SUMMARY
Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom follows the young prince, Evan Pettiwhisker Tildrum, on his journey to create a new kingdom where everyone can live in peace. Evan is joined by various party members who are inspired by his ideals and have chosen to support him in this endeavor. Shortly into their journey, Evan and his friends discover there is an evil power at work that threatens the world. It is up to the young prince to unite the major kingdoms of the land to face this great evil.
COMBAT
Combat in Ni No Kuni II is action oriented. The player controls one of the characters in a party of three and has the option to cycle between them. All of the party members have a standard light and heavy attack along with the option to dodge and block. Each character can also use skills to increase their effectiveness in battle. Those skills range from magic attacks like a fireball to weapon attacks like a spinning slash that really increase the damage output. You can also assign little elemental spirits known as higgledies to assist you while in combat. Their help comes in the form of healing your party, summoning a cannon to shoot at the enemy, inflicting enemies with status ailments, etc. Mixing all of this together gives a combat experience that flows smoothly and doesn’t feel too repetitive.
CONTENT
There is a ton of content in Ni No Kuni II that will keep you busy for quite some time. Besides the main story quests, there are side quests, skirmishes, collectibles, corrupted enemies, dream doors, exploring and building up your kingdom. Most side quests have the player traveling throughout the land, collecting materials to turn in or fighting monsters to satisfy an objective. Next up are skirmishes, which are large scale battles where you control up to four squads of soldiers to battle enemies on the world map. Your forces are determined by the level of might you have. Using squad abilities or summoning more troops will cause your might to diminish. The battle is over as soon as you or the enemy’s might reaches zero. Outside of side quests and skirmishes, there are 3 main forms of collectibles, Higgledies, song books, and citizens (this will be covered in another section), for your kingdom. Higgledies are little spirit creatures that assist Evan and party during combat. They can be found from meeting Higgledy stone’s conditions, kingdom quests, or making them in the kingdom. Songbooks are spread throughout the world hidden in chests, as rewards for quests, or obtained by beating tainted monsters and there are 31 of them to find. The third form of collectibles comes in the form of tainted monsters that have a dark aura about them. They are upgraded versions of the normal monsters with more HP, defense, and attack making them more deadly. There are 50 of them ranging up to level 69 for you to fight and slay for a healthy amount of money and exp. The ultimate challenge in Ni No Kuni II comes in the form of 10 dream doors hidden throughout the world for you to find and can be challenging to the unprepared. They are procedurally generated areas filled with enemies, treasure chests, and no map. As you move further in, the level of the dream door rises to a max level of 5. This increases the level of the enemies in the dream door. At the end, you will fight a boss who drops a dream fragment which you will need to complete a specific side quest. If you get tired of side quests, fighting monsters, or collecting things you can always hop into your boat or zeppelin and explore the world. There are tons of out of the way areas for you to see. If that’s not your fancy, then there is always in my opinion, the best part of the game. Building up your kingdom.
BUILDING A NEW KINGDOM
A major part of Ni No Kuni II is being able to build a new kingdom where its citizens can live in peace. There are 64 buildings that can be added to your kingdom and a total of 103 citizens that can be recruited and assigned to those buildings to help the kingdom prosper. To build and upgrade buildings, you will need to generate enough kingsguilders; the currency the kingdom generates over a period of time that is used to pay for buildings and upgrades. The more buildings you build, the more kingsguilders you can make. The kingdom can be upgraded 3 times to a maximum level of 4 while buildings can be upgraded to level 3 or 4 depending on the building. Buildings that generate resources tend to have a max level of three while the others typically max out at level 4. Leveling up buildings will allow for additional citizens to be assigned to that building and will also unlock additional research topics. Research topics take a set amount of time to research and unlock new things to help out Evan on his journey. A couple of examples are increased exp for non-active party members or the ability to make high-level gear and weapons. Some research topics will require citizens with specific skills before research can begin. Citizens can be found through the game and have specific skills that make them more efficient in certain buildings over others. Some can be recruited through side quests while others are unlocked through the in-game shop, Swift Solutions. As you start to recruit new citizens, check out the map of your kingdom regularly as citizens will have quests from time to time that reward in kingsguilders, weapons, and materials. Your kingdom will generate resources and allow you to build some of the best equipment in the game, so it’s important to keep up with it.
OPINION
I really enjoyed the 130+ hours I spent playing Ni No Kuni II for the most part. The story was just ok. It followed the “main hero must save the world” theme and had a lot of repetitive fetch side quests. The other thing I was a little annoyed about was some of the trophies were a little grindy, but that’s to be expected in an RPG. What really did it for me in this game was the combat and how smooth and seamless it was. That coupled with a Studio Ghibli like world to explore and the very well done kingdom building feature more than made up for the few cons I mentioned.
RECOMMENDATION
I would definitely recommend this game to anyone who is an RPG lover or to someone who is looking for a great game to play with the family.