Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch Remastered (PS4) Review

A journey to another world.

 Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch is one of the most prolific RPGs in recent memory. Developed by Level 5 (of Professor Layton fame) and animated by anime legend Studio Ghibli, Ni No Kuni got lots of praise when it came out in the late days of the PS3 in 2013. It follows a young boy's quest to save his mother in another world that's ruled by a powerful wizard. I'll be honest, it's a game that I always said that I'll get around to playing it eventually, but never did. Thankfully, when a remastered version was released last year, I finally got my excuse to play the game. So now having beat it, is Ni No Kuni worth all hype it gets?


 In the 1950's inspired town of Motorville, we follow our main lead Oliver, a young boy who's mother has recently passed away after she saved him from an accident. Saddened by her death, he unknowingly summons Drippy, a fairy who tells Oliver that he can save his mother by journeying another world similar to his own and rescuing her soul. However, it won't be easy as her soul is guarded by a powerful wizard known as Shadar, who rules over the world. Along his adventure, Oliver will meet and befriend a colorful band of characters while also being haunted by Shadar and the mysterious White Witch.

 The first moments of the story were pretty moving and got me feeling for Oliver and his journey of saving his mother, with the writing being interesting. While they weren't as engaging as Oliver, I still liked the supporting cast like Drippy, Ester, and Swaine who managed to make the adventure a lot more entertaining. The story remained an engaging one up until the third arc with the White Witch towards the very end of the game. Personally, I felt it was tacked on and uninteresting compared to Shadar's more tragic tale. Worse yet, the ending felt heavily rushed, lacking a nice animated cutscene and leaving you with unanswered questions.

Few gripes aside, the story was a fairly
interesting one.

 Ni No Kuni follows the standard genre tropes of levelling up, battling monsters, taking on side quests, and freely exploring the world. The game changes things up a bit by taking a page from Pokémon with its battle system. In battles, you can summon "familiars", which are cute little creatures that'll battle enemies for you. However, they can't be out for long as they're stamina depletes over time. Each familiar has its own stats and attributes like some being magic users while others focusing more on physical attacks, as well as special attacks to set them out form each other. And just like Pokémon, they evolve and learn new moves as they level up. You tame familiars by using Ester's singing ability once they're weak enough and while it may sound like a chore, I found it to be lots of fun collecting different types familiars for my party. And if that's not enough, you can even feed them snacks, which comes in handy as it increases their base stats significantly.

The combat was good and the various familiars
to catch kept things interesting.

 Controlling party members isn't as interesting as battling with familiars since you'll just be casting spells, using provisions, and defending against attacks. Admittedly, by the time you're at the end of the game, you'll most likely have some overpowered spells that make using familiars obsolete. I just wished that there was a dedicated defend button instead of cycling through the menu since enemies have a tendency of spamming attacks instantly. The gameplay may feel dull for the first few hours, but it opens up greatly once  you catch more powerful familiars, gain new party members, and learn new spells. A downside was the party AI, which often don't a good job of following orders most of the time. For example, they often won't attack an enemy weak to fire with fire spells rather, they just rush up to them with physical attacks (which are weak).

Ni No Kuni is on the easy side but the boss
fights pack a challenge.

 There are lots of side content to partake in when you're taking a break from the main story. For starters, the game's overworld is littered with neat items, secrets areas, and tough monsters to beat. Exploring the world was easily my favorite aspect of the game, especially when you receive the airship and dragon, where you truly free to explore every nook and cranny. Also, there's fetch quests by the dozens as you'll often interact with the game's inhabitants, who will asking you to run errands or restore a fragment of their "heart" for them.

Exploring the overworld was fun, and I enjoyed
some of the harder enemy battles.

 Most of the quests were pretty entertaining though some can definitely get on the repetitive side. The hunt quests which task you of beating tough monsters throughout the world for money and equipment were fun, also rewarding you with stamps. These allow you to unlock perks for Oliver such as gaining more experience form battles, making familiars be tamed easily, allows him to run faster, and so on. The game took me around 40 hours to beat and that's still not counting the post-game content, which are abundant.

 Ni No Kuni is a great looking game, mainly due to the excellent animated cutscenes from Studio Ghibli. The simple yet gorgeous backgrounds and art-style gives the game a lot of charm, though I wished there was more of the animated cutscenes. The in-game visuals show their age in close ups, but the remaster manages to polish things up with 60 frames-per-second and 1080p resolution. The voicework was exceptional and complimented each character's personality, though it's Drippy and Shadar's performances that were fantastic. Also worth noting is the amazing soundtrack composed by Joe Hisaishi who worked on many of Ghibli's films. It was a pleasure to listen to and nails the scope of the adventure with tracks like the main, battle, and ending themes being my favourite tracks. I'll even admit it, it's one of the best RPG soundtracks of all-time.

The game's production values
are absolutely stunning.

 I came into Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch with high expectations considering all the praise its got and for the most part, they were met. The story was good, but the aforementioned issues kept it from being a great one. The gameplay was nothing special but remained interesting and exploring the world was a lot of fun. This goes without saying, but the top-notch presentation is the game's strongest suit, with the visuals and soundtrack being memorable. It's an easy game compared to other RPGs on the market so it won't give newcomers a rough time. Ni No Kuni is by no means a perfect game, but its charming world makes it a worthwhile adventure that genre fans should check out.