Ni no Kuni II is out today, and it’s easy enough that you probably won’t need much strategy to get through the story. But it’s also got some unique systems, including an elaborate kingdom-building feature that can be a little overwhelming. Here are some tips on how to get the most out of the whole game.
Don’t just blaze from story point to story point
Ni no Kuni II rewards exploration, and its world map is full of optional caves, forests, and dungeons. You’ll never regret taking the time between main missions to go explore and see what weird things you can find out in the world.
Don’t worry about levels too much
Ni no Kuni II’s combat system is a lot of fun, but it can also be a little easy. The good news is that because it’s easy, you won’t have a hard time dealing with enemies that are five, eight, or even ten levels higher than you. Between each chapter, you’ll see massive level hikes, and suddenly all of the enemies you’re about to fight will have light or dark red names, signifying that they’re way higher than you. Don’t stress about having to go grind somewhere—you don’t. You should be able to take on enemies way above your pay grade, and even if you can’t yet, just a single level or two can make all the difference.
Don’t worry about all the items, either
Ni no Kuni II is full of items, and as you progress, you’ll collect hundreds of objects ranging from pebbles to leather to eggs. Managing and sorting them all can be a real pain, but you don’t have to stress over that. Just collect everything you can, and only pay attention to what you’ve got when you need it. Don’t sell anything—you’ll need all those random items for quests, upgrades, and recruiting—but don’t worry about managing your inventory too much, either. Be a hoarder.
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Pick three characters and stick with them
You’ll get six party members throughout Ni no Kuni II, and it’s impractical to try to master them all. Each character uses three weapons at once, and weapons overlap—Roland and Evan both wield swords, for example—so keeping all six characters optimally equipped can be a chore. Your best bet is to pick a party of your favorite three and just stick with them.
Conserve healing items in battle
Ni no Kuni II has an interesting system for healing. When you’re on the map, you can collect and use as many healing items as you want. But in battle, each of those healing items has a limited use. For example, you can only use the basic healing item Soreaway ten times in any given battle, no matter how many are in your inventory. During longer battles, you’ll want to be conservative and try to get healing from your Higgledies before relying on items.
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Visit every town after a new chapter
Brand new side quests will pop up in each major city after every chapter, so if you want to keep doing chores for people in order to get them to join your kingdom, you’ll want to be meticulous about revisiting cities. Look for blue exclamation points on the map every time you travel.
Do as many side quests as you want
Just because they exist doesn’t mean you have to do them. If you don’t feel like delivering meals around a city or helping someone figure out how they lost their wallet, there’s no harm in skipping those particular exclamation points. But you should...
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Prioritize quests that lead to recruits
The most useful side quests are the ones that get you new citizens in Evermore. On the side quest menu, these will have a face to the right of the quest name. They’ll also have portraits and character sheets attached, so you can see who you’ll get at the end of the quest.
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Don’t neglect your kingdom
It might be tempting to ignore Evermore’s people in favor of adventure, but if you’re not paying attention to your kingdom, you’re going to hit a wall. At the end of the game, you’ll need a level 4 weapon shop. If you don’t have it, you can’t complete the game. And if you’ve been rushing through Ni no Kuni II without maintaining your city, you’re going to have a miserable time waiting for that weapon shop to finish.
Visit Evermore as often as you can
As real time passes, your citizens will generate kingsguilder and items, but both of those are capped. If your people have gathered 50 items and your cap is 50, you won’t get any more, so you’ll want to go back home and collect all those items ASAP. Otherwise, you’re just wasting precious resources. You can (and should) raise these caps through research. Even then, however, it’s a good idea to stop at Evermore between every quest you do.
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Don’t neglect your army, either
I didn’t enjoy Ni no Kuni II’s clunky real-time-strategy-esque army battles, but at the end of the game your army needs to be around level 20, so even if you’re like me and think the whole system is tedious, play at least a few battles to get your strength up. You can also use Evermore’s Barracks to boost your skills during army battles.
Focus on the Institute of Innovation and Explorer’s Guild first
These are the buildings that let you speed up research, upgrade your coffers, and otherwise enhance your kingdom. They should, of course, be your priority.
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Specialize
There are too many options in Evermore for you to max out your kingdom over the course of a normal playthrough, so it’s best to pick a few directions and stick with them. Keep upgrading your weapons shop, obviously—you need it for the end!—but if you want to focus on Higgledies rather than spells, or items rather than armor, that’s totally up to you.
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Side quests for Evermore residents can get you a LOT of kingsguilder
So keep an eye out for those, and do them as often as possible.
Get the Spring Lock spell as soon as you can
You might assume, based on JRPG trends and the first Ni no Kuni, that all those blue chests you see out in the world will eventually be unlockable with some sort of key you find later in the game. You would be wrong. The way to access those chests is actually an optional spell called Spring Lock that you can research in Evermore’s spell facility. Get it.
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Spin attacks are your best friend
The first thing I do at the start of every battle is use Evan or Roland’s spin attack to take out multiple enemies at once. Then I use it again, and again, pretty much as often as possible. It’s the perfect way to clear out a battlefield.
You can safely ignore the Tactics menu
Ni no Kuni II is easy enough without giving your characters even more advantages, so don’t worry about all those sliders.
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Remember that range attacks use up mana
Mana in Ni no Kuni II, unlike the first game, will recharge naturally as you attack enemies. As you play, you’ll find a rhythm, alternating between melee attacks and spells. Just don’t forget that using ranged attacks also costs mana—something I didn’t realize until halfway through the game, when I wondered why my mana wasn’t recharging.
Dimensional mazes are awesome
As you’re playing through the game, you will stumble upon procedurally generated dimensional mazes with different rulesets than the rest of Ni no Kuni II’s world. These mazes are tense, with no save points or mini-maps, and a timer that ramps up the difficulty level the longer you take. They’re a blast to play through and I recommend doing as many as you can. It’s tempting to wait until later in the game, when you have the airship and can just fly from maze to maze, but that’s a boring way to do it. My advice: Hunt down these mazes and do them all as you progress through the main story.
Ni No Kuni 2: Revenant Kingdom is ambitious. It's a character-driven RPG that doubles as a kingdom simulator and even occasionally becomes a real-time strategy game. Though these components don't always feel like parts of the same whole, Ni No Kuni 2 compels you to care and put your best foot forward. It's the whimsical setting; it's the demanding combat; it's the tangible feeling of growth that comes from being a well-rounded ruler. There's something worthwhile around every corner, and usually something pretty to admire along the way.
You can concisely summarize Ni No Kuni 2 as the wholesome story of Evan, a boy prince ousted by traitors on the day of his coronation who wishes to unite warring nations under a banner of peace. Rather than resort to revenge, he admirably believes that cooperation is a more important goal than domination and sets out to build a new, united kingdom. Evan's charge and passion for peace subsequently carries him from one dangerous doorstep to another. Armed with steadfast ideals, he repeatedly dismantles sinister adversaries because they, too, are actually good at heart; they've merely been corrupted by powerful, dark forces.
It's familiar fantasy fare and a bit safe at times, but Ni No Kuni 2 bears no shortage of interesting moments. For example, Evan's adult consul Roland is a dimension-tripping president from the modern day, cast into a strange time and place in the aftermath of a catastrophic military assault. While this intriguing origin story is rarely referenced after the fact, the kingdoms he and Evan visit offer up interesting qualities of their own. There's Goldpaw, a society that worships lady luck. Her divine power is channeled through a giant multi-armed statue that rolls a six-sided die to decide everything from criminal prosecution to raising or lowering taxes. You'll also have to navigate a kingdom where love in all forms is considered a criminal offense, and every interaction is monitored by an enormous, all-seeing eye. Ni No Kuni 2 dedicates itself to exploring these unusual societies, elevating the otherwise standard RPG tale to something far more interesting that you'd initially expect.
To do this, however, the game is forced to concede that even a king as peaceful as Evan will have to bear arms. And despite his small stature and cuddly kitten ears, Evan is a lion when backed into a corner. Considering his impassioned pleas for a world without war, the game's simple and infrequent RTS skirmishes--large scale, rock-paper-scissor battles that require basic resource management--feel notably contradictory, but standard battles are so flashy and exciting that you'll never think twice about the peace-loving king being in constant battle.
Ni No Kuni 2's traditional combat takes place entirely in real time apart from pausing to consume items, and despite the game's childish airs, fights are surprisingly demanding. Your party consists of three allies and four Higgledies--collectable miniature, goofy familiars that randomly offer buffs and attacks during battle. You only control a single person at a time, but that alone gives you three melee weapons to manage, a ranged weapon, magic skills to consider, and interlinked meters to monitor, on top of defensive concerns. You need to be aware of your surroundings at all times in order to block or dodge incoming attacks--a far cry from the first Ni No Kuni's turn-based battles. Needless to say it can take a few hours to grow comfortable managing all of these systems at once, but you're rarely put at a disadvantage. Your AI-controlled allies are good at self-preservation and dishing out damage, and your Higgledy friends regularly offer up a burst of healing magic or a powerful attack to keep things moving.
Ni No Kuni 2 also does a great job of simplifying things around combat to let you focus on the action at hand. While you can use gear to influence an individual character's strengths and weaknesses, you also earn a secondary type of experience that gets funneled into the Tactics Tweaker, a tool that lets you adjust team-wide attributes and how the game rewards your victories. You have plenty of opportunities to take on quests under-leveled, and being able to slightly dial up your effectiveness against a particular element or enemy type is a valuable means of punching above your weight. When pushing yourself against an enemy 10 to 20 levels higher than you, eking out a victory through clever preparation and a masterful performance can feel downright incredible. The game also smartly limits your inventory during battle, which means you can't rely on spamming restorative items. Only skill (or a leveled-up party) can carry you through a fight.
Given that you can find ways to overcome seemingly impossible odds, you can actually get by without intentionally grinding for experience points. To that end, the game is also designed to keep you from dulling your enthusiasm in unnecessary battles while moving about the world. Enemies appear in plain sight before an encounter with a level marker overhead, and a color denoting their threat level helps you easily discern their relative strength. Red and white labelled enemies will attack you on sight, but low-level enemies will simply ignore you unless you run into them first. Knowing you can bypass trivial fights makes the prospect of exploring the world for elusive treasure and difficult "tainted" enemies more enticing as the story carries on, and ensures that you're only focused on things worthy of your attention.
It's easy to imagine how Ni No Kuni 2 could get by on its quirky characters, engaging story, and real-time combat alone, but Evan isn't just trying to unite other nations; he's got a kingdom of his own to build. From a humble castle nestled between mountains and shore, your parcel of land will grow to contain dozens of buildings and facilities. You'll likely have smiths who craft weapons and armor, farmers that harvest meat, dairy, and produce, and institutions that develop techniques for being a more efficient ruler and a more effective fighter. If resource management and cooldown timers aren't your idea of fun, the good news is that there are only a few instances when the game forces you to reach certain architectural and population thresholds. And while not the most complex management sim out there, anyone who wants to push the limits of their kingdom can easily pour a dozen hours into forging new developments and reaping greater financial and practical rewards.
Ni No Kuni 2 is a robust game that offers ample ways to spend your time, and even if they aren't all up to the same level of quality, it's easy to appreciate how they collectively contribute to the bigger picture.
Everything in your kingdom takes money to fund and time to develop, but more than just investing in these services, you need to staff them with citizens from across the world. This means tackling a lot of sidequests, acquired either by mingling with the populace or by completing tasks for the taskmaster. By and large, sidequests are either a fetch quest or a kill-x-number-of-enemy bounty. These are common fare for RPGs, but nevertheless frustrating to see relied upon so heavily here. On the other hand, Ni No Kuni 2's humorous writing and endearing NPCs shine through, lending something worthwhile to even the most common interactions. They aren't all winners, to be certain, but the distinct accents and colloquialisms spread throughout the world play nicely into the visual variety on display.
In fact, many of the people you meet in passing are actually far more interesting than the four human characters that ultimately join Evan and Roland on the road: a sky-pirate father and his daughter, the former advisor to a queen, and an engineer from the one technologically advanced kingdom on the map. For whatever reason, very little time is spent developing their stories after they join your cause, but even if they offer little more than one-liners during most important events, they are at least invaluable allies in battle that introduce a wide range of skills.
Then there's the small creature Lofty, who while not a deep character, is the game's comic relief and an endless source of amusement. With yellow skin, a pointy head, and a red torso, he's what you might imagine Lisa Simpson looks like if someone described her but forgot to mention she's human. In almost every scene, be it serious or inconsequential, he often lingers just off-center with a dim-witted stare, mouth agape in blind amusement. And when he speaks, he cuts through scenes with wry wit, and even regularly calls out the team for repeatedly taking on errands and doing strangers favors. He is a massive benefit to the overall experience, even within battle. He primarily wanders aimlessly during a fight, but on rare occasions offers a ball of light that causes a character to enter a temporary state where magic can be used freely. Ni No Kuni 2 wouldn't feel the same without him.
Despite the fact that famed Japanese animation house Studio Ghibli isn't directly involved this time around, veteran artists from the studio have injected the sights and sounds of Ni No Kuni 2 with distinctly recognizable whimsy, of which Lofty is but one example. You see it in the characters and environments at large, and you hear it in the soundtrack composed by Joe Hisaishi, a veteran of numerous Ghibli films and the original Ni No Kuni. The feeling is often upheld by a clean and colorful cartoon aesthetic, but there are also plenty of times when Ni No Kuni 2 shifts into a different and far-less appealing style.
When exploring the world map, managing your kingdom, and diving into RTS skirmishes, the camera pulls back and everything is given a rough-hewn, super-deformed appearance. Though you can bend over backwards and call it a potentially necessary evil, that doesn't excuse the sinking feeling that there must have been a better way, one that doesn't require the game to hide its lovely, cel-shaded face. Near the end of your journey, this shift rears its head during a battle that's intended to feel epic and intimidating, but is ultimately deflated by the simple presentation and impersonal perspective; one last reminder that Ni No Kuni 2, despite its outstanding qualities, bears obvious flaws.
Ni No Kuni 2 is a robust game that offers ample ways to spend your time, and even if they aren't all up to the same level of quality, it's easy to appreciate how they collectively contribute to the bigger picture. It's chock full of excellent battles and surprising moments that make for a far more memorable experience than you initially expect and leaves you impressed by your own accomplishments. If you didn't play the first game, don't let this one pass you by too.
Ni No Kuni 2: Revenant Kingdom is now available, marking the release of another sumptuous RPG from Level-5. Like the first game, there's no shortage of things to do in this Ghibli-inspired adventure, and role-playing games are known for their lengthy playtimes. Now we have a better idea of just how much time you'll put into this trip through Ding Dong Dell.
Our Ni No Kuni 2 review said the game lasted roughly 35 hours, which included a handful of hours devoted solely to developing the kingdom. 100% completion could be roughly double at 70 hours, depending on how much you partake in the optional aspects of the game.
It should be noted that while you have some freedom to pick and choose which quests you do and when, they aren't completely optional. Elements like skirmishes and kingdom building are treated as open-ended but you need to do some of each to level up high enough to access the end-game. Kingdom building is something you can easily spend much more time with, though, if you so wish.
Our review found it charming, with a great soundtrack and a demanding combat system, but we lamented an overreliance on fetch quests and underdeveloped secondary characters. For even more, check out our review roundup.
After suffering a few delays, Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom finally makes its anticipated debut on PS4 and PC this week. Despite being a follow-up to the beloved PS3 RPG, Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch, Revenant Kingdom bears little direct connection to the first game, taking place hundreds of years in the future and following the adventures of Evan Pettiwhisker Tildrum, a deposed boy-king on a journey to form his own kingdom.
The story isn't the only area where Revenant Kingdom diverges from its predecessor. The game features a radically different battle system than the original, eschewing the Pokemon-like familiars of the first Ni No Kuni completely in favor of faster-paced real-time battles. In addition to that, Revenant Kingdom features kingdom building and strategy elements, often tasking players with commanding a small army of troops in RTS-like battles.
While these new elements may not always tie together in a cohesive way, they help set the title apart from its beloved predecessor. They also make it one of the year's most ambitious releases, taking roughly 35 hours to complete by our estimates. In GameSpot's Ni No Kuni II review, critic Peter Brown said the game "compels you to care and put your best foot forward" and features "something worthwhile around every corner, and usually something pretty to admire along the way."
Ahead of its release, other outlets have also started posting reviews of Ni No Kuni II. As usual, we've collected a sample of them below to give you an idea of what critics think about the anticipated JRPG. For a broader look at Ni No Kuni II's critical reception, be sure to visit GameSpot sister site Metacritic.
Game: Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom
Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom Developer: Level-5
Level-5 Platforms: PS4, PC
PS4, PC Release date: March 23
March 23 Price: $60 / £50
GameSpot -- 8/10
"Ni No Kuni 2 is a robust game that offers ample ways to spend your time, and even if they aren't all up to the same level of quality, it's easy to appreciate how they collectively contribute to the bigger picture. It's chock full of excellent battles and surprising moments that make for a far more memorable experience than you initially expect and leaves you impressed by your own accomplishments. If you didn't play the first game, don't let this one pass you by too." -- Peter Brown [Full review]
IGN -- 7.8/10
"Ni No Kuni 2: Revenant Kingdom distinguishes itself from its predecessor by layering fast-paced, real-time combat and an engaging kingdom building system atop more traditional RPG systems and quests. It's a shame it delivers so few truly memorable characters and restricts so much of its storytelling to text on screen, but by the end of Ni No Kuni 2 the broader themes certainly resonate and the 40+ hour journey has been well worth it." -- Cam Shea [Full review]
Polygon -- 9/10
"Ni No Kuni 2 aims for a lot of different targets: world-spanning story, management sim, recruitment game and solid combat experience. Against all odds, it manages to hit them all in a way that very few games in its genre can manage. There's no part of the game that feels more or less important, and there were no moments in the game where I thought I was slogging through exposition or kingdom management to pad hours in my playthrough. There's not a wasted breath or a plot point that doesn't manage to pay off in a significant way. Ni No Kuni 2 is a solid contemporary JRPG that brings a lot of design ideas that I love into sharp, clear focus while staying entertaining and engaging throughout." -- Cameron Kunzelman [Full review]
US Gamer -- 3.5/5
"Ni No Kuni 2 is a sweet-tempered and attractive RPG with a strong castle-building mechanic, but it's dragged down by a jarringly ugly overworld, mandatory fetch quests, and a lot of padding. It's a pleasant throwback for fans of the genre, but it ultimately fails to meet the high bar set by other big-budget JRPGs." -- Kat Bailey [Full review]
Game Informer -- 8/10
"Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom may not nail everything it attempts, but it gets the important things right. Building your kingdom is satisfying and engaging, even with the weak narrative hooks. The cycle of rewards became an obsession, and had me staying up late to recruit just one more ally, or complete just one more upgrade. Combat could be tighter, and other supporting elements could use some polish--but like any kingdom, this experience isn't about individual contributions. It's about how those contributions come together, and the fun of this experience as a whole outweighs its flaws." -- Joe Juba [Full review]
GamesRadar+ -- 4.5/5
"Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom is the RPG adventure that's like shooting sunshine right into your veins. So clear your calendar, because Level-5 is about fill it with monsters, magic, and city management." -- Rachel Weber [Full review]
Eurogamer -- Recommended
"With time, Ni no Kuni 2's lavish array of systems grind away any ennui you might feel about the story. There are the usual JRPG sins of a world bloated with loot and resources and missions that are essentially there to sponge up the hours, but most of it feeds satisfyingly into kingdom-building and the party combat. Is a loss of awe and mystique the price we must pay for a game that is so ripe with little things to do, poke at and throw around on the field of war? I'm not sure it is--the Suikoden games were similarly big-bottomed, and had terrific, gripping stories to boot--but I can't deny that I've enjoyed the ride." -- Edwin Evans-Thirlwell [Full review]
Destructoid -- 7.5/10
"Level-5 is more than capable of dumping out healthy portions of its secret sauce on top of its games, but the combat of Ni No Kuni II and its attempt to do so many different things can hold it back. From the first hour I was mesmerized and captivated, willing to see its tale through until the end. While it does fall into some genre trappings and doesn't feel quite as epic in scale compared to the first, Level-5 has the uncanny ability to keep the memory and magic of the JRPG alive." -- Chris Carter [Full review]
