Ni No Kuni: Cross Worlds – A Pumping and Donation Simulator

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The Ni No Kuni series of Japanese RPGs was born as something beautiful. Studio Ghibli, an animation studio founded by the legendary animator Hayao Miyazaki, was involved in the first installment. Released in 2010 on the Nintendo DS, in the following years the game broke into hundreds of thousands of copies on PS3, Nintendo Switch, PS4 and PC (as a remaster). Gamers loved the animation, story, music, and fabulous atmosphere.

Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch, 2010

In 2018, Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom, a sequel with its own story, was born. Although Miyazaki didn’t work on it, the signature animation style of the developers from Level-5 (who originally collaborated with Studio Ghibli) tried to keep it. And they succeeded. That is why the fans took the sequel very warmly and left a lot of good reviews – only on Steam the game has more than 6000 reviews and 83% of them are positive.

Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom, 2018

It would seem that the series should evolve in the same vein, giving away one JRPG after another. However, Level-5, either on their own or at the request of the titular publisher Bandai Namco, decided to”make some dough.” As a result, a mobile MMORPG was released with a mediocre”port” for PC. And we all know how insidious mobile projects can be (with few exceptions – hello, Genshin Impact!).

Setting and graphics

But, let’s start the review with the pleasant. After all, the nice thing about Ni No Kuni: Cross Worlds is still there. The setting remains the same fairy tale, magical, a bit childish, but still very attractive. The designs, the animation, the quality of the cutscenes are all similar to the beauty we were shown in the first two parts. Which makes it all the more frustrating that it was ruined.

Right, Grandpa Autumn, let’s start…trashing this game.

The graphics, despite the emphasis on mobile platforms, are great. Many objects are animated (including grass), locations are detailed, effects are colorful and believable (within the anime genre). There is, however,”soap,” but without it there is nowhere – the project is still designed for a wide audience, not the owners of flagship devices.

Plot

And here everything is already a little sadder. Compared to the previous parts, the plot has become more simple and inexpressive. Let his filing in the form of spoken dialogues and printed text in the cut-scenes has not changed, but to read every word frankly did not want to.

Central hub, where the king lives and the main NPCs you can take quests from.

In addition, because of the abundance of completely uninteresting secondary tasks, my hand was drawn to skip most of the dialogue. And even on second passes (to pump up other characters), the plot is skipped completely.

Throne room is a cool location, but there’s nothing to do here… Only missions to take from the king, and that only by plot, no freedom.

The plot is there, you can poplipat in the dialogues if you have nothing else to do. But it has no value and is unlikely to be quoted by anyone in the future. And the gameplay here is not about a role-playing adventure with a deep story.

Gameplay

There are five characters here. Each represents a different class – mage, tank, swordsman, engineer, archer. You can only play one character, there is no team. The other characters can be chosen separately and pumped from scratch, passing the same story. The only thing is that when you choose the following characters, they get from the first familiars and money, which simplifies the pumping.

Pumping

This is the backbone of the game. It could well be called a pumping simulator. The character has a major characteristic – power points. They determine whether he can pass the plot at a later stage, kill bosses or effectively fight in PvP. Absolutely everything that is done in the game comes down to a desire to gain as many points as possible, as if it were an ultimative goal. And for the sake of this, players grind, grind and, of course, donate, which is what the developers are counting on.

Waiting for the boss – I was admiring the crowd for about 10 minutes, was in anticipation of an epic, and then the boss on autobattle fell in a minute and a half and everyone scattered…

Power points are obtained in a dozen ways, but only some of them are really beneficial, and the rest are added to the check mark, to entice the user or make him grind every digit. And these ways are strictly tied to donation.

There are only a few ways to quickly and efficiently level up a character – by putting him in top gear, by getting a powerful family member and by raising his level. Equipment and familiars are obtained by gachi – to knock out something worthwhile, you need to spend a lot of in-game currency, which is hard to get and… easy to buy in the store for real money!

As for the level, it can be pumped very long and tediously on packs of mobs, one percent in half an hour (such”nerdiness” begins somewhere after level 30, and before that levels are gained very quickly). But the game also allows you to take a ton of experience from the dailyk and in-game store.

Dailyks – you don’t even have to pass them, for just a couple thousand coins they count automatically.

Dailies are limited by default, you can pass (including instantly, for gold) 5 per day. But no one forbids the use of magic tickets and increase the number of available dailies. Drop out tickets are extremely rare, and the store for real money they are full. Well, about the direct purchase of experience in the store the kingdom I’m silent – more gloomy mechanics I have not seen. Why can not buy a level 100 for a thousand bucks at once and not bother?

Add to this list all sorts of suits, pumping the kingdom and other mechanics – you can literally donate to everything. And donat really affects the strength of the character. That is, pay-to-win in all its glory.

Judging by the number of donation mechanics, this Level-5 character is clearly drawn from themselves.

But the developers and this did not seem enough. They also introduced the game and so-called territorial and asterite tokens, which are crafted from the mined in various activities territe and asterite. What are they for? To trade on the MARBLEX blockchain marketplace. There you can buy items or get real currency with those tokens. Don’t you have enough grind? Let’s add more grind!

And we don’t even want to talk about Level-5 plans to add NFT in the next updates. It seems that we are waiting for the ultimative donation dump, which would be the envy of even the unshakable”RED SHADOW LEGENDS!

The benefits of donation

Let’s say we’re rich and we donate left and right. What’s the use of it in Ni No Kuni: Cross Worlds? Apart from increasing the character’s power, of course. Let’s say we’ve just pumped up a family stone – a maunty. Will he change? Well, no – he will just bring more power points, and his features and appearance will stay the same.

Farm, farm, farm, senseless, ruthless, boring and almost useless, because donat is the head.

Okay, but a legendary weapon or armor knocked out through insane donation operations will give something other than power points? Maybe the character will look cooler, or there will be new features in battle? Also, no.

The only thing that will be affected by donation – the level of gamer’s ego and success in PvP.

Missions

So maybe the missions are interesting? I wish I could make you happy, but I can’t. Missions here are divided into story and reputation. Plot ones tell the story, reputational ones you have to do to get enough reputation at each location to gain access to the next plot missions.

After level 35, you hit a grind wall. Twenty-four hours of farming, a couple of missions, and so on to the end of the story. Sometimes, due to the straight hands, you can get through missions for which the character is weak, but when they start vanshotting you, you can’t do anything.

Each mission (literally) consists of the following stages:

  • Runs to the point.
  • Talked to an NPC.
  • Ran to the next point.
  • Listened to the dialogue.
  • Killed a bunch of mobs.
  • Went back to the NPC.
  • Got his reward.
  • He ran to the point.
  • Talked to an NPC.
  • Ran to the next point.
  • Listened to the dialogue.
  • Killed a bunch of mobs.
  • Went back to the NPC.
  • Got his reward.

Sometimes a pack of mobs is replaced by one strong mob. Sometimes instead of killing mobs you have to search the bushes or rocks. That’s all. Given that the missions in the game are perceived only as a way to quickly raise the level, their insignificance is almost not noticed. And that’s doubly sad.

Whipping the boss. Nothing interesting, everything is on automatic. But it looks beautiful.

And three times sadder is the fact that by clicking on the mission icon on the screen, you can turn it on automatically. The character himself will run and do all the actions. Autoboy attached.

Combat system

At the word”autoboy” could have been finished, because what’s the point of the combat system, if the player does not need to do anything. But I would like to draw attention to the mediocrity of this system.

Autofarm. Even when you quit the game, you can put in 3-4 hours of AI-controlled farming. But I went further and left the game open all night by plugging my phone into the charger. Got crumbs of expah and a little gold for that. Depressing…

First, all the characters in combat feel the same. Tank you or a magician, or maybe an engineer or gunner – standing in a crowd of mobs, release AoE-damage and admiring the damage figures. No physics, some tactical tricks, nothing. Unless, when fighting bosses or in PvP, from time to time you have to jump aside in order to avoid taking heavy damage. Because of this, there’s even no point in telling about the characters’ abilities – at their core, they are the same as in any mobile RAID-like toy.

My only joy is the muunt purring softly in my ear. I wish I could take him from here to another game…

Second, the developers introduced the”elemental system”, just like in Genshin Impact. What is it? On the paper it’s not so bad – there are weapons of different elements in the game, different monsters have vulnerability to certain elements. Except that the weapons, depending on the element, don’t have any additional features. In battle the game highlights which element you need to choose at the moment. And in battles with bosses or in PvP elements don’t work at all and cause the same damage. So what’s the point of all this?

Kingdoms

Another loud at first glance innovation, which at its core boils down to pumping, grind and donate. You can create a kingdom or join an existing one – the usual clan system. Your kingdom can be developed by completing mini-tasks and replenishing the general treasury obtained by fair or donated currencies. Sometimes the kingdom is attacked, you can also attack other kingdoms – it looks like”wall-to-wall”, which is won by the one who is better trained.

This is what kingdoms are really for. The rest is a husk…ahem, a pretty wrapper!

But the true meaning of a kingdom is the store available in it. That’s where you can buy experience and materials to upgrade. Therefore, players perceive their kingdoms not as the citadel of the clan, but as another way to quickly swing a character. There is almost no social component, although the developers hinted that they made an emphasis on it. Yeah. Can except that the discord with friends and there to have fun. But in that case, it’s better to go to other games.

Miscellaneous

In addition to those listed, the game has a lot of mini-challenges, which bring crumbs of experience and even fewer power points. They exist to give the player an impression of the enormity of the game and great variety. Genshin Impact, for example, fascinates with big open world, complicated puzzles, unforgettable adventures, interesting bosses and awesome storyline. And in Ni No Kuni: Cross Worlds all the content is tied only to the pumping. You could have filled the interface with the”Upgrade your character” buttons and not care. But I had to do so to at least somewhat disguise the rotten nature of this project.

The world of the game. And essentially a set of locations for farming, nothing more.

There is no open world here, by the way. Everything is divided into locations, corridor and boring. Dungeons, challenges, bosses – all run from separate menus, and the character simply teleports between them. Because of this, the integrity of the overall picture suffers. Eh, if this were the only problem…

PC-port

Ni No Kuni: Cross Worlds was created specifically for mobile platforms, because that’s where the real reign of donation. But, to cut a penny from the PC-gamers developers also wanted. A full-fledged port, however, did not please. Only presented a semblance of the emulator built into the game.

Let’s go destroy the Ring of Power. Okay, just kidding, it’s boring PvP – turn on autobattle and enjoy your unrealistic power.

I won’t say it’s unpleasant or uncomfortable to play on PC. But the interface is still mobile, the graphics on the big screen does not look very good, the control first time you need to get used to. But, the disadvantages of the interface is leveled by the presence of hot keys, the graphics grind fans often do not care, and uncomfortable control – what are we talking about, there’s autorun and autoboy!

Conclusions

Ni No Kuni: Cross Worlds has a great wrapper – graphics, animation, music. But underneath it hides all the worst that mobile games have to offer. You don’t even need to play – just turn on the machine and relax. And to play in fact there is nothing – boring missions, combat is dull, PvP – meaningless wall-to-wall. The project can only advise those who are high on slow character pumping, or donaters who have nothing more to donate. So, Genshin will live on, and such shameful games definitely won’t put him down.

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