Ni No Kuni 2

[bluemax]

Anyone picking this up today? I'm grabbing it after work. Enjoyed the heck out of the first one and apparently this one might be better. I guess they dropped the pseudo pokemon thing and made battles more actiony so we shall see.

[archnemesis]

The first game wasn’t great and I have a large stack of other PS4 games that I haven’t had time to play. I’ll pick it up in 3-6 months when it’s cheaper.

My biggest gripe with the first game was the battle system. I hope this new one is more fun.

[demi]

Namco game, will drop to $20 within a month

[Freyj]

Apparently combat is so mindlessly easy that the transition to combat takes longer than the combat does.

[Mr. Gundam]

Amazon is delivering my copy today, I liked the first game a lot and I'm looking forward to playing through it with my daughter. She loves Ghibli movies and enjoyed watching me play through World of Final Fantasy so I figured this would be something fun for us to do together.

I remember the demo for the first game being absolutely terrible in regard to the battle system, but it was intuitive in the full version.

[I'm a Puppy!]

I wanted to love the first game so much.
But it bored me to tears.

[tiesto]

I wanted to love the first game so much, since it was one of the few games that gen that actually had a world map and traditional RPG progression - not super open world or rigidly linear. But the battle system was so clunky and frustrating, especially the whole evolution of your Pokemon like creatures (why do I start on level 1 again?). The new game seems to rectify combat, but I'm not sure how I feel about the RTS stuff they have in the game - I really don't like that genre very much and hope it doesn't taint the full experience for me

My CE should be arriving soon, I preordered like last year.

[Mr. Gundam]

I hate RTS as well, but it sounds like it's mostly optional.

[eleuin]

Didn't know there was town building, not enough games have it imo

[Svejk]

Didn't know there was town building, not enough games have it imo

A bit of them Dark Cloud vibes. 

[demi]

Well I bought Ni no Kuni 2, I blame being taken to Gamestop during lunch at work

[paprikastaude]

I didn't like the first game, but reviews convined me to pick this up today.

[demi]

First game was pretty good, the battle combat just had AI issues for the most part

[Joe Molotov]

Apparently combat is so mindlessly easy that the transition to combat takes longer than the combat does.

mindless grindan

[bork]

Namco game, will drop to $20 within a month

Am tempted to return my copy for this reason. 

[demi]

Testing out PS4 streaming with this game if you want to check it out

twitch.tv/frostitution

[Valkyrie]

Testing out PS4 streaming with this game if you want to check it out

twitch.tv/frostitution

Cool, been eyeing this game, still can't decide if I wanna play it soon or later.

[demi]

I'm enjoying it so far. Just made it to the Wyverns Den (Chapter 2). I think I enjoy NNK1 story so far though.

[bork]

Testing out PS4 streaming with this game if you want to check it out

twitch.tv/frostitution

Wow, it looks great!  Guess I should try the first game though.

[Valkyrie]

Testing out PS4 streaming with this game if you want to check it out

twitch.tv/frostitution

Wow, it looks great!  Guess I should try the first game though.

I mean, you don’t have to if you just wanna dive into the second.

[bluemax]

I'm almost 3 hours in and honestly it feels like this game was made on a lower budget than the first. It's still enjoyable so far though. Certainly gets to the action much quicker than the first. Combat reminds me of Rogue Galaxy a bit.

[paprikastaude]

this game is much better now thanks to a fun battle system. Also better characters and graphics. The first game's characters often looked more creepy to me than anything and comparisons between the two finally make it blatant that the first game was far from pulling off the look well enough.

[Joe Molotov]

Threat level at Yiffcon 3, abort mission before we have a full-blown Zootopia on our hands!

[BisMarckie]

I liked the look of it, enough to probably pick it up when I have a PS4 again.

It's also on Steam.
That being said. They didn't re-release the first one, right? Is there any point in playing this without having played the first game?

[demi]

theyre unrelated. you can play this one

[paprikastaude]

Yeah, hopefully the upcoming stages tone down the furry-dom, because it's getting a little out of hand. 

[Mr. Gundam]

I've played through the first two chapters and I overall like the game, but the battle system just isn't clicking for me. I think it has to do with the camera angle always right behind your character, making it feel more like a solitary game like Zelda as opposed to a team-based JRPG like the Tales series.

[Junpei the Tracer!]

I like this a lot but I wish it was more difficult, it's rather easy at the moment(Chapter 4) and I wish more of the dialogue was voiced.

[bluemax]

I've died a few times when fighting the Fog monsters but otherwise the combat is a lot less interesting than the previous game. The castle stuff, despite being simple definitely is addictive.

The lack of voice acting is definitely part of why I feel this game had a lower budget than the previous one. That and the limited number of animations your characters have during dialogue sequences, the entirely different visual style for the overworld, and the re-used music.

I've played through the first two chapters and I overall like the game, but the battle system just isn't clicking for me. I think it has to do with the camera angle always right behind your character, making it feel more like a solitary game like Zelda as opposed to a team-based JRPG like the Tales series.

The camera also makes it annoying to spot the Higgledy circles sometimes. It's a weird choice.

[Tasty]

(Image removed from quote.)

Threat level at Yiffcon 3, abort mission before we have a full-blown Zootopia on our hands!

Is that Mutant Lisa Simpson in the bottom left?

[Switters]

I thought this would be the game to pull me away from MHW... The combat is a joke. It's the opposite of XBC 2. At least with XBC 2 you could wail on a monster til you had some satisfying combos unloaded. This game feels terribly unbalanced.

[Joe Molotov]

(Image removed from quote.)

Threat level at Yiffcon 3, abort mission before we have a full-blown Zootopia on our hands!

Is that Mutant Lisa Simpson in the bottom left?

That's the cute mascot character.

[kingv]

This has so many furries they should call it Need No Cunny

[tiesto]

Well, my collector's edition arrived today and the box is all fucked up.

Amazon

[demi]

Well, my collector's edition arrived today and the box is all fucked up.

Amazon

Complain and get some money back. Yaya

[bluemax]

This game is fun and beautiful and easily blows out most JRPGs this gen in terms of dialouge/cutscenes.

 Traversing the overworld and whiplashing into battles feels more like a chore than something that's fun though.

 I'm like midway through Chapter 2 ( I think)

The nice thing is that there are so many fast travel spots that after awhile you don't really have to walk around the World of Final Fantasy looking over world.

[paprikastaude]

I thought this would be the game to pull me away from MHW... The combat is a joke. It's the opposite of XBC 2. At least with XBC 2 you could wail on a monster til you had some satisfying combos unloaded. This game feels terribly unbalanced.

The game balancing and systems make more sense once it opens up after chapter 4 iirc. But I still liked the beginning for flashy button mashing - not like I play non-SMT JRPGs for difficulty 

[eleuin]

Mr President, we have to save the furries

Besides difficulty only complaint is that the subtitles during exploration disappear way too quick

[chronovore]

Namco game, will drop to $20 within a month

That’s my plan.

[Svejk]

Namco game, will drop to $20 within a month

That’s my plan.

That was my plan for Dark Souls 3 too, but that took almost a year to happen. 

spoiler (click to show/hide)

At least for the digital version 

[close]

[bork]

Namco game, will drop to $20 within a month

That’s my plan.

That was my plan for Dark Souls 3 too, but that took almost a year to happen. 

spoiler (click to show/hide)

At least for the digital version 

[close]

That's what you get for sticking with only PSN.

[Svejk]

That's what you get for sticking with only PSN.

[paprikastaude]

I was down on the kingdom building at first, especially since all the locations are pre-made. But then I realised it's more about costumizing your characters and playstyle through whatever buffs or items you're mostly investing in outside the main story. Pretty cool.

[bluemax]

The airship in this game might be one of the jankiest ones in an RPG that I've ever played.

[Mr. Gundam]

Holy shit there is no rhyme or reason to what is voice acted and what isn't.

[Joe Molotov]

Holy shit there is no rhyme or reason to what is voice acted and what isn't.

They couldn't find enough wankers posh enough to voice the entire bloody game, innit?

[Mr. Gundam]

Holy shit there is no rhyme or reason to what is voice acted and what isn't.

They couldn't find enough wankers posh enough to voice the entire bloody game, innit?

They hired someone to do only eight words of dialogue for that librarian character while having the rest be totally silent. What is the point?

[chronovore]

Holy shit there is no rhyme or reason to what is voice acted and what isn't.

They couldn't find enough wankers posh enough to voice the entire bloody game, innit?

They hired someone to do only eight words of dialogue for that librarian character while having the rest be totally silent. What is the point?

 Without having seen the game, I still feel safe in asserting that it was almost certainly a late-production change that lead to this kind of presentation error. At some point your only option is to pull all of the voiceover for a category, or use the assets that you have when you have them.

Usually, I vote for consistency over unevenly applied polish.

[bluemax]

It bothers me that the shop lady in your Castle town is the shop lady from Dragon Quest heroes. I almost feel like they just bought her lines from that game and put them in this one.

[bluemax]

I think I'm close to the end, and all the castle stuff is starting to wear thin.

[Mr. Gundam]

I think I'm on Chapter 4, I tend to only play it when my daughter is in the room watching, so it's gonna take some time to finish.

[Great Rumbler]

So far [up to chapter 4] I like this more than the first Ni No Kuni, although it has some of the same problems. It still feels like a game made especially for kids, which is fine, but the fantasy world overall feels kinda slapdash, like a lot of different elements thrown together because they look/sound cool rather than building something cohesive that makes sense. The action based combat is better than the slow turn-based combat, but it's still super easy for the most part, even going up against high-level monsters. And that combat's pretty simple, not much beyond mashing attack buttons until you build up enough magic power to do one of your special attacks, then it's back to button mashing.

But I do like that it has a lot of different gameplay elements: kingdom building, RTS combat, ect. Adds a little dash of variety.