(3.5 / 4)
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CAN BROKEN HEARTS BE MENDED?
Some people claim the story of Ni no Kuni: The Wrath of the White Witch is a metaphor for a young boy's struggle to overcome unimaginable grief. Playing Level-5:s beautiful role-playing game, with animations co-designed by the venerable Studio Ghibli, the same thought struck me - what if these are the fantasies of a young boy's imagination? Ni no Kuni is so neatly constructed that however you interpret it, literally or metaphorically, one could hardly argue that you're wrong.The story is about the little kid Oliver, who becomes orphaned all too soon when his mother suddenly dies from a heart attack. In his deepest hour of despair, locked away in his room, tears starts rolling down his cheek and unto his lap, soaking a big-nosed rag doll that his mother gave him when she had to leave him for a weekend. The tears somehow make the cherished doll spring to life.
It turns out the doll is in fact a fairy named Drippy, Lord High Lord of the Fairies (not a misspelling - he really claims to be the "Lord High Lord"). The happy-go-lucky fairy explains, in his Welsh accent, that he belongs to another world ("Ni no Kuni" literally translates to "Second country") from which he was banished and cursed into doll-form by an evil wizard named Shadar. Oliver's tears broke the doll's curse.
As Drippy learns of Oliver's loss, he fills him in on a way to possibly save his mother from death. The fairy claims that every person (or animal) in Oliver's world has a corresponding soulmate in that other world. Soulmates share all the similar personality traits, including appearance. This means Oliver's mom could very well be alive over there. The only thing keeping them apart is the veil between worlds and the fact she's incarcerated by Shadar.
QUESTING THE HEARTLANDS
So we get our two-part quest, one that'll stick with us almost the whole game through: Find a way over to Drippy's world (easy), and find a way to free Oliver's mother (hard). It's a JRPG in the most classical sense, with a whole world in peril, lots of story and randomized real-time combat, controlled through a third-person perspective in cities and dungeons, and a world map you explore from a top-down perspective.Unfortunately, the game begins with its weakest part. The intro takes place over several hours of slow and nagging gameplay, with a lot of tutorialising and systems introduced back to back. It is presented through dialogue that constantly seems to go on for five or six lines too long. The useless checkpoint system had me lose a lot of gold to retry battles I was barely ready for. I had little fun, and seemed to only follow on-screen prompts with little in the way of creative gameplay.
I'm glad I didn't give up on it, though, because once the build-up finished after 10-15 hours, the game started blossoming, introducing more complex combat, sidequesting, companions, levelling and crafting. Also, it introduced visionary storytelling on an astonishing scale.
This imagination, both in design and on a technical level, totally surrounds and envelops the player, making me now think back on the sense of a big open world that is in reality quite small and constricted. This universe seems boundless and inspiring, but also contains personality on an almost intimate scale.
Let's face it: RPG codexes can often feel dull and lifeless. The wizard's compendium detailing the world of Ni no Kuni, however, I'd gladly buy in real life. Every region of the world map has its own culture, history, wildlife and character gallery. Researching RPG lore has rarely felt this compelling. It feels like an extension of the game's natural charm. Teeming with well-written legends and illustrations, it gives you great insight into everything you'd want to know.
Now, I doubt such a wondrous, elaborate fantasy would be taking place inside the mind of a young boy like Oliver. If anything, it seems to belong to an older man, probably a professional writer, looking back on the great tragedy of his youth and considering what sort of psychological struggles he undertook to become the man he is today. Or in short, how he avoided getting consumed by bitterness and contempt. This fantasy world is colorful, upbeat, humoristic and hopeful, and seems far removed from the tragedy that frames and shapes it. The story told within it is, for a JRPG, unusually bright and clear.
Most of the time, you are limited to a specific area of the world map, and you keep wondering about what's next - what's beyond that illustrious horizon. As you finally clear that area, you get to cross the mountain range and new vistas open up with even more horizons. And so you keep wondering the whole game through, motivated by your need to explore. It's a game about looking forward to the future, because good things await those who struggle to get there.
COMBAT AND COLLECTING
Consider the combat, for instance. In itself, it's nothing special. Most encounters you can beat spamming the "Attack"-command, or you could have Oliver and his companions on the forefront casting powerful magic spells. But much more satisfying is experimenting with the very rich gallery of familiars you can collect, in the style of Pokémon. Trying out different ones was so much fun I actually took detours to exhaust random encounters in every area. The familiars each have their own unique design, personality, attributes and skills that make them useful for specific situations.You might even form a special bond with some of them like you would to your favorite toys, since they level up and metamorphose into very powerful, specialized beings. It's a perfect illusion: You trick yourself into believing you groomed them yourself. Some advance slowly but come out really strong in the end, whereas others speed through levels but soon fizzle out with poor stat increase, making them less useful near the end. Of course, you can boost their abilities by giving them treats. But if you have the spirit of a true survivalist, you'll never dare waste them on familiars you feel uncertain whether you'll keep.
PLUMBER OF HEARTS
Not everything revolves around combat. A most gut-wrenching sidequest mechanic has Oliver helping people mend their broken hearts. He needs to find out what the ailing heart is missing, and borrow some of that from another person with an abundance of it, be it kindness, enthusiasm, resolve or whatever.This, of course, has a connection to his psychological desire to fix his own mother's ailing heart, and had me taking pride in the young boy and his abundance of goodwill towards strangers. Without these tales we would have struggled to form a human connection to the world, and all the design efforts could have been wasted. These sidequests are not challenging on a gameplay level, but that hardly matters with the thematic ramifications they bring.
SUMMARY
Although I started out very sceptical, I'm looking back on Ni no Kuni as a lovely game. It breaks no new grounds in any single way, but crafts magic out of a dozen old ones. Like in a good fable, animals play important parts, and the lessons taught are good-spirited, wise, and free of all pretentions. Even the unique naming conventions ooze charm and personality. Writing this review weeks overdue, I didn't even have to Google names of cities like Ding Dong Dell, Al Mamoon and Yule, nor islands like Summerlands or Autumnia, nor caves like The Glittering Grotto and The Vault of Tears.Everything blends together well to form a fully functional world; the sweet fairytale of youth and hope, the compelling characters, the Ghibli artwork and animation heightened by the Joe Hisaishi score, and of course the addictive Pokémon combat, with its collecting and leveling. Had the game started off better, with more balanced boss battles (some of the early ones are brutal), more exciting equipment and a less grindy crafting mechanic, it'd been spotless.
Ni no Kuni made me long for a possible future when we'll be able to visit fiction through more than just sight and sound. I wanted to feel the sea breeze of Castaway Cove against my skin, taste the sweetness of a babana milkshake from the desert oasis Al Mamoon and smell the scents of the forests and the Summerlands. Games rarely evoke such longing; their worlds are so often dystopias and war zones you only love to explore from the safe side of a video screen. Ni no Kuni paints a magical universe where you long to belong.
I adore this game. It took its sweet time getting there, but Ni no Kuni improved every step of the way to become a game of visions and ideas. Once the initial hurdles were behind me, I never looked back to the sad beginnings.
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