Ni no kuni ps3 free#

When you do engage a monster, the view switches to a battle mode like a traditional JRPG. In fact, if you're wielding powerful weapons and a bulging spell book, they'll leg it from you anyway. All enemies can be seen as you explore the landscape, and are easily avoided. For a start, there are no random monster encounters. The combat system mixes both action RPG and turn-based mechanics to involving and intuitive effect. During our demo, we meet Esther, a young girl who specialises in magic and healing and Swaine, an older boy. Throughout the adventure, Oliver can recruit new characters to his party, each with their own strengths and abilities. A lot of times you get these awkward shadows cast on the faces of characters, but we have an engine that removes those automatically to create a really hand-drawn style.' 'But Ni No Kuni uses a very advanced cell-shading technique. 'We've worked with cell-shading a lot, ever since Dark Cloud, so we are comfortable with it,' he says. Naturally, the game employs cell-shaded animation to capture that look, but according to Hino this is a whole new approach to the style. There's that sense of a living town in which everything is alive and transformable вЂ“ such a lovely Ghibli staple. In a cinematic sequence, a royal procession begins, and the buildings are moved out of the way on track systems. In the demo I saw, we also visited one densely crowded city, Hamelin, populated by pig-like soldiers and crammed with looming metallic buildings. In the exploration scenes, we get that glorious, somewhat hazy look, with gentle winds depicted as swirling white lines and the shadows of clouds rolling over. With lush colouring, fine detail, imaginative monsters and elegant steam punk architecture, Ni No Kuni captures everything we love about the Ghibli aesthetic.

But afterwards, we requested that they review all the characters, setting and art designs, everything we'd originally prepared, so that it would be fitting to their style.'ДЄnd indeed, the look of the game is unmistakable. 'The whole idea of having two worlds already existed before we asked Ghibli to work with us on the animation. 'The game concept was entirely generated by Level-5,' explains the studio's CEO, Akihiro Hino. Many players will no doubt assume that the animation house had a hand in the scripting, but apparently that's not the case.

With its central concept of a child alone in a parallel universe, the game is enormously reminiscent of Ghibli's global hit, Spirited Away. In typical RPG style, the rolling hills, vast woodlands and icy mountains are peppered with towns and mission locations to explore вЂ“ and waiting somewhere out there is the eponymous White Queen, who seeks to thwart Oliver's quest.

Ni no kuni ps3 free#

Players are free to roam the expansive landscape, made up of several interconnected islands, travelling on foot or via galleon and eventually on the back of a dragon. What follows then, is Oliver's journey through the Ni No Kuni вЂ“ the other world of the title. Drippy also gives him a magic book, stuffed with dozens of different types of spells to aid in his quest. Oliver can reanimate his mother if he crosses over and saves her doppelganger. The creature reveals that there is another world existing in parallel with our own, and that every inhabitant of our reality has a soul twin in the adjacent dimension. The story follows a young boy named Oliver who, stricken with grief by the death of his mother, is visited by a goblin-like fairy named Drippy who tells him there is a chance to bring her back to life. We won't get the game in the West until early 2013, but judging by the localised demo I have played, the wait will be worth it. Released in Japan last year to hugely positive reviews, it is now being localised for a global release. Developed by skilled adventure specialist Level-5, it features characters and landscapes drawn by the legendary Studio Ghibli, the animation house repsonsible for movies such as Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle.ДЄs a result, this fairly traditional role-playing game genuinely looks and feels like an interactive Hayao Miyazaki masterpiece. It shouldn't come as any surprise that Ni No Kuni is a thing of astounding beauty.