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Man, this game. I really want to like this game because it's incredibly charming, looks great, has a nice lighthearted plot... it really feels like a nice old SNES/PSX era JRPG with improved technology. And yet, I can't, because the battle system is just plain not fun and, frankly, kind of a chore. The pseudo kinda-real-time-except-not-entirely system seems interesting on paper, but the execution is clunky. Just the simple fact that the "Defend" and "Evade" options are menu options that you need to scroll to rather than them being bound to a button, and yet they're often required to basically survive boss attacks, would be bad enough, but also: - The menu becomes unavailable while you're executing any attack. - The menu only shows like four options at the same time while you can have more than that, leaving some possibly vital ones off-screen. - And the menu scrolling is done via the D-Pad while the movement is done via the left stick, basically requiring you to either perform some finger acrobatics on the controller or standing still while scolling over to whatever attack you want to use. In addition to that, the party AI is garbage. Not only does it burn through MP at an alarmingly fast rate, but it's also plain suicidal, especially against bosses. It also takes like a second to switch over to a different party member so you're at an even bigger disadvantage if you're trying to micromanage. And last but not least, maybe because of some of the things above, bosses often take 20 or more minutes despite having only perhaps 3 minutes of unique attack patterns. It doesn't help that they often have unskippable combat animations that plain interrupt the battle, dragging them out even longer. Again, I'd really *like* to like this game, but I just simply cannot. I'm sorry, Ni No Kuni. Of course, the JRPG I played last before this game was Tales of Graces f, and you can't really expect any other game to compete with that battle system, but that doesn't excuse any of the battle system flaws which all seem easily fixable (except maybe the party AI) with some playtesting and a couple days of work.
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Jun 25, 2013 01:21
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| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 03:08 |
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