Ni No Kuni 2: Revenant Kingdom

 Release: 2018

Developer: Level 5

Publisher: Bandai Namco

Genre: JRPG, Action

Gameplay Stats: 90 hours, 51/63 achievements, Hard difficulty

I played the first Ni No Kuni earlier in the year and had mostly positive feelings about it. Will the sequel stand up to the reputation of the first one?

Visuals: So, it's pretty safe to say that Studio Ghibli wasn't involved in this game. Level 5 did their best to emulate the legendary animation studio with very limited success. The game does capture a little bit of the magic, but the world is far less interesting. There isn't as much detail in the background compared to a lot of Studio Ghibli's efforts and it makes the game feel kind of boring as a result. The characters and the backgrounds are both lacking in detail. The enemies do look like enemies and they act how you would imagine they might, but there is a serious lack of variety in enemies and locales all over this game. I bet if you showed me a screenshot of the first game I could tell you where it was taken, but there are SO MANY reused assets in this game, I know for a fact I couldn't pick apart several of the locations. The cities look distinct, but nothing else does.

Audio: The audio was another strong point of the first game, with the music, voice acting, and sound effects all being strong. The sequel really doesn't measure up to the first game in this regard. The music is pretty nice, I have to admit that! Particularly the background music of Hydropolis is very, very pretty. The rest of the music is just okay. There is a pretty striking lack of voice acting compared to the first game, with characters issuing a bark that somewhat captures the emotions their words are expressing. The voice acting that is present is pretty decent, but it felt like only around 10% of the game was voice acted. All of the story and quests are on rails, so it's a pretty startling lack of voice. The majority of the main quest isn't even voiced! The sound effects are okay apart from telegraphing enemies, it seems like they are well into their move before making any noise.

Plot: The story felt very different than the first game. Ni No Kuni 1 was about two connected worlds that you traversed between to solve problems on both ends. Ni No Kuni 2 has a slight tinge of that, but only at the end of the game to explain a singular plot point. The first game felt like a children's story book, a story told to a child, and the sequel just feels like a story told by a child. It's a huge difference in tone and overall quality. It almost feels like there are two mostly parallel games happening here that were stitched together last minute. Minor spoilers. There is a plot of Evan creating a kingdom and then there is a story of a sequel to Ni No Kuni. It really seems like they were put together in a rush with only very minimal connections between. Another point for the idea of this game being rushed is that the story only takes you to roughly 60% of the map. The side quests take you to the rest of it in a way, but the areas aren't introduced in any meaningful way. They felt like an add on.

Gameplay: I think this is the strength of this game, but it still feels a bit disjointed. There are action-rpg style fights and then there are Pikmin-like kingdom battles. The kingdom battles are pretty interesting! There's a nice rock/paper/scissors component that was directly lifted from Fire Emblem, but put into an action battle instead of turn based. I liked it! The normal fights are pretty subpar action games. They feel like really old games from the Tales series. The Tales series has grown a large amount over the years to feel more like an action game, but this game is some very serious steps back. Which is weird, because they are both made by the same company. You can't interrupt attacks with a dodge or block no matter how long the attack is. It really feels clunky, especially for a modern game. Another serious pet peeve is that you have no control over your team mates. I think that's been a staple of large style battle games for over a decade and was VERY important in the first Ni No Kuni. Why does the gameplay here feel like a such a major step backwards?

Overall: I feel like I'm taking crazy pills here. This game has gotten a TON of praise, but I really felt like it was a middling experience. There isn't very much that ties this game to the original and I think it's a pretty middling RPG on its own. I don't know if I'd be able to recommend it on its own merits and I think I would actively warn people away if they wanted to play it because of the first game. [6/10]