Arcade 3 have adopted certain design tropes once associated with another country. But even as the exciting world of genre classification continues to spin into total anarchy, some developers take no issue with delivering the expected; both Dragon Quest and Pokemon stand as excellent examples of developers continuing to iterate on a limited, time-tested formula, all while offering up enough new ideas to sustain the series. These two series may rely on ideas unchanged for decades, but they do so in a manner that keeps players engaged and addicted.
The long-awaited Level-5/Studio Ghibli collaboration Ni no Kuni seems to understand the elements that define “Japanese RPG,” but not the reasons why this genre grew so successful in the first place. If you’re looking for the qualities that transform this type of experience into a nearly bottomless bowl of comfort food for folks who cut their teeth on Square and Enix’s 16 and 32-bit offerings, you’ll find them all in this breathtakingly beautiful RPG — but delivered at such a leaden pace that the sheer amount of talent involved in this ambitious project feels absolutely wasted.
Imagine a new version of Pokemon that doesn’t let you capture a single one of those marketable little creatures until after the third gym, and you’ll get an idea of how reluctantly Ni no Kuni parcels out new content. The game opens with the expected onslaught of tutorials, and, in the tradition of Final Fantasy XIII, you’re rarely set free until the most basic of information has been drilled into your skull. Even as the hours stretch into the double digits, Level-5 drops in new elements that would have added some much-needed complexity during Ni no Kuni’s early chapters; it’s kind of like playing a game of Monopoly where players can only move their pieces around the board for the first hour — why burden folks with complicated concepts like “buying property” until they’ve become intimately familiar with the function of rolling dice?
I’ve generally come to regard excessive tutorials as a necessary evil; after a few hours of tedium, I’m typically set free, and the fun to follow tends to erase any bad memories of a game’s poorly-paced beginning. Ni no Kuni seems to follow this trend at first — until it slowly becomes clear that nearly every in-game action has been designed to take as long as humanly possible.
The Pokemon-like battle system, for instance, seems to be a snappy, action-based alternative to Nintendo’s own turn-based tradition, but Level-5 makes maintaining a stable of monsters into an unexpectedly excruciating experience. Ni no Kuni doesn’t just let you throw out a trap to grab the beast you’d like to keep as your own; instead, you have to wait for the chance to “charm” a downed monster, which entails fighting the same type of creature over and over until you’re lucky enough to have a fallen foe join your party instead of disappear in a puff of smoke. And while the game lets you micromanage your monsters’ stats, doing so involves feeding them one item at a time; not a hassle for small parties, but when your group eventually blossoms to nine separate creatures, prepare to watch the same animations play out for upwards of ten minutes.
This lackadaisical pacing runs straight to the core of Ni no Kuni, as the game emphasizes grinding above any other activity in order to make the most of of its compact and attractive settings. As with Pokemon, you’re encouraged to evolve your monster to new forms, but in Ni no Kuni, evolved monsters revert back to level one — and restoring their former strength takes much longer than you’d expect. The game also emphasizes keeping your monsters fully decked-out in the best gear; enemies on the map may flee in terror from your party once you’ve reached a high enough level — an idea taken from EarthBound that isn’t seen in enough RPGs — but bosses tend to destroy party members that lack the best equipment from that area’s shops. Yes, this idea shouldn’t strike anyone as out of the ordinary for the genre, but Ni no Kuni makes it necessary to outfit 12 different characters (since each summoner and their three monsters share HP, MP, and status effects), which makes “optional” side-quests a necessity and grinding a fact of life.
Ni no Kuni’s roots as a DS game also manage to undercut elements that could otherwise be interesting. The original (and unreleased in America) version of the game came with a hefty guidebook, which players had to consult in order to solve puzzles — consider it a whimsical form of copy protection. For example, if players needed to cross a chasm, they’d have to scan the included book for the right stylus motions to cast a “bridge” spell, which would then give them a means to move from point A to point B. While the console version doesn’t depend on an included tome, the game’s puzzles haven’t been changed to reflect this; instead of having to pore over actual pages to find a solution, the PS3 Ni no Kuni merely gives you a drop-down list of the spells you’ve learned so far — and in every case, the answer is staggeringly obvious. By implementing the laziest solution to transplant its puzzles from one format to another, Ni no Kuni doesn’t offer any interesting challenges to distract players from its battle-based tedium.
It’s a shame that Level-5 underthought the core elements of Ni no Kuni; as expected with anything branded with the Ghibli name, its world drips with detail and looks absolutely stunning — after just a few hours, Ni no Kuni had me asking “Why are we so excited about upcoming consoles when current-gen games are just starting to look this good?” The localization contains this same attention-to-detail, with legend Richard Honeywood adding wit and personality to even the most minor of NPC characters. But regardless of its jaw-dropping presentation, the game’s design comes off as lazy and uninspired, as if Ni no Kuni could earn a pass based on the Ghibli name alone. Even though there’s enough game here for a meaty, 25-hour adventure, Level-5 spreads this content incredibly thin, under the mistaken assumption that “bigger RPG” equals “better RPG.” One can only imagine what nature boy and notable curmudgeon Hayao Miyazaki would think of a Ghibli product designed to keep its audience locked to their TVs for as long as they can stand it.
The Great JRPG Revival Begins....
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