Ni No Kuni 2: Revenant Kingdom Review – A JRPG Masterpiece with gorgeous visuals and enjoyable gameplay

Launched on PS4 and PC at 23 March, Ni No Kuni 2: Revenant Kingdom is already sound promising just from the big names behind it – it is developed by “the legendary JRPG developer” Level-5 that brought us Dragon Quest VIII and Inazuma Eleven series along with the assist of Studio Ghibli (a well-known Japanese animation film studio). We are lucky to be able to try out the game (thank you Bandai Namco), so here is our Ni No Kuni 2: Revenant Kingdom review!

Introduction

To make things clearer, Ni No Kuni 2: Revenant Kingdom is a classic JRPG and a sequel to Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch. Setting its timeline hundreds of years after the events of Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch, Revenant Kingdom starts its story in the kingdom of Ding Dong Dell.

The story mainly revolves around the kingdom’s young heir, Evan who is being dethroned and chase out from his homeland after his father’s suspicious death. Teaming up with Roland, a president from Earth who shows up in the world of Ni No Kuni with his youth suddenly regained, Evan departs on his journey to establish a new kingdom where everyone could live happily ever after.

Gameplay

Other than the linear storyline with set objectives, you can explore the open world all you want. You can travel through town, dungeons and more around the world, there are also fast-travel points that you can spawn and reduce the time taken for your long journey. Interestingly, your characters are portrayed in adorable chibi-styled characters when you enter the World Map.

You will be able to form a party with up to 3 characters and switch between them easily during a battle (you will only command one at a time while the others will fight automatically beside you). Upon encountering enemies, you will enter an open battlefield area where you can move freely in the area.

Different from the first Ni No Kuni‘s turn-based combat, you will now fight in real-time using the classic moves – light attacks, heavy attacks, magical abilities, dodge roll and block. The controls are designed well and simple, it won’t be hard to learn and use the controls effectively. The flashy effect of the character attacks kinds of resembling the Final Fantasy XV’s combat (which is beautiful to watch).

There will be Higgledies, the weird yet cute looking small creatures following you around too. They exist in several forms and elements, each comes with their own strengths that aid you in your battles (such as AOE buffs or shooting fire cannons). You can have up to 4 of them in your party!

Since it is an RPG you will level up and earn skills points to improve your stats. There is a tactic tweaker allowing you to tweak certain stats such as your resistance to certain types of element attack, or the damage you can deal against a certain element type of enemy.

What really hooked me into the game is its Kingdom Builder – you can build and manage facilities for resources. You can even get involved directly in recruiting citizens and workforces by completing the side quests they gave you. Also, Skirmish is available in the game where you can control troops and rotate them like a wheel around Evan to battle against enemies (kind of the rock-paper-scissors combat).

The Verdict

As Ni No Kuni 2: Revenant Kingdom is a game brought to us by Level-5 and Studio Ghibli, the graphics are gorgeous with adorable and charming characters. In my opinion, the game’s story is quite common (a young king who is betrayed and wants to build a new kingdom) that I get bored in the first few hours but the gameplay slowly attracts me, especially the Kingdom Builder where I will probably spend hours to farm and grow the kingdom.

Ni No Kuni 2: Revenant Kingdom is now available on PS4 at RM 239.00 (SGD 79.90 or USD 59.99) and PC (via Steam) at RM239.00 (‎USD 59.99).

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