Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch

[Agent D.]

Get a Purrrloiner if you can. You can find them by castaway cove. Its got a great attack speed and nice damage as well as huge evasion. It trumps the mite very quickly. Plus, one of its tier 3 variants can be a pirate with an eye patch....it's so badass.

Bighorns are great, though I've never used one personally. You can catch one on old smoky, and as far as a tank goes he's pretty solid til the end of the game. The banana dude is pretty cool too, huge attack power and he's a favorite of party member number 2, so he gets bonuses being in their party. The cog things on Teeheeti island are great damage takers, I left one on party member 3, and as long as it has stamina, it can stay out indefinitely and eat hits. Saved my ass a few times fighting nightmare bosses. But yeah, as soon as you can fly, go to the cliffa north of al mamoon and find a dinoceros and catch it. Priority 1, I tells ya. He's so crack you'll end up feeling cheap using him.

[Dice]

I've got no beef with you updating what good monsters are, I'd rather avoid trial and error myself.

[dalucifer0]

Thanks for the replies. Like Dice said, I want to avoid raising duds and prefer to know which familiars to go after. I do plan on experimenting a bit since I really do enjoy the game, but I usually only have an hour or so to play during the weekdays, so I don't want to waste my time with fucking shitty familiars.

[Klyde Chroma]

Man, i just spent 2.5 hours trying to tame the bone-soldier from the desert and the pirate-cat because I missed em and they were some of my favorite looking thus far....

Dice... I officially concur.... tame-rate is waaaay too low.... that sucked

[Agent D.]

The last set of merit stamp rewards has a tame rate increase. Btw, don't hoard the points, you have to fill out each row before the next row is available. The taming rate is increased by 20% of the innate rate per beastie, so a 10% tame rate before becomes 12% after, and so on. It's the best I've come across so far. Don't worry though, once you get a dinoceros and learn earsplitter, everything dies SSSOOOO fast.

Seriously can't emphasize enough how crack that one monster is. It's like mewtwo of the ni no kuniverse. Its attack power is beyond comprehension.


It's a lot later to worry about, but auroralynxes are another good monster to look into. Great healers, plus winged kittycats are awesome. I named mine aurakitteh :)

[Cyril]

Regarding familiars:

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I've found that Esther's starting Familiar is very useful in the long run.  It comes off rather weak
at first, but stick the wind magic and healing spell on it, and it'll be useful for the long haul.  The third
character's Familiar is beyond worthless; toss it immediately.

I've found another excellent tank to be the Monolith, outside of Castaway Cove.  Even bosses were hitting it for 1 damage.

And, to follow up on my Griffy statement earlier: If you pre-ordered from Amazon and want to play the game with a modicum of challenge, do not use Griffy. He's adorable, but he'll be brokenly powerful for about 70% of the game.

[Agent D.]

Just beat the game, now messing around in post game, bounties and quests a plenty. The final boss was pretty cake, but I was SERIOUSLY overleveled (heroes are all 80+). Overall, I give the game a solid 8.5. The gameplay was fun, but the tame rate for creatures sucks way too much, especially when you're trying to catch them for quests. All the excess attempts caused a bit of a level spike, making everything pitifully easy. The story is great, but it starts to become pretty easy to see coming, and I didn't like how they pulled the old 80% of the game villian is in fact not the major villian baloney, it always sours my taste buds (though it does get surprising at the absolute last second though, I chuckled for it). The music was catchy....til you realize that there is only 1 fucking song playing the whole game. Sort of a late kick in the balls, but I'll eat it. Honestly, my gripes are miniscule regarding the game, Level-5 did a great job making an old rpg here, and I'm gonna use the term old because this is an rpg of olden days. Fuck the wrpgs and jrpgs of today, they're both crappy 9 times out of 10. This reminded me of games like chrono cross, ffvii, pokemon, and so forth. So much freedom to explore, places to go, stuff to do. I was always occupied with this game, and had to force myself away at times to relax and level out from gaming. Last time I did that was probably FFIX or X. This is easily my most enjoyed week and a half in years, and I spent most of it sick and achey.

One suggestion for anyone who is still on the fence or even just starting, take the time to read everything and not speed past it. The language used is quite entertaining, especially the fairies' english slang. It's downright comical at times.

[beLIEve?]

Get a Purrrloiner if you can. You can find them by castaway cove. Its got a great attack speed and nice damage as well as huge evasion. It trumps the mite very quickly. Plus, one of its tier 3 variants can be a pirate with an eye patch....it's so badass.

I got a purrloiner upgraded him to puss and boats he's pretty rad I named him Sebastian after my cat.

I'd agree with your reveiw, I don't think I'm very far probably around the half way point but already got pretty good geuss what the end is. Unlike My roommate, i'm taking my time with everything. he tore through this game the first week. he's still playing ng+ and collecting everything he's four trophies away from platinum. He said he beat the final boss the first time through at level 49 but it was tough. He said lvl55 would probably be goldy locks.

[Cyril]

My thoughts are similar, as well.

I have a few more minor complaints:
Alchemy Ingredients are obnoxious to farm for.  
The difficulty is unbalanced.  One boss might be incredibly difficult, but the next is very easy.
The Familiar pathing is nightmarish.  Absolutely horrible. It's more than them simply blocking each other, in some cases it's flat out broken. I did an optional post-game boss in Smoky and the familiars would spend 2/3 of their attack round running around him instead of attacking, despite being perfectly capable of hitting from their location.  

From a story perspective, I enjoyed what seemed to be a classic story until

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I beat Shadar.  
Everything after him just felt tacked on and unnecessary. I felt it hurt the experience more than it helped it.

Also, this is one of those games where leaving the ancient civilization mysterious would have helped immensely.
It's not nearly as impressive as the game makes it out to be when you see it up close. Some games can do this right,
like Grandia. Ni No Kuni is not one of them.

One special note goes out to a post-game quest that explains why the Save points exist.  This was a very good minor twist.

Overall I'd give the game about an 8.

[Agent D.]

The grinding factor in this game is pretty beans. It'd be nice if you could have gotten equipment that enhances drop rates or got a steal skill on familiars maybe, the fact that only 1 person can steal items sucks, especially when you take into account that even 40 levels over some enemies, the humans seem to just eat it eay worse.

Speaking of human characters, WHAT THE FUCK was the point of *SECRET 4TH PARTY MEMBER" joining you? He's got the same spells as Oliver, does less damage with them, and is a wasted spot because no one wants 2 Olivers. Why would you give us an inferior version of the main mage when yoi could have given us another thief or another play to use serenade in that (not so) rare circumstance when number 2 is dead? It's just silly, if you ask me.

[Cyril]

Well, if you're not stealing or boosting your Monolith's stats by affinity, he's much better than the third character.  The third character has an absolutely abysmal MP pool, which means less skills overall.

That and he looks nicer.  

...Which is a shame, because I'm always stealing. I'd very much love to keep the Fourth in my party, but with the way ingredients work, it's just not viable.

[Klyde Chroma]

Just beat the game, now messing around in post game, bounties and quests a plenty. The final boss was pretty cake, but I was SERIOUSLY overleveled (heroes are all 80+). Overall, I give the game a solid 8.5. The gameplay was fun, but the tame rate for creatures sucks way too much, especially when you're trying to catch them for quests. All the excess attempts caused a bit of a level spike, making everything pitifully easy. The story is great, but it starts to become pretty easy to see coming, and I didn't like how they pulled the old 80% of the game villian is in fact not the major villian baloney, it always sours my taste buds (though it does get surprising at the absolute last second though, I chuckled for it). The music was catchy....til you realize that there is only 1 fucking song playing the whole game. Sort of a late kick in the balls, but I'll eat it. Honestly, my gripes are miniscule regarding the game, Level-5 did a great job making an old rpg here, and I'm gonna use the term old because this is an rpg of olden days. Fuck the wrpgs and jrpgs of today, they're both crappy 9 times out of 10. This reminded me of games like chrono cross, ffvii, pokemon, and so forth. So much freedom to explore, places to go, stuff to do. I was always occupied with this game, and had to force myself away at times to relax and level out from gaming. Last time I did that was probably FFIX or X. This is easily my most enjoyed week and a half in years, and I spent most of it sick and achey.

One suggestion for anyone who is still on the fence or even just starting, take the time to read everything and not speed past it. The language used is quite entertaining, especially the fairies' english slang. It's downright comical at times.

You sir, play games like a demon! LoL

I only say that because I know we both started playing literally within hours of one another and I'm not even close to done... I've been playing for like 30 hour or so which is a record for me.... typically I can only get in 1 or 2 hours a day at best.... but I agree with just about everything you said in your mini-review.... I feel so excited to play, just like a freakin' kid again.... this game is gold....

[Agent D.]

I was sick most of last week, so I waan't doing much outside of laying down and relaxing, so it made playing the game pretty easy. But to be honest, I have a pretty bad addiction to games, when I start a new one, unless it sucks balls I have trouble tearing myself away from it til I either A: beat it or B: find myself at a clean breakoff point where nothing extremely important is about to happen or is happening. I remember having beaten FFXIII in like 6 days, which was fairly impressive according to most people I knew (the fact that I actually beat it, most gave up due to sheer hate, loool).

You wanna talk about demonic dedication to a game? When MGS4 was released, I was working at a game store. I got the game the day before it was released, brought it home after installing it on my ps3 while at work, and proceeded to marathon it from 8pm that evening to 11:16am that next morning, 2 liter bottle of iced tea next to me and a small pizza to go through the night.  2 minutes after I beat the game, I walked to my phone, called my boss and told him I was not coming in that morning, see him tomorrow. He reminded me I wasn't working that day anyway, so I said oh good, hung up, went to my bed, and fell right to sleep. Best 15 hour marathon ever!

[Farron]

You wanna talk about demonic dedication to a game? When MGS4 was released, I was working at a game store. I got the game the day before it was released, brought it home after installing it on my ps3 while at work, and proceeded to marathon it from 8pm that evening to 11:16am that next morning, 2 liter bottle of iced tea next to me and a small pizza to go through the night.  2 minutes after I beat the game, I walked to my phone, called my boss and told him I was not coming in that morning, see him tomorrow. He reminded me I wasn't working that day anyway, so I said oh good, hung up, went to my bed, and fell right to sleep. Best 15 hour marathon ever!

Awesome! Funny thing is your boss saying you didn't have to work that day.
I'm quite the opposite, most of the times I take somewhat of a long time to beat a game, but I do play a bunch at the same time, so what happens sometimes is I beating about 3 games in the same week. however, there are still some games I do runs like yours, MGS2 was one I did pretty much the same thing you did, took a day off and only stopped playing with it finished.

I remember my cousin and my neighbor playing Dragon Quest VIII, while I took my sweet months to beat the game, they in a week had over 100 hours.

[beLIEve?]

I could sit and marathon it very easily since I get laid off for the winter but I've been taking my time so I don't burn myself out. Much like agent d I think my roommate went though it so fast cause he was having a gout attack so he really wasn't doing anything but playing.