Ni No Kuni 2: Revenant Kingdom
A MASSIVE JRPG DESIGNED FOR NEWCOMERS TO THE GENRE.
WHEN IT RELEASED in Australia back in 2013, Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch represented a rare, mainstream moment for JRPGs, receiving the kind of attention normally reserved for Final Fantasy games. The reason was its pedigree: while its status as a new Level-5 game was only of interest to die hards, Studio Ghibli’s attachment to the project was key. The studio is, after all, best known as the animation crew responsible for My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away and more. It was like a match made in heaven.
But Ni No Kuni 2: Revenant Kingdom can’t lay claim to any Studio Ghibli association, so its arrival feels muted. Perhaps to compensate for this, Level-5 has transformed the Ni No Kuni series from a prickly turn-based JRPG into... a game that basically tries its hand at everything, with its sights fixed firmly on a more casual audience. The turn-based combat is gone, replaced with a simplistic but nonetheless fun live-action system with the usual light / heavy attack and stamina management formula.
And that’s not all: the game’s typically grandiose JRPG formula is augmented by a kingdom building element, which proves a lot more complicated and feature-heavy than you might expect.
This dovetails with the plot: you play as Roland, who has witnessed the destruction of a city and, afterwards, is whisked away, transformed and tasked with rebuilding a (much more whimsical) fantasy kingdom. It’s a JRPG, so the story is several orders of magnitude more complicated and bloated than that, but the setting is gripping enough to carry you through what is, at heart, a fairly breezy game.
Because it’s true: Ni No Kuni appealed to JRPG fanatics, whereas its sequel wants to appeal to everyone. Those seeking a stiff challenge may be disappointed, but the game is beautiful and charming enough to compensate for its easiness, even if by the halfway point it reveals itself as a confection, rather than a hearty JRPG meal.