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Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom (for PC) Review

Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom is a heartwarming adventure that resurrects the wonder and chibi-world aesthetic of classic role-playing games like Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy.

Developed by Level-5 in collaboration with former Studio Ghibli character designer Yoshiyuki Momose and composer Joe Hisashi, Ni No Kuni II is an audio-visual treat that leads you through a world seemingly crafted from a child's imagination.

Unfortunately, this $59.99
PC game has some frame rate issues and doesn't offer many challenges.

A Union of Kingdoms

Four major countries comprise Ni No Kuni II's open world, with each nation boasting distinct cultures, music, and persons of interest.

There's a steampunk, America-inspired land, an Asian-like country, a sinking Greek-styled city, and the fairytale kingdom of Ding Dong Dell.

The protagonist, boy-king Evan Pettiwhisker Tildrum, is driven from Ding Dong Dell by Lord Mausinger, a former high-ranking official within the kingdom.

While some kingdoms are more fleshed out than others, most feel large and full of life, with new things to do every time you visit them in your quest to unite the regions.

When visiting these ally nations, you can pick up side-quests, buy weapons and armor, deliver take-out to hungry people, and cook up new recipes native to those regions.

You can recruit the citizens into the hero's new nation upon completing those tasks.

King Evan and his motley crew of protectors venture off into the game's overworld to claim a large swath of land to build the fifth major nation, Evermore, and prevent the main antagonist, Doloran, from committing evil acts.

Thus begins the Kingdom Management game mechanic.

Kingdom Management is addicting in the same way that mobile gaming is addicting.

It's a revolving door of level-ups, research completes, and citizen recruitment.

Think Farmville, except with a castle and Higgledies, magical creatures who assist you in combat, instead of livestock.

The process is repetitive, but entertaining.

Most minor characters you encounter in your adventures can be recruited into your kingdom, and they have accompanying citizen cards to help you know where to put them to work in the various facilities.

One may excel at War, while another has strong Ingenuity.

Their skills help you build armor and weapons, as well as expand Evermore's scope.

The process is not entirely unlike the recruitment and construction system in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain
.

The Kingdom Management system is directly tied to the real-time battle system, so the bigger and better your kingdom, the more party-customization options become available.

At several points in the game, your kingdom's level, number of citizens, and building count affects your progression through the main narrative.

For instance, you might need a certain population count to upgrade your kingdom in order to level up your spell shop.

The spells you learn there trigger the next story event.

My only Kingdom Management lament is the lack of customization.

When it comes to city-building games, I want to make my own mark on the world.

Ni No Kuni II's Kingdom Management has zero customization; you don't decide where buildings are placed or what their appearances are.

You can only select where citizens work in the kingdom, and how much you want to level up each establishment.

Even the PlayStation 2's Dark Cloud, which offered a very similar build-your-kingdom objective, let you decide where to build structures.

While you couldn't directly customize the buildings in Dark Cloud, you could customize the neighborhoods and make choices that impacted the citizens' happiness and production.

That level of immersion just isn't present in Ni No Kuni II's Kingdom Management system.

A Storybook World

Ni No Kuni II is a tale of royalty and heroism, but what immediately hooks you is the splendor of its sights and sounds.

The game's graphical style is inspired by Japanese animation house Ghibli Studios, the company that helped craft Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch's wondrous graphics (though Ghibli didn't return for this sequel).

The moment you step into the overworld and behold the Rolling Hills' floating islands, you're transported to a fantasy world in a way that few other games can accomplish.

Likewise, the impressive score adds to the spirit of adventure.

Hydropolis, a city built on the sea, has a theme that's romantic, wistful, and just a bit gothic—the song of a tragic city sinking into the ocean.

Furthermore, the overworld has an epic soaring sound that compels you to explore all the secret nooks and crannies hidden in the landscape.

And the battle music, which varies by region and story events, increases tension, keeps you pumped, and reflects the musicality of a fantasy world at war.

Melodic writing flows through the dialogue, plot points, and the flavor text.

Major and minor characters are thoughtful beings who react to the world's changing events, and boast their own backstories, manners of speaking, and distinct voices.

For example, Batu, the air pirate, and Roland, the dimension-traveling president, frequently butt heads and clearly dislike each other.

And much to their childish embarrassment, King Evan, and Tani (Batu's daughter) must pretend to be in love to save a city which has outlawed public displays of affection.

While most quests are fetch errands, there's always funny, delicious writing accompanying them to lessen the blow of the simplistic chores.

Some Storybook Woes

Unfortunately, King Evan gets lost in a sea of well-crafted characters and suffers an occasionally cliched story.

His wide-eyed naivete and innocence, while sweet at first, proves grating over time.

Plus, King Evan's repetitive catchphrases may be enough to make you pull your hair out over the course of Ni No Kuni II's more than 60 hours of gameplay.

Roland, the time-traveling president and the character you control in most of the opening chapter, is a far more compelling character.

In fact, you may want to choose to play as Roland for the entire game, as he carries an air of mystery.

Who is he, where did he come from, and will he be going home?

Although, Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch is praised for its storybook aesthetic, that same quality hinders this sequel, as it skirts the line between invoking wonder and being childish.

Case in point: the unlikely duo, Roland and Evan, and their overly helpful party of noblemen and warriors, forge a path made from good intentions to achieve their goal of simply living happily ever after.

That's it.

Evan's mission is simplistic, and never develops past that blissful and innocent stage.

At some level, the game is aware of this, as Revenant Kingdom's supporting characters frequently warn Evan that everlasting peace is a hopeless mission.

Sadly, anything bad, evil, or wrong is chalked up to being corrupted by the world's big baddie.

Doloran, the main antagonist, taints all the nation leaders so that he can steal their Kingmakers, mythical creatures that legitimize rulers' claims in the world.

His goal is to resurrect the Horned One, the greatest kingmaker of all.

As in the Lord of the Rings, morality is a simple black or white affair with no shades of gray.

This is in stark contrast to Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch, which opened with the main character, Oliver, traveling to Ding Dong Dell from a 1950's-style Earth to save his dying mother with the help and guidance of a rude fairy.

Both stories are idealistic, sure, but Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch has a far deeper and more intimate narrative than Ni No Kuni II.

The Higgledy Factor

In a departure from Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch, Revenant Kingdom's Higgledies support your party in battle, not familiars.

Higgledies, beyond being plain adorable, come in handy during the real-time battles.

Unlike familiars, Higgledies aren't directly controlled.

Instead, you activate them when your character is within enemy range.

When activated, a Higgledy performs a singular skill, such as healing your party, attacking enemies with fire balls, or my favorite, building a mini-cannon for ranged attacks.

With Kingdom Management, you can nurture existing Higgledies, create new ones, or find them in the game world.

Higgledies are numerous, with each showcasing a personality that lets you develop an attack strategy.

You should have a team with a mix of Higgledy personalities, because the creatures choose when to help you during battles.

If one's outgoing, it may ask to be activated far more often than a shy one.

Overall, Higgledies are a fun deviation from the Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch formula.

Difficulty and Real-Time Battle System

There will always be a swordsman, a hammerer, a spearman, a pistolier, a spellcaster, and an archer.

These classes represent the potential combatants in your party, as well as the troops available to fight in Skirmishes (more on those in a bit).

Due to this mix of close- and long-range warriors, it's relatively easy to create a varied and unique party.

The real-time battle system kicks in when you encounter enemies in the thankfully not-repetitive dungeons, or when you square off against overworld foes.

The switch is nearly seamless, and the battle mechanics are a lot of fun, easy to learn, and accommodate a wide variety of playstyles.

Unfortunately, enemies are too easy to defeat.

About halfway through the game, I discovered that long-range attacks could be powered up, but because I was basically killing enemies with one or two shots, I never needed to use the attack boost.

Most common enemies, up to 10 ranks higher than your party's current level, are pretty easy to defeat via button mashing.

Thankfully, there are dozens of tougher opponents, known as Tainted Monsters, that are wreathed in the same evil, purple energy that envelopes everything in the world.

When you encounter a Tainted Monster, the game auto-saves and then drags your party into an interdimensional arena to face the super-powered versions of common-place monsters.

Occasionally, defeating Tainted Monsters is mandatory for completing certain quests.

In similar fashion, Dreamer Doors
tiered dungeons with challenging monsters and special mechanicsup the difficulty.

Dreamer Doors and Tainted Monsters are solutions to Revenant Kingdom's difficulty issue, but you can still defeat them with ease if your squad is over-leveled.

The most interesting real-time battle system implementation appears when you battle rogue Kingmakers.

These can be defeated with the help of special Higgledies that perform situationally unique attacks, such as forming a Gatling gun that you aim and shoot.

It makes for an entertaining experience, and you might die a few times before figuring out the best strategy to defeat some of the more difficult Kingmakers.

Your own Kingmaker, Lofty, a silly little creature with a bastardized Scottish accent, supports your squad with buffs.

A Tale of Two Chibis: Skirmishes

Skirmishes are a specific game mode in which Evermore's armies face off against bandits, accompany couriers through the overworld littered with monsters, or perform mock battle exercises against allied nations.

While a promising idea due to the kingdom-building mechanic on which the game sits, Skirmishes can get super irritating as Evan leads his troops into battle, breaking down walls, defeating combatants, and sieging command posts.

That's it.

There's not a lot of variation.

Skirmish opponents are usually bandits or monsters, and it seems like a missed opportunity for a game about kingdoms.

It would've been cool if Skirmishes allowed face-offs against rival kingdoms or the ability to siege strongholds to add to your demesne.

The worst part about Skirmishes is that your armies' ranks are separate from your party or kingdom levels.

That means a lot of grind, and since armies don't share experience, you'll probably play with the same one the entire game.

That said, Skirmishes are worthwhile battles, especially in the early stages of Evermore's development, as each victory awards King's Gold, or KG.

Early in the game, before your coffers are built up, this can be really helpful.

My Kingdom, My Kingdom for a PC Port!

Ni No Kuni II mostly runs well on PC, with nary a crash or gameplay glitch in sight.

The keyboard controls are a little unintuitive, but thankfully Revenant Kingdom offers full controller support.

The biggest issue with the game is that even on a PC that surpasses the recommended specs, Revenant Kingdom suffers frame-rate hiccups.

The game's Steam page recommends that your PC pack at least the Windows 10 operating system, 4GB RAM, 40GB of storage, an Intel Core i54460 or AMD FX-6300 CPU, and either a Nvidia GeForce GTX 750 or an ATI Radeon R7 260 GPU.

My gaming laptop, which has an Intel Core i5-4440 CPU and a Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 GPU, produced frame rates that dipped beneath 30 frames per second on the overworld and during Skirmishes.

Outside of those areas, however, the game ran close to 60 frames per second in my testing.

A Near-Classic RPG

Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom takes a relaxing and delightful journey through nostalgia town, making its classic RPG forefathers proud in the process.

In a sea of realistic games, Ni No Kuni II is an enchanting stand-out fantasy, with fairy-tale-like graphics, humorous writing, and engaging game mechanics.

If you're looking for a challenging experience, you'll probably want to skip this game.

But if you're new to RPGs, want to share this whimsical experience with young gamers, or simply seek an light adventure through a beautiful world, Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom is a worthwhile purchase.

Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom (for PC)

Pros

  • Engaging real-time combat system.

  • Breathtaking graphics and soundtrack.

  • Magical world to explore.

  • Humorous story, with (mostly) lovable characters.

Cons

  • Frame rate issues in testing.

  • Monsters don't pose a challenge until more than halfway through the game.

  • Simplistic character morality.

  • Skirmishes require some grinding.

Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom is a heartwarming adventure that resurrects the wonder and chibi-world aesthetic of classic role-playing games like Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy.

Developed by Level-5 in collaboration with former Studio Ghibli character designer Yoshiyuki Momose and composer Joe Hisashi, Ni No Kuni II is an audio-visual treat that leads you through a world seemingly crafted from a child's imagination.

Unfortunately, this $59.99
PC game has some frame rate issues and doesn't offer many challenges.

A Union of Kingdoms

Four major countries comprise Ni No Kuni II's open world, with each nation boasting distinct cultures, music, and persons of interest.

There's a steampunk, America-inspired land, an Asian-like country, a sinking Greek-styled city, and the fairytale kingdom of Ding Dong Dell.

The protagonist, boy-king Evan Pettiwhisker Tildrum, is driven from Ding Dong Dell by Lord Mausinger, a former high-ranking official within the kingdom.

While some kingdoms are more fleshed out than others, most feel large and full of life, with new things to do every time you visit them in your quest to unite the regions.

When visiting these ally nations, you can pick up side-quests, buy weapons and armor, deliver take-out to hungry people, and cook up new recipes native to those regions.

You can recruit the citizens into the hero's new nation upon completing those tasks.

King Evan and his motley crew of protectors venture off into the game's overworld to claim a large swath of land to build the fifth major nation, Evermore, and prevent the main antagonist, Doloran, from committing evil acts.

Thus begins the Kingdom Management game mechanic.

Kingdom Management is addicting in the same way that mobile gaming is addicting.

It's a revolving door of level-ups, research completes, and citizen recruitment.

Think Farmville, except with a castle and Higgledies, magical creatures who assist you in combat, instead of livestock.

The process is repetitive, but entertaining.

Most minor characters you encounter in your adventures can be recruited into your kingdom, and they have accompanying citizen cards to help you know where to put them to work in the various facilities.

One may excel at War, while another has strong Ingenuity.

Their skills help you build armor and weapons, as well as expand Evermore's scope.

The process is not entirely unlike the recruitment and construction system in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain
.

The Kingdom Management system is directly tied to the real-time battle system, so the bigger and better your kingdom, the more party-customization options become available.

At several points in the game, your kingdom's level, number of citizens, and building count affects your progression through the main narrative.

For instance, you might need a certain population count to upgrade your kingdom in order to level up your spell shop.

The spells you learn there trigger the next story event.

My only Kingdom Management lament is the lack of customization.

When it comes to city-building games, I want to make my own mark on the world.

Ni No Kuni II's Kingdom Management has zero customization; you don't decide where buildings are placed or what their appearances are.

You can only select where citizens work in the kingdom, and how much you want to level up each establishment.

Even the PlayStation 2's Dark Cloud, which offered a very similar build-your-kingdom objective, let you decide where to build structures.

While you couldn't directly customize the buildings in Dark Cloud, you could customize the neighborhoods and make choices that impacted the citizens' happiness and production.

That level of immersion just isn't present in Ni No Kuni II's Kingdom Management system.

A Storybook World

Ni No Kuni II is a tale of royalty and heroism, but what immediately hooks you is the splendor of its sights and sounds.

The game's graphical style is inspired by Japanese animation house Ghibli Studios, the company that helped craft Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch's wondrous graphics (though Ghibli didn't return for this sequel).

The moment you step into the overworld and behold the Rolling Hills' floating islands, you're transported to a fantasy world in a way that few other games can accomplish.

Likewise, the impressive score adds to the spirit of adventure.

Hydropolis, a city built on the sea, has a theme that's romantic, wistful, and just a bit gothic—the song of a tragic city sinking into the ocean.

Furthermore, the overworld has an epic soaring sound that compels you to explore all the secret nooks and crannies hidden in the landscape.

And the battle music, which varies by region and story events, increases tension, keeps you pumped, and reflects the musicality of a fantasy world at war.

Melodic writing flows through the dialogue, plot points, and the flavor text.

Major and minor characters are thoughtful beings who react to the world's changing events, and boast their own backstories, manners of speaking, and distinct voices.

For example, Batu, the air pirate, and Roland, the dimension-traveling president, frequently butt heads and clearly dislike each other.

And much to their childish embarrassment, King Evan, and Tani (Batu's daughter) must pretend to be in love to save a city which has outlawed public displays of affection.

While most quests are fetch errands, there's always funny, delicious writing accompanying them to lessen the blow of the simplistic chores.

Some Storybook Woes

Unfortunately, King Evan gets lost in a sea of well-crafted characters and suffers an occasionally cliched story.

His wide-eyed naivete and innocence, while sweet at first, proves grating over time.

Plus, King Evan's repetitive catchphrases may be enough to make you pull your hair out over the course of Ni No Kuni II's more than 60 hours of gameplay.

Roland, the time-traveling president and the character you control in most of the opening chapter, is a far more compelling character.

In fact, you may want to choose to play as Roland for the entire game, as he carries an air of mystery.

Who is he, where did he come from, and will he be going home?

Although, Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch is praised for its storybook aesthetic, that same quality hinders this sequel, as it skirts the line between invoking wonder and being childish.

Case in point: the unlikely duo, Roland and Evan, and their overly helpful party of noblemen and warriors, forge a path made from good intentions to achieve their goal of simply living happily ever after.

That's it.

Evan's mission is simplistic, and never develops past that blissful and innocent stage.

At some level, the game is aware of this, as Revenant Kingdom's supporting characters frequently warn Evan that everlasting peace is a hopeless mission.

Sadly, anything bad, evil, or wrong is chalked up to being corrupted by the world's big baddie.

Doloran, the main antagonist, taints all the nation leaders so that he can steal their Kingmakers, mythical creatures that legitimize rulers' claims in the world.

His goal is to resurrect the Horned One, the greatest kingmaker of all.

As in the Lord of the Rings, morality is a simple black or white affair with no shades of gray.

This is in stark contrast to Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch, which opened with the main character, Oliver, traveling to Ding Dong Dell from a 1950's-style Earth to save his dying mother with the help and guidance of a rude fairy.

Both stories are idealistic, sure, but Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch has a far deeper and more intimate narrative than Ni No Kuni II.

The Higgledy Factor

In a departure from Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch, Revenant Kingdom's Higgledies support your party in battle, not familiars.

Higgledies, beyond being plain adorable, come in handy during the real-time battles.

Unlike familiars, Higgledies aren't directly controlled.

Instead, you activate them when your character is within enemy range.

When activated, a Higgledy performs a singular skill, such as healing your party, attacking enemies with fire balls, or my favorite, building a mini-cannon for ranged attacks.

With Kingdom Management, you can nurture existing Higgledies, create new ones, or find them in the game world.

Higgledies are numerous, with each showcasing a personality that lets you develop an attack strategy.

You should have a team with a mix of Higgledy personalities, because the creatures choose when to help you during battles.

If one's outgoing, it may ask to be activated far more often than a shy one.

Overall, Higgledies are a fun deviation from the Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch formula.

Difficulty and Real-Time Battle System

There will always be a swordsman, a hammerer, a spearman, a pistolier, a spellcaster, and an archer.

These classes represent the potential combatants in your party, as well as the troops available to fight in Skirmishes (more on those in a bit).

Due to this mix of close- and long-range warriors, it's relatively easy to create a varied and unique party.

The real-time battle system kicks in when you encounter enemies in the thankfully not-repetitive dungeons, or when you square off against overworld foes.

The switch is nearly seamless, and the battle mechanics are a lot of fun, easy to learn, and accommodate a wide variety of playstyles.

Unfortunately, enemies are too easy to defeat.

About halfway through the game, I discovered that long-range attacks could be powered up, but because I was basically killing enemies with one or two shots, I never needed to use the attack boost.

Most common enemies, up to 10 ranks higher than your party's current level, are pretty easy to defeat via button mashing.

Thankfully, there are dozens of tougher opponents, known as Tainted Monsters, that are wreathed in the same evil, purple energy that envelopes everything in the world.

When you encounter a Tainted Monster, the game auto-saves and then drags your party into an interdimensional arena to face the super-powered versions of common-place monsters.

Occasionally, defeating Tainted Monsters is mandatory for completing certain quests.

In similar fashion, Dreamer Doors
tiered dungeons with challenging monsters and special mechanicsup the difficulty.

Dreamer Doors and Tainted Monsters are solutions to Revenant Kingdom's difficulty issue, but you can still defeat them with ease if your squad is over-leveled.

The most interesting real-time battle system implementation appears when you battle rogue Kingmakers.

These can be defeated with the help of special Higgledies that perform situationally unique attacks, such as forming a Gatling gun that you aim and shoot.

It makes for an entertaining experience, and you might die a few times before figuring out the best strategy to defeat some of the more difficult Kingmakers.

Your own Kingmaker, Lofty, a silly little creature with a bastardized Scottish accent, supports your squad with buffs.

A Tale of Two Chibis: Skirmishes

Skirmishes are a specific game mode in which Evermore's armies face off against bandits, accompany couriers through the overworld littered with monsters, or perform mock battle exercises against allied nations.

While a promising idea due to the kingdom-building mechanic on which the game sits, Skirmishes can get super irritating as Evan leads his troops into battle, breaking down walls, defeating combatants, and sieging command posts.

That's it.

There's not a lot of variation.

Skirmish opponents are usually bandits or monsters, and it seems like a missed opportunity for a game about kingdoms.

It would've been cool if Skirmishes allowed face-offs against rival kingdoms or the ability to siege strongholds to add to your demesne.

The worst part about Skirmishes is that your armies' ranks are separate from your party or kingdom levels.

That means a lot of grind, and since armies don't share experience, you'll probably play with the same one the entire game.

That said, Skirmishes are worthwhile battles, especially in the early stages of Evermore's development, as each victory awards King's Gold, or KG.

Early in the game, before your coffers are built up, this can be really helpful.

My Kingdom, My Kingdom for a PC Port!

Ni No Kuni II mostly runs well on PC, with nary a crash or gameplay glitch in sight.

The keyboard controls are a little unintuitive, but thankfully Revenant Kingdom offers full controller support.

The biggest issue with the game is that even on a PC that surpasses the recommended specs, Revenant Kingdom suffers frame-rate hiccups.

The game's Steam page recommends that your PC pack at least the Windows 10 operating system, 4GB RAM, 40GB of storage, an Intel Core i54460 or AMD FX-6300 CPU, and either a Nvidia GeForce GTX 750 or an ATI Radeon R7 260 GPU.

My gaming laptop, which has an Intel Core i5-4440 CPU and a Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 GPU, produced frame rates that dipped beneath 30 frames per second on the overworld and during Skirmishes.

Outside of those areas, however, the game ran close to 60 frames per second in my testing.

A Near-Classic RPG

Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom takes a relaxing and delightful journey through nostalgia town, making its classic RPG forefathers proud in the process.

In a sea of realistic games, Ni No Kuni II is an enchanting stand-out fantasy, with fairy-tale-like graphics, humorous writing, and engaging game mechanics.

If you're looking for a challenging experience, you'll probably want to skip this game.

But if you're new to RPGs, want to share this whimsical experience with young gamers, or simply seek an light adventure through a beautiful world, Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom is a worthwhile purchase.

Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom (for PC)

Pros

  • Engaging real-time combat system.

  • Breathtaking graphics and soundtrack.

  • Magical world to explore.

  • Humorous story, with (mostly) lovable characters.

Cons

  • Frame rate issues in testing.

  • Monsters don't pose a challenge until more than halfway through the game.

  • Simplistic character morality.

  • Skirmishes require some grinding.

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