Ni no kuni magimech
Once you've obliterated the four, return to the ivory tower and report to caph. You'll now be charged with taking out three more, except this time, they're the stronger magimech masters.
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Errand 134
Description
The knights who appeared in the ivory tower are ghosts who were once charged with protecting queen cassiopeia.
Availability
This errand is available to complete after completing the main story.
Guide
From the iron wyvern, fly east into the ivory tower. Make your way north to the waystone, and you'll find some nazcaän soldiers. Talk to the captain, caph, and he'll request your assistance. Remember the robots we've seen in pieces throughout the game? Well, apparently they've now come back to life, so we need to find them once again and dismantle them for good. Here's where they all are:
- Golden grove - from the northern entrance, make your way south, then east, north, and west to the dead-end with the first soldier.
- Old smoky - from the entrance, just follow the path north, then north at the fork to find the next soldier.
- Tombstone trail - at the second waystone halfway up the map is a shack; the third soldier is hanging around there.
- Glittering grotto - on the lower section of the grotto, in the open area just southwest of the waystone south of where you fought the boss.
Once you've obliterated the four, return to the ivory tower and report to caph. You'll now be charged with taking out three more, except this time, they're the stronger magimech masters. Leave the ivory tower, then make your way to nazcaä. Save before each fight, then take out the three:
- Located just south of ara memoriae.
- Located to the far north of ara memoriae.
- Located just west of the southeastern landing point on the island.
Once those three are taken out, return to the ivory tower one last time, but before you do anything, SAVE and RECOVER at the waystone. When you're ready, talk to caph, which will lead to a tough fight; this time, it's against one manic magimech and TWO magimech masters. AT ONCE! For this battle, you'll want to switch to esther; use her to boost your party's defense and attack, then focus on healing, as the magimechs will be dishing out damage quick enough to where you wouldn't want to trust esther on her own.
Ni no kuni
Alternative titles
Information
Statistics
Synopsis
High schooler yuu and his friend haru get involved in a case involving his childhood friend kotona, which forces them to go back and forth between another world that is different but is somewhat similar to their world, ni no kuni. The real world and ni no kuni, when kotona's life is in danger, what's the ultimate choice the three of them have to make in ni no kuni?
Background
Related anime
Characters & voice actors
Staff
Opening theme
Ending theme
Reviews
1: you are being chased by a guy with a dagger through the streets. You call your friend but he doesn't pick up. What do you do?
A: call the cops to come and help?
B: call an adult to come and help?
Or C: call your other friend who is in a wheelchair to come and help?
If your answer is C, then you will probably love this movie. If it isn't then you will probably enjoy watching this show to laugh at other dumb things the characters did.
2: you find your stabbed girlfriend on the streets in the arms of your best friend (not in that way, get your minds out of the gutter). Your girlfriend is losing blood and your friend who can't walk (because he is a cripple but is still trying to carry her and save her) is holding her too tightly. What do you do?
A: rush over and help carry her?
B: call an ambulance?
C: ask your friend in an angry voice why he is holding his girlfriend like that?
If your answer is C, then you will probably love this movie. If it isn't then you will probably enjoy watching this show to laugh at other dumb things the characters did.
Ni no kuni is as cliche and over dramatic as it gets. So much so that I called every single plot point and surprise twist reveal. Cliche doesn't necessarily mean bad, but it does lead to a lack of enjoyment when you have seen everything it does done better in other movies. Nothing is really bad but nothing is really good either besides for the art. It will entertain kids though and that is enough. This movie was made by an animator employee of studio ghibli, momose yoshiyuki, and while you can tell that by the animation and sound (by another ghibli employee), it fails to do what most miyazaki films do, and that is to touch your heart. That is probably because of the generic script from akihiro hino. The script is definitely the falling point of this movie.
Story:
ni no kuni is about two friends named yusuke (yuu) and haru who both like a girl named kotona who suddenly gets stabbed and when they to rescue her they end up in the middle of traffic and get transported to a fantasy world. The only difference is that they got transported before they got hit by a vehicle. In this world they find that there is a princess named astrid who looks like their kotona and is in critical condition just like her and they need to try to figure out the connection between the two girls and the two worlds, and they need to find a way to save both of them since they are both injured.
Art:
the art and animation are the best things in the movie. It almost looks like a ghibli or ponoc film. The art is pretty and clean and the animation is smooth and explosive. The CGI actually looks pretty good in this movie.
Sound:
nothing of note here. It fits in and does its job but there is nothing memorable about it. It is slightly surprising since the music composer is done by joe hisashi, otherwise known as the musical composer for pretty much every studio ghibli movie. The soundtrack is good and keeps me invested in the atmosphere of each scene but it is one of his weaker works. My personal favorite songs of his are "my neighbor totoro" (the totoro song) and "carrying you" (from castle in the sky). I saw the movie in english on netflix and the dub was good. The british-like voices from the other world annoyed me a bit but everyone was well cast.
Characters:
there is nothing unique about the characters. They had emotions and names and faces but besides for one being in a wheelchair (for only part of the movie), there is nothing that I could say about the characters that would distinguish them from other characters. Haru was just a badly written character for most of the movie and the other leads were just generic characters with no motivations besides for protecting those they love.
Enjoyment:
while I can't say that I didn't enjoy it, I might have enjoyed it for the wrong reasons. I laughed at some of the stupid things that the characters did throughout the movie like what I wrote in the opening paragraph. There were a lot of other times that dumb things happened. Dumb, but entertaining to watch.
Overall:
I enjoyed the movie and that is what counts the most. But overall the movie just suffers from a bad script. For what it is, from the studio behind pokemon, studio OLM, kids will enjoy it and it is for them that it was probably made. Unlike with ghibli movies, this movie didn't have a lesson or moral to give over, and that may actually be its biggest sin.
Score: 8 (good and had some great elements, but I wouldn't rewatch it).
I don't think it deserves an 8 but I enjoyed it too much (for whatever reason) to give it a 7.
What we have here is level-5's attempt at making a movie, and on the surface, it looks promising. Ni no kuni is a game series that got started in the early 2010s, and it was famous for one thing: it was the first video game that studio ghibli worked on. No, really. Level-5 actually brought ghibli on to animate various cutscenes and had joe hisaishi make the music for it. Needless to say, everyone who played it really liked it. I've been wanting to play the game myself for years, but it was on the PS3, which I could never afford. It did get re-released on the switch, so I wasted no time buying it, but I never got to sit down and play it yet. Getting back on track, ni no kuni eventually went on to get a sequel game and, as of last year, a movie with an original story. When I heard about the movie, I was really excited! But then I actually got to watch it.
Good lord, I've been disappointed before, but this was just. Painful. I really want to like this movie. I really do! It does have a lot going for it at first. And it crashed and burned. Hard. So what's the story? Well, it focuses on three kids: yu, haru, and kotona, who are great friends and spend a lot of time together. One day, kotona is stabbed by a mysterious pursuer. Haru and yu try to save her, but when they're nearly killed in a car accident. They wake up in another world called evermore. But kotona is missing, and the princess of this world they're in happens to look almost exactly like her. In their quest to save the princess and find kotona, they learn more about evermore and what it has in common with earth, but the friends' loyalty to each other get tested and strained when their actions in evermore have consequences in the real world. Yu may have to make hard choices, especially when haru begins acting strangely when kotona's situation gets more complicated.
Sorry if my summary of the story isn't that great. There's a lot that I can't mention without spoiling the entire movie in the process, so I'll try to hold back as much as I can. But man, do I really want to rant about this movie! However, I don't want to be too negative, so I'll go over the positive aspects of this movie first: the animation is quite good. The world's overall look is really breathtaking, the character designs are varied and interesting, the fight choreography is top notch, and some of the fight scenes were actually pretty clever in some ways. I also really liked yu as a character. Not only is he NOT an overpowered bland isekai protag (and he has no harem. Thank god!), he actually has a backstory, has good chemistry with his friends, and is smart and competent. He could have benefitted from more depth and had more flaws, but I'm happy with what we got. Plus, having a main character in a wheelchair who is portrayed decently well, doesn't bemoan his disability, and isn't solely defined by his disability, is pretty cool. His friend/adopted sister saki was pretty awesome too. She got some great moments in the movie, both in the real world and in the other world. I kinda wish we had seen more of her.
Unfortunately, those are the only good things I can say about the movie, because the rest of it really doesn't fare well. While I admit I haven't played the games much, they delve into the world the kids go into in a lot more detail than the movie could even scrape, so what little we see of it is just kind of there. The setting isn't developed well enough to make its audience feel invested in it, even with the animation making it look as beautiful as possible. And that's only the tip of the iceberg in terms of this movie's many, many problems. With how well loved the games are, and how the movie is telling its own story, you'd think the creators would be able to do them justice and create an intriguing story out of it. Unfortunately, the movie is little more than a generic fantasy isekai movie, with the main kids trying to save their girl friend and the princess who is a damsel in distress. The villains are so cartoonishly evil that you'd think they'd have come straight out of a saturday morning cartoon, and the real big bad is so obvious that you can tell who it is straight away. The whole movie follows the same story beats and cliches that have plagued other stories for centuries, and doesn't really do anything new or exciting with them.
And that's not even getting into the characters. Other than yu and saki, every single one of them is extremely bland and one-note. Kotona's the energetic girl whose life is in danger, astrid is the damsel in distress princess who tries to be more active, the main villain is the chessmaster manipulating everything who hams it up when exposed, but all of them pale in comparison to haru. Seriously, watching him made me feel like the writers really didn't know what to do with him most of the time. He starts out as the cheerful friend archetype, then gets needlessly angry at yu for little to no reason (case in point: early in the movie, when he sees yu with an injured kotona, he doesn't ask if he's alright or offer to take them both to the hospital, you know, like a good friend would. He yells at him for holding her in an intimate way, takes kotona away so he can run her to the hospital, and JUST LEAVES HIM THERE! Knowing that yu's in a wheelchair and can't move! Dude, what a dick!), his motivations are laughable and poorly developed, and he's constantly being a reckless idiot who can't stop to think (which yu actually calls him out on in the movie!). Any development he gets is really unnatural and rushed, like the writers couldn't agree on what to do with him. Honestly, as a character, haru is the biggest dark spot on the movie, and the other characters, while slightly more tolerable, are still too bland to really connect with on an emotional level, since the movie's only under two hours long. There's a lot of characters to keep track of, and I think the movie would have fared better if it had cut a few of them out to give the writers more wiggle room to strut their stuff.
Speaking of writing, I'm not even done with that portion yet. Late in the movie, a lot of stuff happens, but most of it is characters spouting about random plot points that were never mentioned before, are barely explored when they're introduced, and they just appear without rhyme or reason. Like, at one point, astrid mentions that the only way to defeat a villain is some magic sword, but her father tells her it's been gone for years, and later, we see the sword again because some old guy gave it to yu, who can activate it even though he has no reason to be able to do so at that point, and all is suddenly happy happy joy joy. Can you see how badly planned and written this sounds? Basically, the only reason the sword is even used again is because the plot demands it. Furthermore, there are a ton of other plot threads that get little to no deep exploration, such as an old man who yu met when he was a kid. We never know his name, we never know who he is or why he's there, but when the story writes itself in a corner, he appears and gives the heroes the tools they need to save the day, and then leaves again. He's basically a deus ex machina in human form, and that's not good writing. Seriously.
I don't have much to say about the soundtrack, as its joe hisaishi, and from what I've heard, he re-uses tracks from some of the games. Again, I haven't played them, so I can't judge them on how well they fit into the movie, but I kinda feel like hisaishi overused his orchestra to the point where the bgms were so loud during certain scenes that they just got obnoxious. And at other points, the music swells and gets dramatic, then suddenly just stop. Oh, and the CGI made no effort to actually integrate with the animation. My god, close-ups of various monsters walking through rugged terrain don't even try to blend in with the 2D animation, making them stick out like a sore thumb, even worse than how granblue fantasy did it. It's jarring and takes you out of the movie. Think looking through a closet of all black clothes and a random pink dress suddenly flies in front of your face and blinds you. That's how bad it is. It's especially obvious when important characters, who are traditionally animated, are the focus of a scene, while obviously CGI soldiers flail around in the background, their limb movements all herky jerky and the texture so computerized that you can tell they're not even trying to make them mix with the scenery.
So yeah, the movie's not great. It's poorly written, the characters are bland, the story is cliche in all the worst ways, the CG is terrible and makes no effort to try to be less jarring than it is, and any drama it tries to pull off comes off forced and artificial. But in all honesty, if ni no kuni had been just a generic isekai movie, I wouldn't have minded. It would have been just a generic but still serviceable movie. But then the ending happened. I won't spoil it for you, but the ending is absolutely one of the most awful, badly written endings I've ever seen in any form of media, not only by just how out of nowhere the final twist is, but how little sense it makes, and how it completely spits on everything the movie previously established all for the sake of forced drama that didn't need to happen. Seriously, I haven't been this infuriated at anything since the card captor sakura: clear card anime's just as god-awful ending, and this one stoops to a whole new level of bad writing. I mean, you really have to TRY to be that bad.
I really don't want to hate this movie. I really don't. If the writers had made more of an effort with it and smoothed out all of its issues, it could have been a fine movie capable of standing on its own merits. Alas, what we wound up getting was a complete mess with a god awful ending that ruined an already flimsy premise to hell and back. So don't waste your time with this one.
Ni no kuni: the kotaku review
It would be easy, while reviewing ni no kuni, to sit at my desk and fling adjectives on the page like a fantasy novelist. I'd call the game whimsical, charming, beautiful, fascinating, smart, pleasant, challenging, slow-paced, grand, surreal, and aggressively colorful.
And yes, those are all fitting words for the new RPG, which came out last tuesday for the playstation 3. The product of a collaborative effort between animation house studio ghibli and the game developers at level-5, ni no kuni is a stellar mash-up of both companies' strengths, mixing ghibli's eye-popping style with level-5's dragon questy substance. It deserves a lot of adjectives.
But what makes this fairy tale work so well, what has earned it a place among my all-time favorites, demands more of an explanation. It requires more than adjectives. It might even call for a noun.
Let me tell you what makes ni no kuni so special.
The first thing you see, when you start up ni no kuni (full name: ni no kuni: wrath of the white witch, which I promise is more fun to play than it is to say out loud), is a brown-haired boy in overalls running next to a lumpy little critter with a lantern hanging through his proportionally massive snozz. Surrounded by nature and strangely-shaped rocks, the boy and his tiny friend are clearly in some sort of fantasy world. They're nearly trampled by a pack of stampeding boar things. They get down in the nick of time. Then they arrive at a cliff.
"so this is your world," says the boy.
"that's right!" says his companion, whose welsh accent, while never quite explained, is remarkably endearing. "A whole ‘nother world. Beautiful, en't it?"
Beautiful, en't it? There's no better way to sum up the ghibli-crafted animation, which is grand and meticulous, so lovely that it must be impressive even to the most jaded of gamers. Designed like an animated film, ni no kuni blends three-dimensional character models and watercolors in a way that makes everything pop, from crusty stone tablets to flying purple dragons.
There's something elegant about that mundane task—about the fact that the first thing you must do in ni no kuni is bring home the groceries.
A few seconds after that intro, we're back in time. We're no longer in the fantasy world. We get our first of many anime cut-scenes, and our first look at motorville, a generic U.S. City that looks very much like what japan thinks america looks like. Or what they thought america looked like in the 1950s. Our overall-clad boy—introduced as oliver—is running to the grocery store, which sets up our first mission: guide the young hero as he brings groceries to his mother.
There's something elegant about that mundane task—about the fact that the first thing you must do in ni no kuni is bring home the groceries. Before you can become a powerful wizard and fight monsters and save the world, you have to go get your mother some milk.
Next, as you might expect, some major events happen, the game breaks your heart a little bit, and eventually oliver is told that he is the chosen one, destined to save both his world and the parallel fantasy world in which you'll be spending most of the game. And then, adventure.
In this case, adventure means following a traditional JRPG formula: cut-scene -> town -> dungeon -> boss -> town -> side quests -> dungeon -> boss -> rinse -> repeat. Sometimes you'll see these events in a different order, but if you've played a game like final fantasy or dragon quest (particularly, dragon quest VIII, which is a lot like ni no kuni in many ways) you've seen this structure before. But the game is more than that. Like a good basketball team, ni no kuni is significantly greater than the sum of its parts.
Here are four possible theories about what makes ni no kuni so great:
1) it's a game that pays attention to the little details. The way oliver's cloak sways and shimmies in the wind. The way his little welsh companion, mr. Drippy, tumbles and dances as you wander through the world. The way drippy stops dancing when you visit one village in the snowy northeast tundra, and instead mopes behind you, shivering from the cold. The way he'll carry important objects on his head. The way every nook and cranny of this massive world feels like it's been crafted with care and precision, from the tiny cave full of tiny crabs to the giant volcano full of nasty fire monsters. The way characters turn toward you when you're standing next to them.
2) it's a game that never stops surprising. During moments that might feel hackneyed in a lesser game, ni no kuni always delivers—mostly thanks to the script, which has been crafted and translated with masterful precision. For example, here's one particularly delightful exchange, presented without context, because you don't really need it:
"the girl is correct. It's no ghost ship."
"so what is it?"
"it's a ghost galleon."
3) it's a game that isn't afraid to offer a challenge. If you're not prepared, you might not be able to keep up. It'd be nice if ni no kuni had a "very easy" difficulty mode , since by all accounts even easy mode can get pretty tough, but it's also nice to play with a turn-based combat system that takes a lot of skill to use. While you might get frustrated during a few early boss battles, before you get a pair of quick commands to make your AI-controlled companions attack or defend with the click of a button (commands that really should be available from the beginning), ni no kuni's combat system never feels unfair. It is punishing, but never cheap. And that makes victory all the more satisfying.
Maybe all games should have A 'very easy' mode
This morning, I got an e-mail from a kotaku reader named jaime.
4) it's a game that makes me feel like I'm on an adventure.
We play video games for many reasons, and different types of games can be appealing in totally different ways. A puzzle game might challenge our minds, encouraging lateral thinking and unorthodox solutions. Shooters test our reflexes, while multiplayer games like starcraft II let us feed into that competitive instinct that keeps so many of us going every day.
WHY: because it's a fantastic japanese role-playing game, one that will stun your senses and break your heart in the best possible way.
Ni no kuni
Developers: level-5, studio ghibli
platform: playstation 3
released: january 22
Type of game: JRPG with anime-style cut-scenes and graphics.
What I played: 32 hours, 6 minutes, and 23 seconds. Took my time, playing through quite a few side quests and bounty hunts. Spent way too much time flying and sailing aimlessly around the world. Have not yet finished the game.
Two things I loved
- I don't think it's hyperbole to say this is the prettiest game I've ever played.
- The writing, the combat, the side quests, the ridiculous puns, the music, the world, the dungeons, the. Oh, was this supposed to be just one thing? Oops.
Two things I hated
- Hey drippy, do you really need to stop combat and talk during every single boss battle?
- Hey drippy, do you really need to make me go through like four menus just to restore someone's heart?
Made-to-order-back-of-box-quotes
- "if only all studio ghibli movies had playable characters." —jason schreier, kotaku.Com
- "how do I get myself a little buddy with a welsh accent? Can we make that happen?" —jason schreier, kotaku.Com
Ni no kuni is something else entirely. As a game—that is to say, as a set of rules with conditions for victory and defeat—ni no kuni, like most role-playing games made in japan, is not particularly satisfying. You win when you get through the whole story. So does everybody else. Congrats?
But as a journey, this is a special sort of experience, a grueling adventure filled with ups, downs, corny jokes, heartfelt moments, and unbelievable sights. Playing ni no kuni is akin to becoming a virtual tourist, experiencing a few hours at a time as you wander through a strange land.
Except it's bigger than that. You're not just touring. You're there to help oliver succeed at his mission. Oliver, a character who is as essential to ni no kuni as any sharp backdrop or charming animation, sometimes says some painfully cloying things, but it's his stubborn naivety and unnatural courage that make this adventure possible. Even when you're groaning at the boy wizard's tireless go-get-'em attitude, you kind of wish you had his strength. You kind of want to be him. After all, he gets all these cool spells.
Oliver is joined, in addition to mr. Lumpy drippy, by a feisty girl named esther and a snarky rogue named swain. These characters are interesting, if somewhat. I don't want to say clichéd, but. Familiar.
When you and your party aren't roaming towns or fixing peoples' lives, you're battling monsters, which in ni no kuni is both complicated and a great deal of fun. Something of a cross between pokémon and dragon quest, ni no kuni's combat system requires you to control familiars—little collectible monsters—as you fight other monsters on a constrained battlefield. Each hero can hold up to three of these critters, and you can swap between them at any time.
No matter who you're controlling in battle, you can move freely and swap through commands in real-time, selecting between options like attack, defend, or special abilities. Once a character starts an action, he has to stay in place for a few seconds while doing his thing. So if you make your little skeleton buddy attack, for example, he'll spend five or six seconds hacking away at an enemy (unless you cancel mid-attack) and then he'll be ready for his next order.
This system is frantic and fast-paced, like controlling ten foozball sticks at once. It's particularly crazy during boss fights, when you'll have to watch a boss's ticks and animation cues to see when it's about to cast a spell, then quickly make your characters defend in response. You will inevitably fail to do this in time. You will feel really bad about that. This is part of the fun.
There's a bit more—elemental weaknesses, orbs that restore your health and mana, special golden orbs that give you limit break-esque power moves—and it all blends really smoothly. You have to find the best way to take down each specific encounter, whether that's just going all-out and defeating a monster as quickly as possible, or carefully dancing around the battlefield, guarding and firing spells as you zip back and forth.
It's funny: it would have been easy for the folks at level-5 to sit back and coast, doing the least amount of work possible and letting ni no kuni's visuals sell the game for them. In fact they do quite the opposite, and perhaps because they had so much confidence in the aesthetics, this is a game that experiments, and tries very hard to make sure every other aspect delivers. Ni no kuni knows that it's gorgeous, and that you're impressed, but damn if it won't kick your ass anyway.
Here are some of the things you can do in ni no kuni:
•you can visit a handful of towns ranging from a secluded fairy village to a large cat-filled city called, for some reason, ding dong dell. They are all filled with interesting npcs, helpful merchants, and cool things to see.
•you can take on sidequests, some of which are more tedious than others. Every time you finish one, you get a certain number of merit stamps, which can be used to fill up a merit card, which can be traded in for cool minor bonuses, like cheaper goods and a completely useless (but awesome) jump ability.
•you can go out and bounty hunt for big beasties, whose deaths reward you with items, money, and more merit stamps.
•you can save peoples' lives by fixing their hearts, which is both a core plot point and an entertaining optional activity. Part of the main story is that this evil wizard dude named shadar is going around and cursing people by taking away important parts of their souls, usually in the form of emotions like restraint, courage, and belief. As the ultimate hero wizard, oliver can go around the world, find people with extra emotions, take those, and bring them to people who are deficient. So you might find a cowardly soldier and give him back his courage, or help an angry merchant learn how to be nicer to his customers. While of course you would do this no matter what because you are a lovely and selfless person, helping people out also gets you merit stamps.
Uh oh. I just realized that ni no kuni has gamified kindness.
•you can fly around the world map—yes, there's a world map!—scouring the surface for hidden treasure chests and rare monsters.
•you can spend all day reading, if you choose, and work your way through the tremendous wizard's companion, a 200-page book filled with spells and short stories . There's even an in-game wizard language based on strange symbols that you can find—and pull out the ol' pen and paper to decipher—all throughout the game. (kotaku reader kentoss made this helpful nazcaan/english translator in case you need help getting your wizard on.)
Gather round for one of ni no kuni's lovely fairy tales
The splendid new role-playing game ni no kuni is, in many ways, a game about stories. It's a fairy…
so, let's see, what we have: the knights who appeared in the ivory tower are ghosts who were once charged with protecting queen cassiopeia. This errand is available to complete after completing the main story. At ni no kuni magimech
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