Ni No Kuni

Ni No Kuni (literally translated as "The Second Country" or "The Another World") is a Japanese video game made by renowned animator, Hayao Miyazaki.

For those of you who don't know, Hayao Miyazaki is a famous anime (Japanese style of animation) artist. He did Howl's Moving Castle, Spirited Away, and, more recently, The Secret World of Arietty. His stuff is usually out in Japan first, with an English dub released a few months later. Because of the delay, the western version of this game was released only last month, and I played it for the first time yesterday.

As far as I know, Hayao Miyazaki played a big role in the plotting for the game. When he writes the story, it's kind of a hit or miss. As a writer, Miyazaki is wildly creative, so sometimes we get these incredible stories (Castle in the Sky, Spirited Away) but then sometimes his imagination is just overflowing, and we get movies like Nausicaa, which are just trippy and weird. So I was a little worried at first, but after playing it, I realized that Ni No Kuni is most definitely a hit.

It's kind of like Zelda meets Pokemon. In the game, you play as a little boy named Oliver. His favorite stuffed animal, Mr. Drippy, comes to life one day and takes you to Ni No Kuni, a parallel universe where every person has an opposite. Once there, Mr. Drippy tells you that you have to learn to be a master wizard so you can defeat Shadar, and evil sorcerer who has been stealing bits of people's hearts. There's only one problem: the book that you're supposed to use to learn how to be a wizard, the Wizard's Companion, is missing nearly all the pages. So you have to go questing around this new universe to find the pages, fight bosses, and give people back pieces of their hearts.

It has the basic journey platform of Zelda (minus the puzzles, which I like. I can't play Zelda because I'm not smart enough to figure those stupid puzzles) and the companion idea of Pokemon. In the game, there are little creatures called "familiars" which you can tame and then send out into battle for you. Also like Pokemon, you can evolve these to be better fighters. In a fight, you can play as one of your familiars, or you can play as Oliver, which means you get to cast spells. When you get companions to travel with you, you can play as them, too.

The game also has really great controls. I know that's not something most people consider, but there are some games I refuse to play because the controls are so weird and I always lose because I'm trying to figure them out. Ni No Kuni's controls actually make sense though, so you can spend your time fighting evil wizards and not trying to figure out which button is attack.

Some other cool features: The game includes little videos done in Miyazaki's traditional 2D animation style (the game is usually done in a 3D sort of animation) so it's like an interactive Miyazaki film! Also, the familiars are awesome. You can name them whatever you want, (we have one named Jaques) you can buy special weapons for them, which will increase the damage their attack does (we just got metal talons for Zaboomafoo, he's unstoppable) and when one familiar gets experience, all of the familiars in your reserve do, too (which makes upgrading them a lot easier.)

The only drawback of Ni No Kuni is that it's only available on Playstation 3 or Nintendo DS (sorry Xbox owners.) But if you have either of these systems, I highly recommend you pick up this game. You may have to order it off Amazon because I don't think it's very popular in the West, but it's totally worth it! It has a amazing story, great characters, awesome game play, and the animation is adorable!