In the last update, we more or less played through the prologue, and learned how to resist those emo urges save. This time, we'll be getting a little down and dirty.
When we boot up the game, we will immediately notice that there's two extra buttons, with the middle one automatically selected. Since our goal is to continue the same file as before, let's try the default selection. We get presented with a card corresponding to our last save file, and Shizuku on the bottom being a scribe again with some question and a button hotlinked to the "A" button. After some blind faith careful deduction, we press A...
And wind up in Oliver's bedroom from last time. Let's take the opportunity to check that bag out while we're here. The bag icon on the top left DOES indeed appear to be some sort of inventory, with six item classes, which are selectable by the L & R buttons as well as the touchscreen. A couple of the icons seem to rather obviously correspond to equipped items, but let's wait and find that out later. The book has some tags with numbers and text... These are our quests, I suppose? We have three tags under the left tab, and the right tab (selectable by the same method as the tabs in the invetory) has nothing. The magnifying glass appears to be where the nitty gritty of the stats are. It gives the HP, MP, and what appear to be physical and magical offense and defense stats along with your speed here. Along with a maximum of four item slots, a number above these items, and four icons with either an X an O, or a - by them. Looks like these are elemental resistances and weaknesses. Apparently, your maximum party size is three, although there's nine other slots beneath the top three... Are we going to have to wind up making a doll stand in for Oliver at some point? More detailed stats for our party include a spread of (Assuming Physical Offense / Phys. Defense / Magical Off. / Mag. Def. / Speed) are 7 / 9 / 11 / 7 / 6 for Oliver, and Shizuku has a spread of 12 / 9 / 7 / 9 / 6. Lantern-face also apparently has an empty item slot, a 1 for a mystery number, and looks like he can take getting soaked... Not so much getting burned.
Also, the B button IS your "back" function and Select appears to bring up a settings menu, but enough about that, let's get out of this bedroom already!
- We are the living room. At the fireplace. Magic books for the New Jersey マジック マスター to name the. Book
Sounds like we need to go downstairs... Not sure how on earth New Jersey figures into this though. Let's see if we can get any items first... And it looks like there really IS nothing to take in Oliver's house at least not on the top floor... A little side note, but Shizuku apparently warps to you if he gets caught behind a corner or something. Which will probably come in handy for keeping him from becoming monster chow. We go downstairs, check the surroundings to find a whopping nothing, and try to leave the house for the heck of it. Shizuku will gently whack you upside the head prod you to follow the magical beyond-the-fourth-wall map on the top screen, so let's do that. We arrive in the living room... And there's no arrows... Hmm... Since we're in a Level 5 game... What would Layton do? Let's start by rooting around a bit. We get an exclamation point over Oliver's head when we poke around the fireplace, so let's press A. We get treated to a (rendered but voiced) cutscene of Shizuku going up the chimney and rooting around to ruin Oliver's lungs from the ashes retrieve an in-game counterpart to our beloved phonebook spellbook. Oliver gives the thing a good dusting off after being told what on earth he's holding by Shizuku.
And Shizuku's talking again. We got a highlighted phrase consisting of two Kanji this time. Oliver, despite speaking Japanese, is as oblivious as we are, which ticks Shizuku off a little. He yacks a bit, and drops another highlighted phrase, same two Kanji from before, plus an additional third... A few more words and it looks like Shizuku's done. Interestingly, when we move around, it looks like Shizuku stays put by the fireplace. We talk to Shizuku and he gives us a "yes" or "no" question again... "Yes?"
Oh, looks like we're putting in a name here... We've got six slots... Select lets you switch between Hiragana and Katakana. A + D-pad for selection lets you pick kana (as does tapping the screen), B & X both are your delete function. Hmm... ¿Cómo se dice "Trope-Tan"? A quick visit to Google Translate suggests "比喩 - タン" which is apparently pronounced Hiyu-Tan, or literally Metaphor-Tan... Trope-Tan it is! Let's stick with hiragana though, since that's apparently how OS-tan rolls. After a little digging online, we score: ひゆたん, which is promptly punched in. We get a "yes" or "no" question again (presumably to get you to reconsider those anatomically-themed names), and answer "yes".
Shizuku starts talking again... And we get an abrupt transition from booping to spoken lines. Another highlighted phrase, 2 kanji followed by "no" then a last kanji. It's Maho no... Something. After the conversation ends, we get a red arrow leading us back to the entryway.
- After that, the red arrow out of the house, we will stick 木 の 棒 fluorescence around on the floor.
Sounds right... But what is this fluorescence?
We head back to the entryway... And... Get prompetd to head out... Shizuku talks to us a bit on the front lawn... (Why is he out?!) And then we get prompted to... Something. Okay, Heading towards the grocery store obviously isn't it... Oh! There's apparently a glittering stick on the sidewalk to the left of Oliver's property line... This must be important... We press A and... Pick up some sort of item, the last three kana match those from the guide.
Shizuku yacks some more (put a disguise or something on, seriously!)... And... Chucks the stick that we found into the neighbor's yard... Well, that would explain why our neighbors don't like us... When we try and reach the neighbor's gate, Shizuku yells at us... Gee, what do you want me to do? A little moon logic careful reasoning later, we have determined that Shizuku does not want us to go in our house or up the street again... So how do we get that accursed stick? ... Oh, there's another one in the road on the other side of the street. Being the daredevils that we are, we boldly strut into the street, hoping that a passing semi doesn't reduce the two us us into a meaty paste to fetch another stick. Oliver apparently wasn't expecting to find this, and we get another voiced exchange... So it's the same stick? Shizuku yells at Oliver a little (presumably for being as slow as we have been), and then tells us to go up the street. The magical fourth wall breaking map confirms these desires.
- Follow the arrow and select the map outward to the right place.
Sounds easy enough. Though "right place" could be less ambiguous...
We go back in the direction of the grocery store, SOMEHOW not being spotted by anyone or run over by cars in this now-deserted town... And notice an utter absence of BGM... Uh oh. We talk to an NPC, who is oblivious of Shizuku apparently... Shizuku yells at us if we try to go get more groceries, and the citizens of Hotroit are apparently masters of egregiously bad parking, with two boats stock 1950s cars parked in the middle of the street, one cutting off a crosswalk. If you turn LEFT at the intersection instead of going to the direction that the arrow points out, you find out that Hotroit is apparently a little bigger than it looks, and is full of lovingly illustrated places that we apparently can't access yet. Onto the arrow's path, then. ... Which punts us back to the same scr- Oh. It lets you pick different landmarks to jump between... And the only other choice appears to be a park. Let's take it.
By the time we get to the park, it is nighttime. There's a couple NPCs about. So let's bug them. ... None of them apparently notice, or otherwise care that there's a lamp-tapir shadowing me... (Or if they are, I can't understand it...) Is Shizuku visible to the rest of the world? We notice an arrow pointing northward and follow it.
- The event occurred. Shizuoka and Tokyo will give us a casting Gate ゲート to open the door to a parallel world.
... Parallel worlds and Gates, that's all I got from this one...
We get a short animated cutscene of Shizuku egging us on to do... Something in a plaza. Looks like we're opening up a gate to "Ni no Kuni?" And he tells us to cast a Gate spell. The game gives us a reference number for the spell for the folks using their phonebooks spellbooks, and prompts us to get our stylus out via a cute picture of Shizuku pulling one out from a DS Lite. We tap the screen, and get an interface for drawing stuff... Um... Help me out here, guide...
- The Russian style of painting below it.
The guide has the symbol that looks kinda like an inverted trident as our Gate spell.
◊ Which is on page 21 of the tree killer.
- The black line in the drawing, then draw a red line from the dark to light.
So black lines, then red lines for these spells then. Let's try this out. Start with the fat part to the thin part.
After sketching a rough approximation of the Gate sigil, we trigger a series of animated cutscenes. Oliver uses that stick from earlier (oh, it's a wand) to sketch out a Gate spell, which causes a brilliant burst of light to erupt from his stick wand and form a absolutely gorgeous gate and steps. The other NPCs can't see this either, as we see some woman dragging off a dog who can sense the massive gate that we just summoned utterly oblivious of the fact that there's STAIRS right beside her. We bound off after Shizuku, go through a beautiful pillared hallway with trippy wall paintings... And arrive in a forest. Shizuku bounds off ahead of us while Oliver gets a little freaked out by the local wildlife, and Shizuku takes us to a cliff where we can see this other world, in all of its drool-inducing glory.
北の森North Wood.
- I went to see the safe deposit box.
- We will not walk into the old tree was a giant.
... Yeah, let's save here before we progress... I don't like the sound of that "giant"...
Shizuku and Oliver yack a bit, presumably Oliver is telling Shizuku how much of a moron he is for blindly bounding off into a world with creatures that Oliver has no idea if they're friendly or not... OKAY SERIOUSLY, GAME?! We apparently can't save just yet... Whelp, follow the arrow on the top screen, I guess. I don't see a safe... I DO see a glowing stone tablet though... Shizuku yacks about it when we get close, and brings up some more highlighted text, all in katakana... There's an exchange, no VAs unfortunately and we can reassume direct control over Oliver. When we get close to the tablet, an exclamation mark pops up over Oliver's head... Time to press that A button... Looks like it restores our HP and MP. Handy! The game then gives us a chance to save, which over three hours in, would probably be a good thing to exploit right now (sadly, there's no scribe Shizuku for this one). We save, and then press on...
Okay so NOW we're in the North Wood... Looks closer to a jungle than a proper "wood"... Shizuku and Oliver yack a bit with their VAs... Shizuku breaks out the highlighted text again... Looks like its about some sort of kingdom... Also, the music is a little tense at the moment... Sounds like there's a fight brewing. Something named Jabo pops up a couple times... More highlighted text... Which sadly looks like moonspeak to me... It's a Nu... Nukega... Something or other. And they talk about Jabo again... Is it something we'll meet soon? More talking... Dropping the name of what I think is that kingdom again... Is it related to Jabo? When we try to backtrack and save, Shizuku yells at us... Let's see if we can save via our bag... Nope. Looks like we can only press on following our handy fourth-wall violating map...
We leave the clearing... And come across a straight (but pretty) path northward... Moving on... And we find another seemingly straightforward path... Still can't save... Let's trudge on, gawk at the background and pretty lighting effects simulating sunlight peeking in through the treetops and go to the next area... And we find... A fork in the road... As we get to it, Shizuku starts to talk (in boops), and runs off down the left branch of the fork. Darn it Shizuku, you're not supposed to run off! You're my GUIDE for crying out loud! We follow the red arrow out of this present area and find... A stream... With Shizuku running off... Again. At least he's going in the same direction as the arrows... In the next area, there's...
Cutscene time! It's a prerendered cutscene of Shizuku running off ahead of Oliver... Again, and Oliver stumbling over a log. After picking himself up, Oliver notices a Whispy Woods expy a tree with a face, which he and Shizuku check out. The tree talks back to us (with a VA). ... Looks like Shizuku and the tree know each other... The VAs die out after a while, and we're left with booping again. There's a bit of an exchange and Shizuku gets startled. And then Shizuku just HAS to get us involved... He drops a highlighted term...
- To draw a Fireball ファイア ボール.
Which happens to match up with this... But why are we using Fireball... In a FOREST?
One crude approximation of a Fireball spell later (it looks like an X with a top and a vertical bisecting slash
◊, on page 50 of the spellbook). Shizuku gives us another spell to use.
- Followed by a Heal ヒール.
This one. It's the one that looks like a V intersecting with a half circle
◊, it's located on page 22 of the 392-page copy protection spellbook.
- Then the monster will appear. We fight to win.
Piss. You could be a little more detailed than that, you know!
Four tries later, we manage to get a sufficiently unsucky approximation of a Heal Spell out. Which prompts our tree buddy to talk some more... Shizuku and the tree's VAs speak a bit... And the tree apparently decides he hates us and dumps a monster (which looks kinda like a bipedal yellow cross between a cat and a bird) onto the ground for us to deal with.
Battle Time!
The most obvious impressions to begin with: Your party members are on the bottom screen, your foes on the top. Looks like Shizuku will be babying us through this one. (Which is probably pretty good, since it would be fairly humiliating to lose to this "monster" that looks more like a reject for a baby Pokemon design than something that's supposed to be fear-inspiring.)
The game instructs you to press a red button with four kana. Let's do it. Doing so brings up some sort of targeting system (which is kinda redundant, since there's ONE monster to swat), so we'll press A again to hit this yellow button. Now it's Shizuku's turn. He has the same red button highlighted... Same targeting system... We press A, and... Whallop the yellow bird-cat upside the head. Shizuku deals an attack dealing 7 HP of damage, Oliver smacks the thing with his wand for 5, and gets pecked(?) for 3 HP of damage. Shizuku does some more explaining, drops another highlighted term... Looks like he's talking about using magic... Two additional tabs open on our battle menu. A light blue button with three kana, and a darker blue one with 4. A button between the two remains grayed out. The light blue button brings up a magic menu... And the dark blue... Skips your turn? ... Eh, what the hey, Oliver's got 23 more HP, let's see what it does.
And after Shizuku gets kicked in the face by the cat-bird for 2 HP of damage, we discover that it's a "defend" command. Also, if it's not already apparent, Ni No Kuni appears to run on a Dragon Quest-style turn system (which, for the unfamiliar, is pretty close to the same system that Pokemon uses) rather than an ATB system like in Final Fantasy or Chrono Trigger (which is probably why we're not dead yet). Alright, let's try out some magic... Oliver has 2 spells. One costs 3 MP to use and apparently restores HP, the other is some sort of offensive attack for 2 MP. Shizuku has a green button rather than a light blue one next to his attack button, but it functions the same as Oliver's magic tab. He only has one spell at the moment, which costs 3 MP to use. It appears to affect a single party member, let's give it a whirl.
Oliver's offensive spell is apparently a fireball... Which did 7 or so HP of damage to the bird-cat. Shizuku's spell apparently raises defense. Since Shizuku's out more HP and MP than Oliver right now, let's have him attack and experiment with Oliver's other spell. Like Shizuku's spell, it only affects one party member.
Sadly, Shizuku defeats the bird-cat with a final blow before we get a chance to see Oliver's healing spell, and loses a further 3 HP in the process.
From this first battle, we gained 3 experience points, 9 G, and what appears to be a bread loaf.
Oliver and Shizuku yack a bit and we talk with the tree a little more... Maybe it didn't mean to drop that monster on us? The tree's laughing about something... And drops a highlighted term of his own... What's it about? Oh. Imagines. That's right, Ni No Kuni apparently took a page from mons series for your party members. Many of them will be adorable little abominations critters... Now... How do they work anyways? There's some more yacking... And now it's apparently sigil time again.
- To draw the Symbol device Imagine.
Well, that would explain what we're supposed to draw... (It's the symbol that looks like a < with a vertical slash
◊, which apparently shows up on page 20 of "Trope-tan's" out-of-game counterpart.)
Drawing the sigil triggers a cutscene, in which a glowy blue light erupts from Oliver's chest, and an adorable little... Er... What is that, a toad? Orange red-caped thing with stubby limbs, a pair of small horns, a gimpy sword, and shield takes form (you might remember it from the trailer). Oliver is naturally mesmerized, though is brought down to earth by his Imagine whacking him in the head with the blunt of its sword, which gives Shizuku a bit of a chuckle.
- An Event caused the monster to attack again. The game is to try to change the position of Oliver. We've been up to Oliver, then the reverse.
- After you win, then we can get them ルッチ he might also have a new menu.
- The red arrow to continue the safe.
... Sounds like that bird-cat's a tenacious little bugger. Shizuku and Oliver yack a bit after summoning our first Imagine (no VAs) and we hear a roar. A thing that looks kinda like an unholy offspring of a Totodile and a Kremling pops out from a bush. (Where's my bird-cat, guide?!) Looks like we've got that second fight on our hands...
As with last time, Shizuku is here to baby us through this battle. The game highlights a button on the upper left of the bottom screen hotkeyed to the Y button... We use that to move? Looks like it brings up a 3x3 movement grid... Let's check what we can and can't do... The front and rear rows all have unoccupied cells. To move, click on your char with A or the stylus and then click an unoccupied cell. Let's see how much freedom we have to move... Shizuku yells at us if we try to move back. Looks like he wants us up and personal with this monster... (Jerk.) Moving to any of the three cells in the front will appease our slave driver Shizuku, though what exactly this will achieve probably won't be clear until we get bitten by this croc. Shizuku then allows us to move the entire party around until we find an arrangement that suits us... Let's park Oliver and Shizuku in the back row, with our Imagine buddy in front of Shizuku in the central cell.
We hit Y (or tap the red button in the bottom right) to confirm our decision. And we can select from buttons like we did back when it was just Oliver and Shizuku. A green button to the left of "Defend" and a downwards pointing arrow are now accessible for us. The arrow apparently accesses two sets of 4 prompts (the 2 middle ones on the bottom are available for us to use at the moment), let's experiment around a bit. Accessing the purple button on the bottom (the left one) reveals that we can't really do much right now. There's apparently some sort of stat for all three of us... But all of us have 0 in that stat right now. The orange button, on the right does something to affect your party members... But I can't make out what it does right now, and it (seemingly) just returns us to the battle menu... (Watch as it becomes pivotal to winning a boss fight in about 3 updates or something.) The green button accesses held items, but since our HP and MP apparently got restored from that last fight, we'll avoid using the bread roll for now.
So like the nimrods brilliant strategists that we are, we attack the little croc. Everyone uses melee attacks, seeing as our Imagine has one spell, which requires all 8 of his(/her?) MP. The Imagine deals out 10 HP of damage, Oliver and Shizuku deal out 3 and 4 respectively, while Shizuku eats a 5 HP attack. (So no, attempting to use one of your party members as a meat shield does not appear to work. At least not for this enemy.) Let's play around with movement for a bit and move Oliver up one cell to see what it does to his attack strength. Another button is accessible now, on the upper right, red with 4 kana and linked to the X button... Which is apparently Auto-Battle. Thankfully, the croc didn't have much HP left and our Imagine (who is apparently called Rucci) and Oliver were able to down it with a combination of a Melee attack and a Fireball.
In this second battle, we gained 6 exp, 6 G, another bread loaf, and everyone leveled up to Level 2. Oliver gained +3 HP and +3 MP. Shizuku gained +4 HP and + 1 MP, and Rucci gained +7 HP and +5 MP. Our team's PA/PD/MA/MD/Spd spreads increased by +1/+2/+4/+2/+2, +2/+1/+2/+3/+2, and +3/+6/+4/+4/+4 for Oliver, Shizuku, and Rucci, respectively. (Which I shall spare you from having to endure too frequently in future, hopefully more battle-intensive updates.)
After the battle, Rucci gets recalled back into Oliver's body by a yellow light. (Looks like he won't be following us around, sadly.) And Oliver and Shizuku have a voiced exchange again, apparently about Imagines like our friend Rucci. The tree butts in for a bit, and we transition into a rendered cutscene. We get a thing that looks kinda like a Thwomp (party member?) and some sort of necklace thing. We thank the tree and after some more spoken lines by Oliver, Shizuku's, and the tree's VAs, head off on our merry way.
... AND WE STILL CAN'T SAVE! On the other hand, we have three new menu functions. That necklace thingy on the top left, some sort of birdcage thing in the center, and the thwomp in the bottom middle. Oh, so the necklace thing is... A perfume bottle? What do I do with that? There's 8 slots... Apparently to be filled later on... The birdcage is an interactive mode with your Imagines, we'll check that one out later. The Thwomp appears to be the reference / stat-tracking section for the game. There's four parts. The top one is something text-heavy that I can't make out at the moment, the second is a codex of some sort... Looks like it's about the various Imagines and enemies in-game. The third tab appears to be a map, and the last is apparently a completion tracker. Also, your staff is now accessible in the overworld via the Y button, for when you need to cast spells.
We quickly find out that we can't press on further beyond the tree, and have to backtrack. So let's follow the arrows again... And we find ourselves back at the fork in the road. Except this time, we need to head right. We go on to a pretty (albeit barren of anything interesting in terms of items or enemies) corridor with a background of some rapids and continue on to the next area. Here, we find another one of those rocks, which are apparently save points. Let's stop here for now.
Takeaway Points:
- Ni No Kuni takes pity on disoriented players, but not enough to let you save out of your bag anywhere you please.
- Ni No Kuni's battle system, TL:DR version: X = Auto-Battle, Y = move party members, "top" row of buttons (from left to right) = Attack /
PSIMagic / Inventory / Defend, "bottom" row of buttons = stuff I need to figure out eventually. - Ni No Kuni's magic system, TL:DR version: Black strokes before red strokes, going from non-pointy end to pointy end. It'll be kinda hard to miss when you have to sketch something, just look for the Shizuku pulling out a stylus bigger than him. A full catalog of spells can be found here.
◊
- You're the only entity in Hotroit barring some random mutt that has displayed any awareness of this other world.
- Shizuku is looking more and more like he's going to become some
Totodile'sKremling'scroc's chow with that habit of running off of his. - Level 5 hates kleptomaniacs. Hence why we've been able to get a whopping nothing from the areas that we've visited that weren't given to us via events or battles. Unless if you're robbing monsters, then it's cool.
Stats:
- Oliver: Level 2: 29 HP / 15 MP
- Shizuku: Level 2: 37 HP / 11 MP
- Rucci: Level 2: 37 HP / 13 MP
- G: 15.
- Play Time: 5 hours, 15 minutes, 58 seconds. (This is going to be a long quest to retrieve our sandwichmaker... And probably explains why this update is
as long as "Trope-tan"a bit longer than the last one.)
Next time, we'll see just how well Oliver and company fare when those training wheels start to come off.
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