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Live Blogs Let's (Try To) Play Ni No Kuni
TracerBullet2012-07-03 15:34:09

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The (Supposedly) Informative Introduction

Hello, and welcome to my wonderful little experiment. As you probably gathered from the title and distinctly non-English sounding topic, this liveblog will follow my attempts to play Level 5 and Studio Ghibli's excuse to murder trees en masse lovingly crafted RPG, Ni No Kuni. Or more specifically, the 2010 DS release with the 392-page illustrated phonebook spellbook that unlike the PS 3 release that hit Japan two months ago, has no announced rumblings of a localization.

Being the kind of guy who seeks out the eclectic in gaming, I've been waiting for the chance to play this game for a while, but have been held back by a number of things... The first, and most obvious of these, is that I have an comprehension of Japanese writing and text, or for that matter, the Japanese language as a whole, that is about on par with that of a drunken mole, making the phonebook spellbook more or less a glorified art book for me in terms of usability. The second, is that I have a nasty tendency to suck get hopelessly in over my head with games like these, which is why Final Fantasy IV DS started to seem like less of a game and more of a surrogate for cutting myself as I got further into it. For folks like me, our best course of action short of watching someone else play our games for us is typically to quietly lurk the shadows of Game FA Qs, ignoring the petty squabbles of raging nerds on their fora for the meaty guides that will tell you what on earth to do in a game down to when to sneeze. It may seem heretical to some, but hey, I don't play games looking for an excuse to pound my head against a wall, I'm here for the story and art that devs have lovingly showered upon their games.

After a few months of tearing my hair out patient waiting, I finally managed to find a detailed walkthrough for Ni No Kuni... In Thai. Despite this, Google Translate appears to spit out what seems to be a semi-coherent translation. (I hope.) So this will more or less be my best chance at getting any sort of help progressing through the game (unless some kind soul cranks out an English walkthrough some time in the near future). Since there's no other guide this detailed to my knowledge for this game, I have decided to attempt to de-idiotify Google's translation of this walkthrough as I progress through the game, in the hopes of being able to make Ni No Kuni more accessible to folks like me who imported the game, but are kinda stuck on account of not really understanding Japanese, and for the folks who are playing this game by PERFECTLY LEGAL MEANS due to logistics or otherwise being too broke to afford direct importing.

A final note... This is kinda my first liveblog, ever. So I'm more or less out of tune for what is considered "prompt" and "egregiously slow" for liveblog updates. Further complicating the matter is my status as a (theoretically) broke college student. So as a disclaimer, I intend to aim for a biweekly*

updating schedule for this liveblog, more if I have the time and motivation, less if I'm worried about being savagely murdered by a series of impending concerns in real life.

So anywho, let's get started (when I get the first real update up)!

UPDATE:

Since this liveblog began, it would appear that someone made a small, if more understandable walkthrough of the game in English. (Which I noticed shortly before posting the 17th update.) If you happen to not be fluent in Thai like myself, and lack the confidence to bumble your way through the game (like myself), pick the guide that doesn't have to be viewed via an internet log (even if there's no pictures).

Comments

FreezairForALimitedTime Since: Dec, 1969
May 3rd 2012 at 5:07:01 PM
I am now picturing an "Imagine Rap," sort of like the Pokemon Rap. Lord preserve me.

Does HP/stat effects seem to affect the catch rate at all?
TracerBullet Since: Dec, 1969
May 7th 2012 at 10:07:22 PM
I honestly couldn't tell, though a few battles gave me the impression that HP and/or status might be a factor. *cough* Cortez *cough* Unfortunately, I have not found a spell equivalent of "False Swipe," which would make testing the theory out a lot easier.
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