The Ni no Kuni Wizard’s Edition Has Arrived!

As you may remember, I recently attempted my very first auction on eBay in an effort to purchase the Ni no Kuni Wizard’s Edition at an affordable price.  Long story short, I lost the auction, but ended up getting a similar item for about the same price.  The only difference is I got the European version (more specifically, the German version) instead of the North American one, so I missed out on a few extra goodies.  Fortunately, nothing of any real importance is missing, and now that it has finally arrived, it’s about time I talked about it.

Crushing Defeat at the Duck’s First Auction

The very first auction I ever participated in involved fake money in elementary school.  We earned this money throughout the year and had several auctions.  But I saved up all of my money for the very last auction, allowing me to obtain highly coveted items no one else had the money for.  I think I got a fair number of things, namely a large box of colored pencils that I still have to this day.

Ni no Kuni and Why Swaine is the Best Character: A Random Rambling

In recent times, I have decided to replay Ni no Kuni, a game that has become near and dear to my heart.  It is due to the fact that I’m living in a rental with limited items unpacked that I returned to the game so soon, as when I enjoy a game, I will often try to spend longer between playthroughs to keep it fresh.  So often in the past, I would replay my favorite games until I couldn’t stand the sight of them.  Not so anymore.  It’s ironic that I intentionally avoid my favorite games, but it keeps them fun, so it’s worth it in the end.

The (Tidy) Return of the Old RPGs

Lately, I have really begun to lose my affection for RPGs, a genre I used to love after discovering how amazing they could be thanks to my first playthroughs of Square’s Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy X.  Those games were truly special and introduced me to some complex and deep stories and characters I could really fall in love with (but not in that way, you silly people!).  For this reason, I came to look to Square Enix for good RPGs, I found myself, nevertheless, underwhelmed with the release of FFXII and FFXIII.  While I did have a lot of fun checking out some of the old RPGs, like FFVI and FFIX, I still had quite a bit of trouble finding any good new games of the genre, and as my schedule became busier, I also had less desire to spend such a huge quantity of time on a whole category of games that, in general, felt slow-paced and tedious.

That all changed when I was first introduced to Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch on the gaming blog, RPG Square.  Something about it caught my interest, and I ended up finding it at Wal-Mart when I was in possession of a gift card.  And yet, at the same time, I must admit that my initial impression of the game was a bit reluctant.  I didn’t know about the cartoony style of graphics (I know, I’m a snob sometimes), and when I saw the creature on the cover (who turned out to be Mr. Drippy), I thought, oh, no, not another cutesy sidekick.