I finally started
playing Ni no Kuni in earnest. Finally.
The game has been out
for more than a year, earned its fair share of praise, has been touted
semi-recently for reaching the
“1.1 million sold” milestone (1.7 with Japanese DS sales, but either way
makes for a much more respectable number than the “we JUST started making a
profit” Tomb Raider 2013), and
manages to prove pretty handily that the JRPG is not only possible in the HD
generation, but proves that the genre at large isn’t a broken model. It’s just been proven by certain companies how easy it is to get it wrong.
For one reason or
another, I’d only just started picking away at it in the past few months. Blame DmC
for that (I certainly will); it was my expectation that I could clear that
game fairly quickly and get back to something good, but one thing led to another,
and here we are -- with me lagging well behind the gaming populace. That’s a mistake I’m willing to rectify, to
the point where I’m about ready to REFUSE playing anything else -- barring the
occasional multiplayer game -- before I finish it. And while I don’t know how much
farther/longer I have to go, I can say with plenty of confidence that there’s a
reason this game has earned the
praise it has -- and why I’m so very thankful it exists.
But it’s not for the
reason you think.