Be Excellent To Each Other

Couple of things I know about this game:

1) Studio Ghibli are/were mega involved.

2) It's an RPG.

3) There's a demo on PSN right now.

It might also be a PS3 exclusive. Who knows, these days, aye? It's hard to keep up with current affairs. If it ain't on Radio 4 between the times I drive to and from work then I don't want to know about it.

Trailer. Out, um, next year. Like, January probably.

I saw this on the PSN store the other day but didn't download it on the assumption it would be JRPG-y and this does nothing to dispel that notion so it's probably not for me. Looks gorgeous if you're into that kind of thing though and I'm amused by the sidekick being called Marr Mite.

English or Japanese with subtitles. Excellent!

This looks awesome; just like a Giblets movie. The characters are pretty cool too especially the wee Scotish cunt that's your travelling companion.

I'm less afraid of RPG's after Xenoblade Chronicals and might give this a whirl.

Not bad. Not bad at all. It does look a bit like a Zelda RPG though. Still, very nice but I struggled to get excited with the demo. I doubt you do with RPG's mind and need to spend some time in their company.

Frickin' results screen after every battle quickly got old as did being transported to a separate screen for the battle. Lord knows why we couldn't duke it out on the actual map like, well, Xenoblade. Ok, look, it's the only RPG I've played, ok, and it was bloody marvellous.

I think they may have released a rather poorly thought out demo.

Before I played that, it was a certain purchase, now I'm rather more hesitant.

I remembered there was.a.second part of the demo which might give some kind of.clue.about battle before whcking me into some boss fight. As it stands there was, but it didnt tell me.anything about how.to fight.

Figured.it.out a.bit, but I still seem to be able to do no damage to bosses.

I suppose ai wouldnt mind this in the full game, but it doesnt half make mebquestion their ability when something like this ends.up as a demo.

Don't you just move your character up it's arse (like it says beforehand) and do your moves there?

You get three Pokemon to play with instead of one, but it as pretty much a similar fight to the first part of the demo but took longer.

£5.93 for PS+ £6.59 everyone else! Having some of this!

I'm going to grab it.

Cor blimey this is a bit of a looker isn't it? IM IN A CARTOON. And not one of those shit ones kids are watching these days with utter dogshit drawings or rubbish computer graphics that you could make on an Amiga and, um, Deluxe Paint?

I'm totally not afraid of JRPG's now and, thank god, cause I've had my arse handed to me twice already when clearly a 5 year old would struggle to be taxed by this only 3 hours in. I'm getting used to it mind, but right now my Pokemon just go ATTACK ATTACK ATTACK YOU LITTLE BASTARDS. I only ever defend a well telegraphed boss move.

Still, voice acting is sublime, graphics beaut, localisation is A Maze and music dreamy. It's Studio Ghiblied up to tha max. It really does remind me of Zelda but with JRPG fighting. I'm struggling to reason why it's a JRPG... a Zelda bashy bash would sell more copies, right? Well, maybe not in japan...but why not a JRPG though, I suppose.

Bonus point: Less irritating companion character than any Zelda game I've played too.

I bought this.

I will play if after DMC5 (which I'm loving a fair bit).

I might get back into Demon Souls too...

Glad it's good though, I'm sure I'll like it.

My only gripe was I wish it was all voice acted, great game & yes like you said gorgeously animated.

I'm tempted, but the demo was kinda boring.

It really spends on whether you get on with JRPGs I guess. There are some really boring treks back and forth between missions, endlessly being attacked in some areas by minor monsters and so on but I'm not even sure of that's par for the course for JRPGs. Probably. Xenoblade Chronicles (the only other 'proper' RPG I've played) had no such problems but from what I've read it's outstanding for an RPG (it really is a fabulous game that's all I know. Ten 10 of all time, fo sho).

Mind you the demo did nowt for me as well, as I said above, but this is really sweet when it gets going.

Looking forward to playing that when Wii-U goes cheap.

[edit] *reads Wii-U thread*

Yay!

I'm 7 hours 20 mins in and I've just come across the volcano part of the demo. Also, it's just got good.

It's taken a wee while to get going but since I'm shit at the combat I think I've needed that amount of time to get used to the bloody thing. But now it's opened up and I've got to juggle between two main characters for fighting and a full contingent of wee fighting monsters to command (eight of the little blighters), imrpove their stats, get used to their fighting styles, special moves, armour, weapons and so on. It's a fair old amount of stuff to get to grips with for numpties like me anyway.

So by the time you get to the volcano you've got two teams of fighting monsters that need constant attention and all have different powers to juggle between offensive and defensive, one team looking after the other and so on. You get your favourite little monsters to kick ass and shit and you're just playing with some of the others while trying out new spells for offensive attacks or poison or blindness or whatever.

Which is why the demo was a load of old gash cause it threw you right into a boss fight at the volcano with a group of monsters you don't know from adam and a complex (well, it is for me) combat system. When I've got to the same spot now I know which little bastard I'm going to use the most and hits the hardest, I know that my second team is going to keep energising me and I will do them by return (cause they can't look after their bloody self), I've swapped the monsters so I have the Tanks and Team 2 has all the guys with the spells and so on. I'm invested in my main monster guy (Mitey) cause he's ace and I bought him a kick ass sword and shield but I'm going to use the raccoon guy now cause his Psyche-Up move packs a punch now I've shelled out for some horn weapon that boosts his attack by about +15 (which is awesome stats, yo).

And so on...

Essentially, the demo was weak and the actual game is awesomer. It's a bit slow going and it's really only taken off after about 6 hours but then again, in my limited experience, Zelda normally takes about 10 hours to warm up. But Zelda never had that Studio Ghibli magic about it, so y'know, whatevs.

12 hours in and I have three sodding teams to look after, switch between, upgrade and generally fiddle about with. That's 9 wee monsters, 12 in 3 teams and 3 fighting at any one time. Too. Much. Confusion.

It's ace.

Ni No Cunty more like. The bosses can be bastard difficult at times. Big Tank is kicking the shit outta me with its cheapo blast over 150 stat points of magic statness outta you, when I've only got 149 statatatatat-tats.

Not many Ghibbly animations in it though, I've barely seen a handful after 18 hours but fortunately the graphics and animations really come to life so it doesn't really matter.

Just so you know, if you've got the time to play a lengthy video game play this lengthy video game, it's flippin' marvellous mun.

It's a bloody shame that the entire game isn't voice acted but at least the writing is marvelleous.

Oli: "She can't hear you Mr Drippy"

Girl: "Who said that?"

Mr Drippy: "Actually, I think she can!"

Oli: "Be quiet."

Mr Drippy: "HOW DO PET, NICE WEATHER WE'RE 'AVING ENT IT?"

You know how much this cost me? A fiver. Five pounds. If this ain't outstanding value for money I don't know what is.

Anyhoo, last night, in the space of an hour I walked about 40 yards (I think I'm on the final stretch in the swamps), got into at least 20 scraps and died about 8 times. If this is a game for kids then no one told the people who actually made it.

Oh, that's a good thing by the way, cause it's reet aces.

Unless I'm all RPGd out, this is likely my next game after FFX-HD. (Which so far is FFX, but in HD, and something odd about the eyes)

Did you know this was first released on the DS in 2010? And it's first PS3 release was in 2011? Because I didn't know either of those things.

Cor, I didn't realise that so I've had a look at some Youtube playthroughs.

There seems to be some fairly radical changes between the versions as well. Not least how it looks (gone from 2D to 3D), the menus, turn based fights and Mr Drippy getting stuck into the action!

The PS3 is utterly fab looking but the DS version looks very very nice too.

The DS wasn't region locked, was it.

Hmm.

I'm assuming that the DS version was never localised into English. OR WAS IT?

Genuine question; cause I can't be bothered to look it up.

Hang about, the PS3 version was released in 2011? Maybe in abroad-land.

I made this thread until December 2012 just before it's release. It was the localisation that took so long for the western release. Which is the only release that counts, cause me no speaky ova talkings, init?

According to the Wikipedia article.

No, Japanese only. But that doesn't overly bother me.

Talking of the magic book, the Deluxe Edition of this had the actual book, all printed up and everything and looks reet propah lovely mun. Apparently the delux edition is fetching about £400+ on eBay.

TWIST!

COUNTER-TWIST!

That's not allowed. I tried it once when I got 23.

EXPOSITION!

FLASHBACK!

Well I thought I'd finished it but I'd forgot about the titular antagonist. Bastard.

Final stretch!

My warrior pig is the mutts nuts. I call him Smash Mouth.

FUCK YOU JRPG's.

Look at this cheapo shit. A three tier boss battle and if you get killed (which I did. It ain't easy this game. At. All.) it's back to the flippin' start. It's Xenoblade all over again, FFS. Cheapo fecking boss fights. Took me sodding ages to do the first two tiers.

I'm reet cheesed off with dying last night and I've sucked up all my resources - mainly the magic potions so I'm running out of options for spamming the big magic spells. I think I'm stuck in the final castle too so I can't get the hell out of there and go buy some sheeeeet. OR CAN I? I've no idea. You know how hard it is to fight your way from one checkpoint to the next? Lots. Lots hard.

Yes, and I'm ashamed to say that I had a peak at a walkthrough last night. Well I'm on the last boss for christ's sake, I can treat myself can't I? But it really doesn't mention whether you can get out of there and, hell, it was as long as any book so that doesn't bloody help. Plus it gave the distinct impression that the last boss is a piece of piss which is patently untrue so, y'know, fack you people who write walkthroughs. We can't all be awesome at RPG's so stop pretending like I know how to juggle stats and shit. Y'know what I actually do - tool everyone up with the biggest getup they can wear and sell off the tat for potions. WELL IT SEEMED SENSIBLE TO ME. Anyhoo, I got this far so I must be doing something right. But anyway, that Ni No Kuni... it's pretty compulsive stuff.

You should certainly be ashamed to have typed that.

Walkthroughs are for losers. Losers.

I am a loser.

I meant more that you're using the wrong version of peek/peak but I was apparently being too subtle.

Are we still correcting people's spelling and grammah?

Just make up something about autocorrect as an excuse.

God yes.

They do generally expect you to have followed the walkthrough and so be in the same position, which may make the last fight easier than you're finding it.

Not having played this, I can't offer specific advice, but I'd be surprosed if you can't extract yourself from the current situation.

I'd be surprosed too! AHAHAHAHAHAHHAHHAHAHAHAHH.

No seriously, I'll give it one last shot tonight, and if I get a whooping I'll see if I can extricate myself from the castle and get to a shop.

You're probably more familiar with RPG's than me so when you play it you'll have to let me know if this is actually good or do I just like RPG's now.

It's nice to try something new though, I think as a gamer you can get complacent that you must enjoy the same tired shit over and over again whereas there is plenty of new experiences in different genres that you might like.

NO!

I got smashed up on the third and final boss bit. AGAIN. That's like 30 minutes of fighting and juggling deaths, magic and health. Tried it again - dead. Goddamn.

NO!

I'm outta hear to find a shop. Am I fuck. It's just as hard getting out as getting in. Turns out I used all my goodies up making in roads. Fucks sake.

YES!

But I've dropped the difficulty down to easy and made my escape. FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU. I am super cheater man.

YES!

I can leave the castle. Now I'm suitably tooled up with goodies and I'll get back to where I was, ramp up the difficulty to normal again and get stuff into that shit.