Here we are with my second report from playing Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch (NNK for short). After spending almost three hours in the game, I started taking audio notes as audios on my Telegram Inbox. These notes serve as the base for this post and for those which will follow.

Current Progress

After filling the heart of the heartbroken guard at the city entrance, I got past the gate and into the city of Ding Dong Dell. Guided by Drippy, I visited the various shops in the city and get a sense of its layout. Once received by King Tom, Drippy introduced me to collecting emotions from people in order to restore the king himself. I stopped playing after healing the king, who is now looking for my new magical wand.

Ding Dong Dell is beautiful to watch. Its layout is fairly simple, with two main branches leading one to the castle and the other to the sewers. The exploration is not the main point of the level design, which I feel aims “merely” at highlighting the graphical beauty of the environment while guiding the player through the point of interest scattered through the city.

Mending Broken Hearts

While Drippy introduced me to a lot of systems, most importantly the different kind of shops, I was impressed by the mechanic of collecting and donating emotions. For those who don’t know, Oliver can receive emotions from people willing to share, then gift these emotions to those wounded by the Shadar. The first time you really feel like a healing mage.

A green glow will emanate from the person with a surplus of emotions; Oliver will then be able to ask them if they can share it (which, of course, they do). People with a surplus of emotions will be marked as glowing green dot on the mini map as well, but you need to walk close enough to them. This means that to find emotions you must explore the environments with some degree of focus.

At this point in the game, most of what I do is still a consequence of direct input from Drippy or other secondary character; emotion gathering is no exception. That being said, I really hope the mechanic will evolve into a more open loop where I can freely gather emotions and deliver them to those in need whom I meet in my journeys.

Slow and steady, but most importantly slow

Everything is happening at a measured pace. There is a lot of expository dialogue, and the characters talk in depth about what is happening all the time. Drippy is significantly more eloquent than other folks and his tutorials pop up at every corner.

After three hours, I feel like I have barely scratched the entire loop of the game. Some systems have been shown to me, but most of my blocks in the menu are still empty. I am limited to one creature, hence fights with other beasts are basically the same; but I know the game will turn into a Pokemon-like, sooner or later.

I would like if the game explained itself more quickly. I am curious about how many hours will I have to spend before feeling like I am in control of the experience, out of the tutorial phase.

Did You Know Studio Ghibli Did the Cutscenes?

Through this early hours the game is also very generous with Studio Ghibli animated clips. Here we have Oliver and Drippy interacting with the Old Tree, there we have them walking through Ding Dong Dell, and here it is King Tom comically floating in mid-air.

The cutscenes and the involvement of Studio Ghibli were one of the main selling points of the game when it came out, so I understand why they are all over the place at this point of the game. Now, I wonder how frequently I will see these kind of cutscenes. They’re beautiful, of course; but they also seem costly. Will they become more sparse given the game is estimated to last around 40 hours?

As a personal note, I would like to see less cutscenes and more gameplay. We will see how the pace goes through the following hours.

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Image credit: Level 5