Ni No Kuni(PS3)

[myghty]

Re: Ni No Kuni(PS3)

Ni No Kuni is 40 bucks at Target this week. Maybe time to pick it up...

[ubernoob]

Re: Ni No Kuni(PS3)

I've been thinking of picking up an RPG but have been debating between this and Tales Of Graces F - which would you guys recommend, considering I probably only have time for one of them (for now anyway). This will be an intro to JRPG games for me considering I've never really played any other than most of the Final Fantasy games and Valkyria Chronicles.

Tales of Graces f is probably a better choice as an intro to JRPGs. This game has frustrating companion AI.

Overall, Ni No Kuni is beautiful... but it's more so for fans of JRPGs already. I can see the horrendous companion AI frustrating a lot of newcomers to the genre.

[CMH]

Re: Ni No Kuni(PS3)

I'm still playing through Ni no Kuni and the companion AI is infuriating both me and the girlfriend.

It seems nothing you do really resolves the dilemma.

I'm also growing increasingly frustrated with characters throwing familiars into a fight by throwing them straight into the arms of the enemy.

I can hardly ever enter a new familiar without getting 60 HP wiped out from two or three hits by enemies. And this becomes more difficult to manage when your companions find themselves "dead" because they are incapable of defending themselves or making anything resembling a smart decision.

Most of my management is in providing health in their aid which makes the game tedious.

[Burns11]

Re: Ni No Kuni(PS3)

Make Esther a pure healer, only give her familiars that have healing spells and only put healing spells in that familiars queue. It still doesn't make the AI any better, but Esther will heal and clear you up to concentrate on doing most of the damage. It doesn't help Swaine from burning through all his MP on the first weak *** enemy he runs across, but with a good familiar he will still do decent damage.

[CMH]

Make Esther a pure healer, only give her familiars that have healing spells and only put healing spells in that familiars queue. It still doesn't make the AI any better, but Esther will heal and clear you up to concentrate on doing most of the damage. It doesn't help Swaine from burning through all his MP on the first weak *** enemy he runs across, but with a good familiar he will still do decent damage.

Yeah I started doing that and it helped but once she was out of MP, she became clueless.

What I did instead was give her the mite. He's my strongest familiar without question. That gives her an attack advantage while I use the weaker familiars because I actually know how to avoid getting them killed.

And I do everything to make sure she survives along with Oliver. If it becomes a choice, I control her and use the Mite to finish off the work.

But giving her and Swaine weaker familiars left me doing all of the work.

It has worked for me even if it bumps battle time up since I'm using weaker familiars and appear to be the only one that knows how to attack and defend. I also try to lure enemies to me so my compadres can attack from the back. And even then they usually just stare at the screen.

Having Attack/Defend All has been a nice help especially when prior to that they wouldn't defend themselves when a major boss used a special attack.


Sent from my mobile device.

[bcruise]

Re: Ni No Kuni(PS3)

Tales of Graces f is probably a better choice as an intro to JRPGs. This game has frustrating companion AI.

Overall, Ni No Kuni is beautiful... but it's more so for fans of JRPGs already. I can see the horrendous companion AI frustrating a lot of newcomers to the genre.

I'd tend to agree with this. In addition I like Ni No Kuni's story more than Graces (not that Graces story was bad, just predictable IMO from what I remember), but that's not going to matter if you can't get to the end.

The best way I found to deal with the MP problem was to just throw coffee at it - lots of it. And also use the lower MP cost skills so the AI wouldn't burn through all of it in one fight. This wasn't much of a problem because I didn't really have to always purchase the best equipment available until late in the game, and one strong coffee would last Esther several fights at least. It was pretty cost-effective, in other words. I always felt that leveling up your familiars with treats was more useful (and cheaper!) than always upgrading their equipment. Late in the game I ran into some really tough fights that I DID need better equipment for, but I did get through the majority of the game playing like this.

Graces' companion AI plays a major role in that game as well (it's real time, control only one character at a time also), but it's done much better than Ni No Kuni's. The regular AI just performs better, and it's also very customizable with 10 general "focus" options per character as well as settings for which type of attack they use, how aggressive they are, and how often they defend. If all that sounds complicated, you can also just use the first focus setting "Up to you" and the AI will still perform pretty well according to that character's style (attacker, support/healer, etc. Also, there's no MP in Graces - characters act with command points that refill over time, so you won't have many situations where you or your companions are simply unable to heal themselves. If that does happen, you're probably dead.

To sum it up, I felt that Ni No Kuni required a lot more micromanagement of your party than Graces (although you can certainly go that route in Graces if you so wish), and because of that Graces is probably more accessible to an inexperienced RPG'er.

Talking about it makes me want to go back and replay Graces again...

[CMH]

About 20 hours in I realized I should be buying treats and building my familiars vs. buying weapons only. So I'm doing that and it has helped.

Small fights are hardly a challenge. It's the big fights. Getting the Littlies was a drag almost. Took much longer than necessary.


Sent from my mobile device.

[Leon]

Re: Ni No Kuni(PS3)

Haven't been able to play this in a while and I finally picked it back up again. I just finished the Temple of Trials and can finally tame familiars.

Are there any familiars I should be looking into capturing at this stage of the game or should I just play as I please? I want to be sufficiently prepared going forward.

So far I have:

Oliver - Mighty Mite, Thumbelemur, Clubber Cub

Esther - Drongo, Seed Sprite, Boggly-Boo

Reserve - Bonehead

[MachoMyers]

Re: Ni No Kuni(PS3)

Just started this game this week and while not very into it I can already say it is fantastic. I just sit there with the biggest grin on my face. The animation is phenomenal.

[Skyboxer]

Re: Ni No Kuni(PS3)

Loved the game for the most part.. up until I realized it was real time battles (to much happening to keep my sanity.)

I prefer turn based.

[Jasong7777]

Re: Ni No Kuni(PS3)

Still slogging my way through the game. Just about done, but some of these of boss battles near the end are a beast. Been grinding a little.