Traditional JRPG's seem to be a dying breed these days. Back in the 90's JRPG's seemed to rule the industry with Companies like Squaresoft leading the way. Fast forwarding to this generation, traditional JRPG's seem to be a thing of the past. There have been a few games to utilize the old formula for this dying genre (Enchanted Arms and Lost Odyssey, to name a few) but few of them have been able to nail it the way No Ni Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch has.
Right away I was taken back to nostalgia when I first place my two hands on the controller and traversed a lush greenery Fantasy World. The character to world scale was reminiscent of the design of older RPG's, the many places to visit along with secret caves and forests, means of transportation to travel to said areas, and a lot of text speech which was very nostalgic and welcomed. Although, I would have loved to see more animated cut scenes.
Ni No Kuni takes you on a ride through a young boy named Oliver. Due to an unfortunate, and one heart breaking scene, Oliver gets sucked in to this magical world with help from one of the best side kicks to ever grace a video game, Mr. Drippy. The once lifeless Doll informs Oliver that all might not be lost and has a plan to help this boy get something back he desires, but he also needs his help because Oliver is bound by fate as the "Pure Hearted One" to save Mr. Drippy's world from the sinister Dark Jinn--Shadar, an evil force who breaks the hearts of all those who stand in his way. But Oliver can't do it as the way he is now. He will seek help from the Sages who will turn this fragile kid into all powerful Wizard.
When you have your heart broken you lose a piece of one of these 8 elements; Ambition, Love, Courage, Enthusiasm, Restraint, Confidence, Belief, and Kindness. Along your Journey to defeat Shadar you will mend these poor soul's hearts and get them back to their original self. The people who live in this world might have an abundance of these feelings so some may give a piece of their heart to you to help you on your main quest and side quests....make sure you don't hog them all or Mr. Drippy will give you a tongue lashing!
There are a lot of side quests in the game but there isn't much of a variety but still, it never seemed to grow stale. As stated before, you can help people mend their hearts, fetch items, and take part in some bounty missions. Doing the tasks gives you plenty of rewards, cash, and stamps. After your earn 10 stamps you get a Merit Stamp Card that can be exchanged for Merit Rewards. Some help you can EXP, lower prices in stores, or have enemies drop more treasure. Now in the beginning, I didn't really care much about side quests, but eventually, I couldn't help but doing them, especially when you can warp from town to town, getting stamps was a breeze.
The battle system is also very good. You can roam around freely when engaged in battle which will dictate whether an enemies attack will hit you or miss you (depending on the attack), which could be helpful when you find yourself in a bind....and you will. The game is very challenging at first, eases up when you progress further but still maintains a level or difficulty throughout.
Anyway, when you fight with these monsters that scour the lands of the Other World you have the ability to knock some sense into this poor misguided creatures and teach them the ways of good. These are called familiars (think of it like Pokemon). Each brings their own unique abilities into the fight and if you want, you could match up a Familiars that thrive in a specific environment (ie: Using a Fire monster for an Ice level), so it's best to have some of your monsters evenly leveled up and not stick with the same 3 Familiar for the entire game. But it's all up to you and how you want to play it.
Oliver communicates with his companions through speech bubble commands that are displayed on the bottom left corner. You can cast Spells, Attack, Special attacks, and use tactics for your AI. You can change your Familiar or Characters at any time you want. Even Drippy will help you out from time to time throwing HP and MP orbs when needed, or giving your party a much needed HP Shower.
The game has so much depth to it and that's where you get the most out of the game. Familiars can carry their own weapons and accessories, can level up through EXP or earn extra points by feeding them chocolate or ice cream, you can make powerful weapons or health items through alchemy....heck, even the Wizard's Companion (A book of teachings for Wizards) has tons of cool information such as recipes, stories, information about enemies and towns.
The game undoubtedly has a special charm to it. The bond between Mr. Drippy and Oliver is hilarious, the scene when your very first Familiar bops you on the head, the little details of shivering in a cold environment or enemies running in fear when your level is high, Cel-Shaded graphics and Anime styled cut scenes, it's all just a fresh of breathe air.
My feelings towards this game is strange. Outside of the two main characters, your party members are forgettable, the soundtrack wasn't impactful or memorable as I had hoped for (still good), Voice acting was hit or miss (overall good), and the story was predictable at times (again, good), but, I was still very much enamored by said charm.
Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch showed me that the old style JRPG's are still relevant, and with some tweaks here and there, can thrive in this generation and in the next. I spent 65 hours on this game doing almost everything imaginable, to squeeze every ounce of enjoyment I could possibly get, and it was well worth it. With an engaging battle system, depth to the overall gameplay, a magnificent world to explore, I can't tell you how hard it was to put the game down. I was surely addicted to this masterpiece.
Matt from We Game Daily writes: "Cross Worlds isn’t going away. It’s making a small fortune, particularly in Asian markets, so there’s no reason for Level-5 to pull the plug. That said, there’s no real reason why a full PC/console sequel can’t be developed alongside efforts to support Cross Worlds."
While Ni no Kuni 3 would be cool, if it was like the first game, where is Dark Cloud 3 and Rogue Galaxy 2?
I thought the dev recently went mobile and Japan only. They shut down their American offices. So don't expect anything for consoles
I swear they just announced a few new games.
https://www.nintendolife.co...
I stand corrected then. Never heard about these games and also i just remember ni no kuni online being mobile only.
they said a loooooong time ago that Level 5 was working on a new installment but there has been no news since afaik. I just hope that they take more inspiration from 1 than 2, especially when it comes to the story.
Ni No Kuni Cross Worlds is the mobile game you're thinking of.
It looks amazing but I don't like to play mobile games.
Yeah the sequel was okay but had nothing on the first game, especially the battle system.
The story just didn't have that charm and even the twist at the end of the game wasn't really anything cool like Wrath of the White Witch.
Also the fact there was like ZERO mention of Oliver or his adventures in the game, no references, nothing was such weird. It's set a hundred or so years after but still, I'd have expected to seen some throw backs. I think we just got like a temple with his statue in it or something.
yeah, especially outside of japan. They should have released on pc at the same time as the ps3 version or a short time after.
They should've worked with Ghibli to put out a proper movie. Should've also made a Pokemon-esque spin-off rather than make Yokai Watch. If they do make a third game they gotta work with Ghibli!
Get ready to embark on a journey filled with monsters, magic, and overpowered haircuts, because this list features the best JRPGs on the PS3.
There wasn't that many. Thanks to the west's criticism. It was definitely lacking compared to every other ps system. Dont get me wrong there were a few good ones i know that.
Nier, Valkyrie Chronciles, Tales games , Ni No Kuni, Resonance of Fate, FF13’s, Ys8 just a few off the top of my head and there were a lot more.
Not nearly to the degree of PS1 and PS2.
@shinoff2183 makes a good point that around the PS3/Xbox 360 gen is when the genre wasn’t as prevalent and began to shy away from turn-based. There’s some standouts for sure, but look at the PS1 and PS2 JRPG library and then compare that to the PS3 and PS4’s.
Theres definitely a decline in a selection of titles. Even worse was the quality seemed to take a massive hit as well. I think Lost Odyssey was a huge standout for that gen when you look at production values, then you look at something like Fairy Fencer on the PS3 and it’s kind of depressing.
But by that generation there was a shift from western developed games overtaking Japanese developed games. Back from the NES to PS2 Japanese games were the cream of the crop… I don’t know what happened but like midway into the PS3/360 life-time they became less so.
Compared to the ps1 ps2 and he'll even ps4 ps3 doesn't hold a candle to either imo. It's also when turn based damn near disappeared. Again thanks to the west's criticism
Crimson I'd put money on the west being at fault, guys like Phil phish, and numerous others at that time were attacking jrpg and Japanese games in general pretty hard.
Ni no kuni was probably my fav jrpg back then , and the blue dragon
Tales got kinda lucky here. When they took a chance and finally brought tales of graces f over west it sold like 250k lmao a lot of jrpgs did 500k or below. Disgaea was worse i think. Bamco decided to keep bringing more games over though.
Demon's Souls, Dark Souls and Dark Souls II were the best RPGs on PS3 made by Japanese developers. Everything else just fell short always. Ni No Kuni was a full package, an okayish game as well. Nier and Drakengard III had superb writing, setting and voice acting, however, the performance was a real drag on the gameplay. Traditional RPG-wise I'd actually say 360 had better JRPGs, and think that Lost Odyssey and Blue Dragon were the best traditional JRPGs of the era. PS3 Valkyria Chronicles was okay, but it is closer to an SRPG.
Ryu Ga Gotoku games were also solid, they were still finding their footing and breaking new ground with new cities and formats.
PS3 was the era that almost made me quit gaming and I started playing on PC because I could not find good performance nor games on the system. PS4 got me back into it, and now PS5 is a mix in and between, I just play my PS4 library on the PS5 and rest on PC, just like during the PS3 era. The only new exclusive Sony JRPG is pretty much FFXVI and it is so streamlined and simplified from the normal RPG experience that I can't fit it into the genre anymore. Dragon Quest XII hopefully remedies all of this, but it is just one game.
These new games will all be on PC (while it does take 2-3 years to wait, and 6-12 months from launch to have them patched + fixed by modders) and they perform better on it. The only point in owning a PS5 is to play games a couple of years earlier, but for a hard-working family man like me, the quality of the experience is more important than playing it as soon as possible. And I can't do modern games at 30fps 720p after playing 120fps at 4K. For older games, that's okay.
PSX and PS2 though, those were the days...Still have a massive collections of classic RPGs in CD and DVD format and a phat PS3 to play them!
It's kinda like that, the PS3 generation was a bad time for JRPGs, especially with the Japanese feeling the need to westernize their games, shooters dominating that gen, the racism from western game journalists (it was bad, between G4, Phill Fish, and a slew of others), and the higher development costs...
It really made me miss the PS1/PS2 days of JRPGs, even the quality of half of those games during the 7th gen weren't as good. The 360 tried, but Microsoft's consoles weren't popular in Japan and no body in the West bought a Xbox for JRPGs (despite Xbox having Vesperia, Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey).
" It's kinda like that, the PS3 generation was a bad time for JRPGs, especially with the Japanese feeling the need to westernize their games "
This is when everything fall down and games looks not fun to play anymore except for few games like demon and dark souls for example
Nah. It's a bad trilogy of games
The only reason XIII-2 stands out is because XIII was so bad
When the bar is so low, anything after feels better.
Watching the credits roll on ff16 now it is good but , I'd really like to re try ff13 least it's turn based and would fill that gap for me.
They got better after the first one in the trilogy, not outstanding game though.
Honestly, I played FFXIII a few years after release and maybe because it was after the hype cycle and I knew the flaws of the game, it actually became my favorite FF after VII.
I took off the mini map and never used auto battle and the stuff that mattered to me in an FF was just so well done.
The art and graphics were insane at the time
The music is still special
The story still lingers in memory more than a decade later
The RPG systems were decent
I never really got the hate for it, still have a soft spot for that game inside me.
Only gripe I have with Ar Tonelico 3 is that Saki is annoying as hell whether English or in Japanese. Then Saki's English voice actor became Ionasal on Ar Nosurge she was a little annoying but not as bad. Johnny Young Bosch voicing Tatsumi I thought he did a great job. And Akiko Shikata with her vocals and the music from the games just went hand and hand.
Twinfinite: "During the PS3’s tenure, plenty of huge games launched, but the interesting thing is, many of the system’s rarer titles are largely not amazing games. Sure, there are one or two exceptions to that rule (I’m looking at you Ni No Kuni!), but many of the more desirable and valuable games in the PS3’s library are usually rare for a reason."
Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
Sold my Painkiller for around £3 years ago and my Asuras Wrath for even less. Managed to pick up Lollipop Chainsaw and Splatterhouse again but they cost me a fair bit more than I initially paid on release when I first bought them.
Wish I bought Godzilla, the number of times I saw it in the game store for the price of a coffee and didn't bother.
i own nba, lolipop and nino kuni. never heard of the rest tbf xD surprised they are worth that much, for what they actually are.
Getting a valuable game is all luck.. I had three of these. Africa is one that people might have seen coming, but otherslike Ni No Kuni wouldn't have been.
My most valuable game I remember owning was Conkers Bad Fur Day. When the game was being re-released on Xbox (remake/ upgrade if you will), the price dropped dramatically. Once the game released and the changes were seen, the value went back up. Then it was released on Rare Replay and value dropped again. 2020 hit and all collectables shot up along with Conker. Before stopping around $110 which it currently is.
Games change all the time because their digital media that can be reproduced even in weird contract bindings (GoldenEye as an example). One day it can be worth $300 and the next $150. The shrink wrapped items in mint condition cannot be reproduced.. but that takes strength to spend, not open, and hope its worth something.
Right proper jrpg, e'nt it?
Awww knickers! knickers! Knickers!
this game is almost flawless imo, my only tidy gripe(pun intended) is some minor flaws with the combat system but other than that it is nigh on perfect!
Personally, I think the combat is flawless for the game it is in (once you get used to using the triggers for menus) but I do have a beef with the graphics. In hind sight, it was a bad idea to use cel shading. They should have gone with more traditional shading, and a painted look, and the Ghibli style would have shined!