Industry Insiders have been providing an important role in the dissemination of information in the gaming scene recently. Tidux is one such insider who provides a little bit of accurate information from time to time. Recently taking to Twitter, Tidux teased followers with the following four tweets, “Oh got a hint for y’all this afternoon, #PS4 #Exclusive”, “3rd party studio.”, “Not a fps” and “And no remake”.

When Twitter user MrPaNtsONhEaD suggested that the game in question might be Ni No Kuni 2, a rumoured sequel to the hugely popular JRPG from Level-5 and Studio Ghibli, Tidux replied, “So @MrPaNtsONhEaD figured it out! #PS4”

However it must be noted that this is not at all official and there’s no evidence to confirm his claims. This can only be confirmed at this time by way of an announcement from Sony or Level-5. As usual take this with a grain of salt but what do you think of this? Would you be interested in a sequel to Ni No Kuni?

[Source]

In a recent interview with 4Gamer, the CEO of development company Level-5 Akihiro Hino hinted that the team has a new game in the works. Indeed, he also said that in the midst of this sluggish era in gaming, Level-5’s newest title will be a fresh game that will please gaming fans across the globe.

“In the midst of a rather sluggish consumer game industry at the moment, I believe that the industry needs a new game,” and added that the team will, “try our best to make a new title that’ll surprise all of you, so please look forward to that.”

Hino isn’t wrong. With the exponential growth of the gaming industry and technology in general, oftentimes in the amount of time it takes to develop a thorough and well-crafted game, technology has already advanced to the point where there is a more high-tech option available. Nonetheless, this is Level 5 which brought us compelling games like Ni no Kuni and Dark Cloud. What could they have in store? Wait and watch, as usual.

Senior Vice-President at Namco Bandai Games Europe Olivier Comte stated that, “We are very proud to join our partner, LEVEL-5, to announce that the critically acclaimed role-playing game series, Ni no Kuni, has approximately reached the 1.4 million units sold worldwide. The franchise has been very well received in EMEA and as a result of its quality, has reached an amazing number of sales for a JRPG.”

Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch tells the story of a boy who travels between two different worlds on a quest to rescue his mother. The game not only features cut-scenes animated by Studio Ghibli (of Spirited Away fame), but a soundtrack from Joe Hisaishi. Check out review here.

But hold up, you say. You’re talking about the handhelds and the HD consoles, you say, and that’s all well and good… but what about the Wii? What about the Wii indeed. Whereas I am of the opinion that three supremely high quality JRPGs at the tail end of its lifespan don’t make up for the drought that it too otherwise suffered, I acknowledge that the sheer brilliance of Xenoblade and The Last Story cannot be denied. And that’s fine. But this editorial is not about them. This editorial is talking about the unfulfilled promise of the HD JRPG, something which the Wii, and as a result its games, are patently not.

As far as HD JRPGs go, we haven’t had much luck, then. Except for this rather unique new game developed by two giants of their respective industries, Level 5 and Studio Ghibli. Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch for the Playstation 3 was released recently to general critical acclaim. Our very own Kirk McKeand liked it a fair bit, although he did note problems marring his experience. However, if in reading his review, you were to just look at the cons, or just the score, and then dismiss the game as yet another missed opportunity for an HD JRPG, I think you would be missing the point.

You see, Ni no Kuni is flat out brilliant. It might not out do Xenoblade, or even The Last Story, but it is great, and it is without question the best HD JRPG released till date. With a stunning graphical style that puts it right up there with The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker in terms of charm and timelessness, a sweet story that is as much about helping the daily everyday man as it is about saving the world, some great dialog and voice acting that make the character interactions a pleasure to behold, and some tidy evolutions of age old JRPG designs, it is a game that every fan of role playing games owes it to him or herself to play.

For starters, let’s just focus on the graphics. No picture does them justice. No screenshot captures their beauty. The game in motion is a treat for the eyes, and it looks like an animated cartoon. Like Wind Waker did so many years ago, Ni no Kuni consciously embraces this visual style, and makes it work in service of the story that it is trying to tell. As the game exists, and especially because of its story, Ni no Kuni would not have been the same game without these graphics. It would have lost its charm.

And that same charm is also backed up by the great (albeit repetitive by the end) music and the well written dialog, voiced excellently (with Mr. Drippy especially being a highlight with his Welsh accent). Ni no Kuni, like its protagonist, is a game that brings a smile to your face.

But hell, you don’t care about any of that. I mean, you should, but you don’t. No, you want to know what the catch is. Every HD JRPG looks good. Quite a few of them have great music, and some of them even have good dialog. No, that’s not what you care about. What’s the catch, you ask? No overworld? No towns? Does the battle system suck? All of the above?

And that’s the loveliest part. There is no catch. This game is like the realization of those classic SNES RPGs, in HD. You want a massive overworld? You got it, feel free to explore it at your leisure once the game is done with its (admittedly painfully long) tutorial. You want actual towns and hubs to explore, with people to talk to, and side quest design that doesn’t rival World of Warcraft in its banality? Got you covered there as well. A main quest you won’t lose interest in? Covered, and it’s a long one that constantly keeps you engaged to boot, like the 16 and 32 bit era Square Enix games.

How about the battle system? Take Pokemon, and give us a rudimentary idea of how the battle system could evolve. Yes, it has its problems- controlling too many familiars on the fly becomes difficult, it feels clunky and often degenerates into button mashing, and too many times, the battles drag on too much for their own good.  Ironically for a JRPG, the battle system seems to be the biggest point of contention here. It seems brilliant in concept, but seems to lack in execution somewhat. Oh, it’s still great, but it does introduce problems. It’s not intricate, but it is overwhelming. It’s not turn based, but it’s not real time. It’s an uncomfortable mix, and a lot of the game’s overall problems, such as unexpected difficulty spikes, come from the battle system.

And in spite of all that, it’s still fun to play through. Yeah, it may be frustrating, yeah, it may seem like a flaw, but hey, if you played through Demon’s or Dark Souls and survived, chances are Ni no Kuni won’t bother you.

So does Ni no Kuni do it then? Does it realize the promise of the HD JRPG, a promise made to us eight years ago, but one never fulfilled? The truth is, it doesn’t. It’s still not what, say, Xenoblade HD would be. But you know what? It comes damn close. And if you have any interest in RPGs, you owe it to yourself to play it.

Then it grabbed me by the nipples with its arresting visual flair. The game is the end result of a collaboration between Dark Cloud creators, Level 5 and Studio Ghibli, who are basically the Japanese Disney; creating classic anime films such as Spirited Away.

The Japanese animation inspired visual design feels like injecting a rainbow into your retina, or getting slapped by the ocean on a summer’s day.

Vivid strokes of colour dance across the screen as the characters interact animatedly. The animation, in the Ghibli created cutscenes especially, is remarkable. At times, you actually feel as though you’re inside of a Ghibli classic and you feel like a kid again. (Unless you are a kid and then you’ll just feel like you, I suppose, albeit with a happy eyeball).

One of the things I noticed, and I know it doesn’t sound very impressive on paper/the internet, is how the main character actually has a dedicated animation for descending stairs. The JRPG evolution has arrived! I don’t mean to sell it short (I was actually impressed) as this really is a big deal in a genre more interested in stats, than aesthetics and immersion.

Most JRPG’s are focussed on the aforementioned stats and stories. Ni No Kuni is no different – except the story is much more relatable than your standard JRPG fare. Oliver, a boy of thirteen, lives in small-town America, called Motorville, complete with white picket fences and OCD afflicted gardeners.

The story starts out with its feet firmly planted in the realms of reality and promptly burrowing deeper into the rabbit-hole.

After a traumatic experience in the ‘real world’, Oliver is promptly whisked off to a parallel version of his reality by his stuffed toy, Drippy, who came to life after being activated by the tears of the crying boy.

Drippy claims to be Lord, High Lord of the fairies, in a land called Ni No Kuni, where Oliver may be able to fix the cause of his recent trauma. in the process stopping the evil Shaddar, who is stealing portions of peoples’ hearts.

There are hints throughout, that the fantasy world you’re spirited to, is just that… a fantasy. The experiences faced by the young Oliver, are enough to make anyone retreat into a fabrication in the recesses of their mind. It’s always hinted, but never explicitly stated, making for a more interesting and involving narrative for an inquisitive mind.

The alternate dimension is filled with doppelgangers of the people Oliver knows back in his hometown, and even some of the animals. Also, when he is inside Motorville (as you travel between worlds to overcome certain problems) nobody acknowledges his otherworldy companions.

If Ni No Kuni is a construct of Oliver’s mind, he must have the disposition of an artist.

When you enter the exceptional environment for the first time, you are greeted with vast expanses of green fields and blue skies. Birds fly past, clouds roll across the sky, tracing shadows along the ground beneath your feet. Little traces of light flash across the sky, and the grass sways in the wind. It is the most detailed ‘world map’ I’ve seen in the genre.

It isn’t long after you first enter this lush landscape until you encounter an enemy, who are all visible, and avoidable, in the field. These play out in real time, allowing you free movement on the battlefield so you can make space between yourself and the enemy, evading attacks and setting up abilities. It starts off simply and drip feeds mechanics, sometimes during boss battles, infuriatingly.

As your quest develops, you gain access to a myriad of friendly creatures called Familiars. Each has a specific combat role and gains in experience alongside the antagonist as the game progresses.

As they ‘level up’, they gain access to new skills and can eventually be forced into evolving by feeding them a specific item. When you evolve the creatures it resets their ‘level’ to one, but once they reach the point they were at originally, they will be much more powerful versions of themselves.

In battle, you can only control Oliver or one Familiar/ally at a time. Each Familiar has a timer that ticks down until they eventually pass out from overexertion. This is a means of encouraging you to use your whole arsenal, but is a mixed success. In most of the big battles, you can get through it by running from your enemy as Oliver and firing off spells when they inevitably miss a strike.

As long as you can time your use of the defense command and can top up your MP when it’s low, you can win the majority of the bigger encounters with this tactic. That’s not to say it works on them all, however. In fact, some of the encounters are controller-snappingly infuriating.

The difficulty just sort of ambles along at a steady rate, spikes suddenly and then dips again, dramatically. The frustration only increases in tandem with the number of companions and usable abilities at your disposal.

When it does work though, the battle system feels fresh and hands-on; the free movement adding a layer of involvement into proceedings, especially as you need to keep an eye out for restorative Glims. Glims come in three flavours: blue for magic, green for health and gold to unleash a powerful, character specific ability.

Seeing all the different Familiars’ Miracle Moves (as the Golden Glim attacks are called) is compulsive gaming at its best, and collecting the perfect team of miniature critters is as addicting as it was when a certain game popularised the concept.

You capture them by beating their asses until they love you, and then using one of your allies’ skills to serenade them.

Each Familiar has a star sign and creature type. Each human character has preferred familiar types, and after it’s explained to you, it’s down to you to find the miniature icons representing preferences.

This is the point where I find the game slightly inconsistent: things that should be simple, are sometimes vague, yet the things that could be used to add a layer of thought to the exploration are overly simplified.

As you progress through Ni No Kuni, you meet people who have had their hearts broken by Shaddar, and it’s up to Oliver to fix them. You do this by finding out what it is they’re missing and then finding somebody with an excess of the trait they are lacking.

How do you find what they are lacking/overflowing in, I hear you ask? You find out because the game tells you exactly what you have to do, taking any thought out of the process.

Even when you know what you must do, you can’t pull up the magic menu and do it. Oh no, you have to wait for the game to categorically tell you that it’s time to perform the action.

There are many spells that you can cast in the field: whether to aid you with the completion of a puzzle, or to open up a blocked path. But they can only be used at predetermined moments, negating the need for experimentation.

One thing that does make up for this, however, is in the game’s alchemy. You can conjure up some inspired creations by getting your genie to mix a concoction from your collected items. There will probably be guides available online since the game has been out for a while overseas, but I found it a joy to just tinker with a bit of risk/reward item stirring, instead of letting someone else discover its intricacies for me.

Like a mortar and pestle, the game mixes ingredients both old and new, in an attempt to create a synergy; sticking with traditional JRPG mechanics and introducing a few of its own. It’s a mixed success. It is both brilliant and average, compelling and tedious. Whilst it is at times brilliant, there are just a few minor annoyances holding it back, and in a game with such a long runtime, little irritancies can really start to grate. Not you though Drippy, mun, youer tidy. (That was my best Drippy impression and it wasn’t very good).

It’s very hard to dislike the game just based on pure characterisation. Mr. Drippy manages to make a podium finish as one of the best sidekicks in gaming, and the whole world just oozes personality. So while not quite the evolution I was hoping for, still, an inter-dimensional leap forward for the JRPG, to a parallel world where they were still awesome.

This game was reviewed on the PS3.

Ni no Kuni releases in the West in about a week’s time, but critics that have been playing the game have come across a glitch in the game that destroys your save file already.

45 minutes into the start of the game, players are handed a wand quest. If you save or restore your file around this quest, your save file will be destroyed.

This is a pretty major glitch, so hopefully, Level 5 and Namco Bandai will fix this before the game releases here, because the game itself is ace.

It’s been getting reviews for sometime now, and all have them been pretty positive. It currently holds a Metacritic rating of 87 out of 100.

Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch releases in North America tomorrow, on January 22nd and in Europe on February 1st. Stay tuned for more information.

[Gaming Everything]

Ni no Kuni is almost out here in the west, and it’s gotten one of its first official reviews from a major outlet, that being IGN.

IGN has reviewed the game (you can read it through the hyperlink) and given it an incredible score of 9.4/10.

The review cites many positives, some of them being the “gorgeous, lush graphics”, the “excellent story that’s familiar, yet markedly unique” and the “engrossing battle system that takes influence from two great JRPG series.”

The review also mentions that it takes upward of 40 hours just to beat the main story and many more to do the additional quests. There were next to no negatives cited in the entire review.

“Ni no Kuni is the best JRPG I’ve played in years, and a must-play for an RPG fan with a PlayStation 3,” the reviewer concludes.

Looks like the game is off to a good start.

Stay tuned for more on Ni no Kuni.

Ni no Kuni has gotten one of its first official reviews for its Western release on the PS3 later this month, and Official PlayStation Magazine UK has given it an incredible score of 9/10.

The review praises the game for it’s charisma and charm, saying, “Just as the best kids movies have adults clasping their hands together in delight, Ni No Kuni is blessed with a surplus of charisma that can hold the most joyless, cynical audience in its charms.”

The review also calls Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch “pure, sweet RPG nectar”.

That’s high praise for the game, and we’re hoping that other critics will follow suit.

Level 5 recently said that Ni no Kuni can be considered a restoration of the conventional JRPG genre. See the full story here.

Another review score for the game has also been revealed.

Stay tuned for more updates.

[OPM]

Level 5’s CEO Akihiro Hino says that Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch will be a more conventional and orthodox take on the JRPG, and that Ni no Kuni will be like a restoration for that specific genre.

“I’d say Japanese RPGs tend to cater to players who are not skilled at action games and prefer to have command systems that allow them time to strategize, as well as those who enjoy stories that are similar to reading novels,” Hino told IGN. “So for fans of Western RPG, such JRPGs might seem somewhat antiquated.”

He went on to talk about Ni no Kuni and its own design philosphy. “Ni no Kuni is a title that cherishes the so-called fundamentals that makes RPGs interesting,” he said. “Perhaps you will find this orthodox approach a refreshing change from the many overly-individualistic titles that make up the bulk of the market in recent years.”

“We have included elements that create the true charm of RPGs in abundance,” he continued. “The excitement of stepping foot into a new area of the map; the sense of achievement from clearing tough battles and missions; the joy of exploration or discovering new items; the mixed emotions of meeting and then parting ways with a huge array of characters, and so on.

“So perhaps it actually could be considered a restoration or reformation of an RPG from the good old days.”

Get all information on Ni no Kuni here.

“Inazuma Eleven does not violate Sega’s patents,” says the notice. Level-5 has also mentioned that the  touch pen controls were also used before Sega filed for these patents.

“As a result of examining these discrepancies,” Level-5 stated, “we’ve concluded that there is no patent violation.”

“While Inazuma Eleven does not violate Sega’s patent, we do recognize that Sega’s lawsuit could restrict choices in gaming from here on out as well as hindering the growth of the game industry.”

So there you have it. Level-5 actually believes that this law suit by Sega could actually hinder the growth of the industry. It is question 900 million Yen which is probably a massive amount of money for Level-5.  We will keep you updated on how this pans out.

Stay tuned to GamingBolt.com for more news and updates.

Via Kotaku.