Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch for PlayStation 3 Reviews by Gamers

I wish someone would take these graphics and apply them to a mature themed game. This game is aimed at 10 year olds story wise. I played maybe 7 hours into the game and had to return it as it has already gotten too repetitive with the battle system and side quests. Those who said that AI is dumb was not kidding. Your team does not really help you at all and constantly die. More often than not I had to rely on the main character to finish the battle.

Pokemon remake with better graphics.

I love RPGs, I really do. Ni No Kuni certainly feels like a bit of a throwback to older generations with its animation, and I wish we had more of it.

Studio Ghibli presents this game in a manner much like their movies some may be familiar with (Howl's Moving Castle, Secret World of Arrietty). Playing a child as the main character may deter some, but I felt it doesn't really change much; if you can ignore that, I felt the story was pretty similar to most other RPGs, albeit slightly convoluted at times. It's how they presented it with the stunning animation and quirky characters that I enjoyed the most.

Unfortunately, I felt they didn't do a very good job designing combat. It's an interesting blend between real-time combat and turn-based; you can move freely about the battle field but there are timers on your actions. Your ultimate party consists of 3 members, but you can only manually control 1 at a time, and the AI controls the others.

It's the AI intelligence that really hinders combat; most of the time they seem very confused at what to do. I have seen the AI literally stand and stare at any enemy while I do all the work. It's not efficient whatsoever at using MP (and using MP is the main function of combat) and they generally use up all their mana within a few battles.

Speaking of battles, expect to see a lot of combat. Combat is initiated while making contact with an enemy on the field, and most areas are littered with enemies. Enemies also respawn fairly quickly (less than a minute I estimate). Dungeons are fairly linear and usually consist of narrow corridors, making it hard to avoid battles. The plus side is that if you are at the right level, most battles only take about a minute, and if you are overleveled things will run away from you on the field, allowing you to avoid contact.

Overall, it's a good game, but combat seems to drag it down a lot. It is fairly long (~40+ hours) and the platinum is not too difficult, if you can tolerate the AI