UTTERLY baffled by the ten or so hours I put into this one before fizzling out. Couldn’t make any sense of the basic battle controls; felt like trying to play piano with boxing gloves on. Story all a bunch of fire and pomp and anime nonsense signifying nothing. Maybe if I’d pushed further I’d have discovered hidden depths. Maybe I’ll try again one day. But yeah this one was a miss for me based on what I tried.

It's a heavily edited and pruned half-finished game with sloppy mechanics that's padded out with MMO-style content. It nevertheless manages to eke out some emotional resonance with a handful of meaningful cutscenes sprinkled throughout, so kudos to whoever's responsible for salvaging this mess. It's better than FF13 but somehow more of a disappointment because it's a failure of execution rather than a mere creative mistake. And yet, I've played it through twice. What does that say about me?

The game is easily at its best during during the open-world first half, when it allowed you to roam the land at your leisure and the interactions between the cast being the highlight. Unfortunately it starts to go downhill in the second half, where the game becomes more linear and focuses more heavily on its messy and incomplete plot. The main villain is by far the most likeable and fleshed out character in the game. Overall it didn't really manage to live up to a decade of hype.

so far it makes me see a lot of flaws in the game mechanics/world of ni no kuni. this combat better but will probably get boring and stale and make me miss nier automata. i like the story so far and character stuff. driving is annoying. have to run too far too. allies should have 2 techniques. clothes camping cool. some horrible level design especially dungeons. like how open world became optional, linear story got epic then sloppy then too hard stupid bosses so easy mode :P

I played through before Square fixed that one awful chapter and I'd still give it an 8. I've been waiting for FF to return to its former glory and while this doesn't accomplish that, I was still pleased. How they handled magic/summons was stupid and not at all what I wanted, it suffers from some open-world tedium, but I actually enjoyed how it focused mostly on these 4 best friends... it lent itself to some emotional oomph.