As a fan of Studio Ghibli I adored ‘Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch’, the beautiful worlds were fun to explore and it was delightful to feel as though I was taking part in a Studio Ghibli film. For the second game, ‘Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom’, Studio Ghibli are not directly involved however character designer Yoshiyuki Momose and the music composer Joe Hisaishi, who were both involved with Wrath of the White Witch, returned to work on the second game.
Diving into the game, you start as Roland, The President in what you presume is America or at least Earth, witnessing a nuclear attack on a city then waking up in Ding Dong Dell a city in the world of Ni No Kuni 2. He meets Evan, the Prince of Ding Dong Dell which is currently experiencing a coup. Roland helps Evan escape, aided by his handgun which he uses to dispatch unprepared sword wielding mice/men which a modern gun in a ye olde fantasy setting is hilarious. After the escape, Evan decides to start his own kingdom and unite all the other kingdoms in a world of peace…
The dialogue sections of the game are a hybrid between text, fully voiced cutscenes and dialogue with the character saying one word to express their emotions for that particular speech bubble. If I’m being honest, I’d much rather one or the other (preferably fully voice acted cutscenes). Having a character utter the same word over and over will grind on the player eventually. Especially ‘Lofty’, Evan’s sidekick. I hope I never need to hear him say “knickers” or “reeeeeeealy?” in his accent ever again. There is no option to turn this off unfortunately. That was not anything against the Welsh accent in particular by the way, there is a Scottish character, Niall, who repeats the word “Crivens” over and over which is equally as annoying.
The art style may as well be Studio Ghibli despite their indirect involvement, it’s amazing to see that we’re at a stage where playing a 2D animation style feels like we are playing an animated film seamlessly. The art style does shift in the overworld view to ‘Funko’ style big headed characters which is very cute and charming. I found the world absolutely stunning and really enjoyed roaming around the overworld and fighting enemies and discovering new areas.
Each character can equip up to three melee weapons and one long ranged weapon. This means that managing each character’s weapons takes 3 times as long. The game does offer a button to give each character the best gear but it takes that gear off the other characters forcing you to manually check and equip the best gear. There is the tactic tweaker that allows you to be stronger against certain types of enemies and weak against others, I barely touched this apart from trying to gain more experience and money from battles. As for magic you need to level each character’s spells up in your kingdom (I will get onto the kingdom later). If you forget this is here like me and you need to play catch up with the spell levelling it will take a long time as you need to watch a short animation for each spell you upgrade. I could go on and on but I don’t want to overload the reader of this review.
Joining you in the battles are Higgledies, small creatures which you can create in your kingdom or find in the wild. You can equip up to 4 at once, each Higgledy comes with special powers which are provided to you at random in battle. Again, I didn’t really involve myself with this. I kept the Higgledies equipped as they were given to me and just levelled them up from time to time.
All of this combined (as well as another few battle mechanics) helps support you against the monsters you will come across in your travels. ‘Ni no Kuni II’ isn’t a hard game if you keep on top of character stats and completing side quests, there is no grinding required (phew). Yes, you may come up against a strong enemy (a.k.a. Tainted Monsters) but you can always run away and come back later as from that point onwards it is marked on your map or library in the menu. There are 6 playable characters to choose from, each has different abilities and weapons. At no point however do you need to rely on the characters outside of your team as no one has skills so unique you need them to progress. This meant that I stuck with the same three characters throughout the whole game (Evan, Tani, Batu).
As well as battles, there are a few other gameplay mechanics for you to splurge a lot of your gameplay time on. Skirmishes are kind of like a real time strategy/Tower defence game. You come up against certain types of enemies and it is up to you to gather the right forces which are strong against your enemy. Your soldiers are attached to you on a lazy-susan mechanic, where you literally rotate your soldiers so the correct type is facing the enemy. I was not a massive fan of these battles and they were the only side-quests which I didn’t complete as your army can very quickly end up underpowered for the quests.
My favourite way to pass my time in the game was to develop Evan’s kingdom, “Evermore”. You start off with a relatively small area and a few buildings. Soon you are expanding the size of your kingdom, quality of buildings, amount of citizens and the amount of money and items you gain over time. Each type of building can conduct research which can aid you throughout the game such as better weapons, better skills and types of items gained. As you complete side quests you unlock more citizens who will come to live in your kingdom, you can allocate them to the buildings which would benefit most from them.
Like every other RPG game, there are dungeons, 9 main ones with some additional DLC ones. What I liked about these are that you can complete one or two in a single play session. They don’t overstay their welcome and you’re not required to take a weekend off work to complete one.
I absolutely adored the music of this game thanks to the return of Joe Hisaishi. My favourite track was the Hydropolis Theme. Sitting listening to the soundtrack while writing this review and having an absolute blast.
I played the Prince’s Edition on an Xbox Series X and the 4K 60fps was buttery smooth and an absolute delight to play, I’m glad I held off on this game on the PS4 and experienced it this way. The Prince’s Edition is the original base game with all the DLC included. I chose not to chase the DLC content in the risk of falling down a deep rabbit hole and being led too far from the main story. On a desert island I would have been all over it as I know I could spend hundreds of hours with this game but I have far, far too many games to be catching up with for that.
Overall I absolutely loved my time with ‘Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom’ once you get right into the middle of the game with the airship and you are free to explore the world. I found it so addicting. If you chase side quests like I did they will lead you to an area with something else to complete such as a dungeon so you are never lost for things to do. If it wasn’t for my gaming backlog giving me puppy dog eyes I could have continued playing the same and it’s DLC but I wanted to quit while I was enjoying it and not finish the game after being frustrated by dotting every I and crossing every T.