r/Ni_no_Kuni • u/NorthPermission1152 • 20d ago
Ni no Kuni 2 spoiler Why do people not like the second game?
It interested me enough to play it before touching the first game, the silly opening of the plot, the real time combat being different from my usual favouring of turn based combat, city management system etc.
There are some things that bother me though, skirmishes can be annoying especially when the game suggests you are high enough level to do it and you get your shit rinsed, or your guys just don't fight the enemy you want them to. The Stellar Jelly's attacks always knock you down also annoy me. Also by the time I got to Chapter 6 I started skipping cutscenes cause the story wasn't engaging me anymore, it got very formulaic and predictable. I wish Roland was the protagonist, not Evan.
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u/danteslacie 20d ago
A lot of them probably wanted something so much more related to the first game, whether through the plot or the gameplay, both of which Revenant Kingdom doesn't touch on.
Personally, I really love the 2nd one, especially the gameplay. It's just more my style. And while I do miss familiars, I'm happy with the higgledies. Nothing more satisfying in that game than realizing that I can nullify the boss attacks that keep KOing me thanks to the little dudes.
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u/DealerOdd3789 20d ago
After playing the first game the second was so disappointing for me it just doesn't hit the same. I think a lot of that is due to the lack of familiars to be honest and the dual worlds. ( I haven't finished it so I don't know if these things make a return but so far they have not appeared and I'm struggling to enjoy it and play more.)
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u/Some_Excitement1659 19d ago
I feel the opposite, I played 2 first and then tried to play 1 and just couldnt get into it. Felt a whole lot more slower and boring
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u/Frosty88d 19d ago edited 19d ago
This is my experience as well. It seems like what game you play first has a major impact on your opinions on the franchise. 2 is one of my favourite games ever and I played it first.
I enjoyed 1 as well, but it has some horrible difficulty spikes like the volcano, the desert and that flipping genie fight in the early game that are very frustrating to get through, and it's much slower pacing wise. The hybrid combat also takes some getting used to if you're coming from the 2nd game, which has some of the best combat I've ever seen.
Another thing that is that people who played 1 first expected 2 to be a sequel instead of a separate game with the same title, while that's not the case if play 2 first.
The same is seen in the Bravely Default fandom, where a lot of people dislike the 3rd game for not being linked to the first 2
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u/Demonheero 19d ago
Yeah, that sounds about right for me too. I definitely enjoyed the second game more than I enjoyed the first.
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u/Sofaris 20d ago edited 20d ago
I am playing it right now. I enjoy the boss fights more in the first game but the normal fights where really boring in the first game.
I do like Evan and I defiently would not wish for Roland to be the Mainprotagonist instead of Evan. I like Roland but he is cool in the roll he has.
I did not have the experience with Skirmishes you have. I often win even I am underlevelt.
I enjoy the city building aspect.
I do not miss the familiars. In the first game I only ever liked the first familiar Oliver got. The rest I did not care for. I do like the monsters that we fight in the second game more. They look cooler. Makes it more satisfaying to defeat them. In the first game a lot of enemies are so tiny.
Overall good game. Not favorite Videogame Material but good game.
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u/Naschka 19d ago
I love both the first and the second but they ar quiet different from one another. I'd say the first had the nicer story and the collecting was pretty cool but the second clearly has smoother gameplay and some nice minigame stuff.
Regardless, the style is similiar and both are so fun that i have them both on my Switch and tried to tell people to buy them... tho nobody seems to have done so.
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u/Vivis_Nuts 19d ago
I love the 2nd one. I don’t care for the combat in the first game, never finished it
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u/Silent-Material5840 19d ago
I like the second game more that the first one, except for its story I think. But I also played the second one first. I got the platinum for the first game last week and honesty the game has a serious grinding problem.
I liked the combat of the second one way more and grinding is less of a pain in 2. (The skirmishes were not that great though) But I can understand why people like 1 over 2. Especially If you played the first game expecting the same battle system in the second game, which is not a very weird thing to expect. I think that's why a lot of people were disappointed with 2, they changed almost everything, except the art style.
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u/Stoleyk 19d ago
I haven't played the first one. That being said, I loved II. The world, the characters are all really well realised. It is not too grindy or difficult and it does not have turned-based combat. Was a great discovery for me; I felt immersed in the world and the story and overall had a blast.
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u/Ianm06 19d ago
After reading more and more comments on different posts about how the two games compare, I guess I really am in the super minority. I personally really love BOTH games.
I love what each game did, and tbh I didn’t want/still don’t wish that Revenant Kingdom, to be/was like Wrath of the White Witch. Each game being unique and different, while sharing that similar multi-world link/connection is what makes/made them fun. I love the stories, world/s, exploration, mechanics, gameplay, everything. And if you include the DLC for Revenant Kingdom you get more details of the full overarching story, for each and every important character.
In terms of the story of Revenant Kingdom, I guess I can see why people may be a little disappointed or maybe confused, as you need the DLC to really understand or explain some parts/aspects, but that never bothered me.
I cannot think of a single thing in either game, that I didn’t like. I know you will probably not believe me, but I’m being honest/truthful, I seriously cannot think of anything. Feel free to message me if you want to talk in depth about either game and my thoughts.
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u/WiserStudent557 20d ago
I bought it and just haven’t gotten around to it but definitely the lack of familiars is part of it but I also haven’t finished the first one because I almost finished it without catching a single dinoceros for Oliver and then I was putting in so many extra hours to just try and do that I burned out
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u/Leon481 20d ago
It's not bad or anything. It's just super, super bland. Other than the amazing art style, I struggle to remember much of it.
It also just felt so low effort after Ni No Kuni 1, which had so much worldbuilding, gameplay diversity, puzzles, and secrets. Nothing comparable to the impressive Wizard's Companion. Nothing comparable to the endless gameplay diversity of the familiars. I mean, we had six party members, but only 3 weapon types. It just felt so much less creative.
It's not exactly bad, but it's a sequel to an amazingly high effort juggernaut, and it didn't put in even half the effort. If it wasn't a sequel, it would probably just be considered a cute but forgettable casual game. As a sequel to NNK1 though, it just feels like a huge failure.
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u/Maxogrande 19d ago
I was expecting more conections between games but there are no returning characters, no familiars, not two world (except a couple cutscenes) and the whole system of people connectes between world was an interesting concept in Ni No Kuni and in the second is just mentioned once on the whole game
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u/AbroadNo1914 19d ago
It’s mainly how the characters were handled. They felt secondary and after thoughts. Then the game just suddenly ends
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u/Brorkarin 19d ago
For me its the turn based combat and pokemon collection and just the entire charm of it all
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u/Condemilka 19d ago
Because you expected the same with a new story and you find a stupid shooter...
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u/EnbySheriff 19d ago
For me, it's the fact the first game felt more....alive? There's so many different creatures you can come across and they all live in different areas of the world - compared to the second game that just had a handful of creatures who just had texture changes to fit with their environment. Another issue I had was that it felt like there were a few too many areas that were never used: like the desert continent and the snowy area - you had that massive airship crashed into the ice and it's never mentioned ANYWHERE in the game and it feels a bit, pointless. The first game felt a lot more planned out, each part of the map had a purpose, secret areas had lore implications and there was a whole in-game encyclopedia that had 12 short stories - half of which were never even needed! It just feels like a lot more love went into the first game compared to the second
....that and most of it is nostalgia bias
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u/Minnymoon13 19d ago
For me, it’s because it feels weird to me and because for some reason my tv decided that the text font should be as small as possible even oh the biggest setting and I can’t remand it because of my eyesight
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u/GiftOfDrift 19d ago
I love it got to the 2nd or 3rd chapter & thought I'd best get the first one & play that 1st. Luckily they where both on sale on switch so cost me a tenner I think. I'm about 2 hours into the first one & I'm enjoying it.
If you enjoy a certain game then play it. I remember when sacred 2 came out on 360 & got bad reviews. I must of put over 1000 hours into that game easy.
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u/jwlkr732 19d ago
I guess I’m in the minority that I wasn’t really able to get a handle on the combat in the first game, but adored the second game. The combat was more enjoyable to me, and the kingdom building was really fun. I just really liked it a lot.
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u/NorthPermission1152 19d ago
Cause it's a hybrid combat system: menus from turn based combat thrown alongside live combat and you have to deal with the worst qualities of both.
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u/pickirfaceup11 19d ago
It’s a good game, I liked the first far more and as people have said it doesn’t feel like a sequel but instead another game set in that world
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u/LagunaRambaldi 18d ago
It's an action RPG with city management system as you called it. That's not for everyone. Including myself. But if I WOULD be into these "genres", I would probably like the game a lot.
Some are not into turn-based or ATB based combat, so they dislike say the classic Final Fantasy games, Pokemon, Dragon Quest etc. People just be different 😁✌
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u/Fun-Competition3441 18d ago
NNK1 is to Chrono Trigger, as NNK2 is to Chrono Cross. Basically a lot of it is vastly different from the first game that it turned off a number of players that loved what was taken from NNK1. It’s still a good game, but I miss the familiars and the focus on the magic. Not a lot of RPGs have the protagonist be a caster focused character. Usually they’re swordsman.
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u/PsHohe 18d ago
I’ve only played the first, but the reason probably answers that. The 2nd didn’t even look like the same franchise. The aesthetic is completely different, the story is different at a core level. The first one is about a boy that discovers another world (the title of the story). The journey, while about saving the world, is personal, and we can connect with Oliver. Even the genre of the game is different, so I lost all interest. Also, Studio Ghibli was what caught my attention in the first place.
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u/NorthPermission1152 18d ago
Wrath of the White Witch? How does that mean he's discovering a new world
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u/PsHohe 18d ago
Ni No Kuni means another world. The "Wrath of the White Witch" part I understand as a subtitle. But in any case, whether I'm grammatically correct or not, that's what I was talking about. The first one has this "another world" element incorporated in the story and game mechanics, the 2nd feels like it doesn't (other than "this happens in another world" in a generic way). I haven't played the 2nd one, so I can be wrong, but that's what I got from the summaries, reviews and media of the game.
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u/NorthPermission1152 18d ago
The main main character of 2 already lived the Revanant Kingdom's world, whereas Roland the character we start as and the person I play as mostly is the one who is new to this world. I don't get why they sidelined him for Evan who is not as interesting.
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u/Perfectchaos791 18d ago
For me, Ni No Kuni 2 started out strong, but it became very tedious very quickly. I liked the combat engine, Roland and Evan's interactions were sweet, I was really enjoying the adventure, but then the slog came in with everything being fetch quests, constant grinding for materials, my movement speed from a to b to a to b to a to b again for all the back and forth running even the main story had me doing, and everything in the kingdom building side of it exacerbated those issues a ton.
On top of that, everything has these unskippable five or eight second animations you're sitting through. Finish a quest? Watch an animation. Level up a facility? Watch an animation. Forge a weapon? Watch an animation. And, heaven help you if you've been saving materials and want to go and upgrade everyone's three weapons, armor slots, accessories, and skills, and then run around and complete and assign a new task to each of your facilities.
All those unskippable animations and jingles really add up, so while I've been enjoying my journey with the story and cast (I've started and stopped the game a bunch over the years and recently made the decision to really try and power through it), everything just feels like such a slog that doesn't have to be.
I'm convinced if all the fetch quests and unskippable animations were paired down, it'd shave off the majority of the game's runtime.
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u/lazy-man64 17d ago
I have just started playing the second game feels like a baby's first action jrpg and the story is so bland i am not even paying attention to it.
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u/Few-Junket464 15d ago
I love the sequel and hate the first one. Switched to easy difficulty and still had a hard time, ended up using trainer here and there
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u/Puppyknight2007 20d ago
For me it just didnt feel like a sequel. It felt more like a completely different game with Ni No Kuni just slapped onto it, to explain why your advisor knows how to steer a country.
I personally liked the beginning of the story(never finished it, but have seen a lot of the later story stuff), and the combat was cool too. But I really missed the familiars and their wackyness.
I also really miss the dual world part, as without it, the game just felt like a generic fantasy game. Didnt really feel all that special. The dual worlds made the first one so unique, and especially the cutscenes by Ghibli!
For me the second game is fine, but not really my kind of game.