Day 22: A Game Sequel Which Disappointed You

As I slowly inch my way forward through the 30 days’ worth of video game topics, I arrive upon a pretty easy one, a game sequel which disappointed me.  One game in particular springs to mind, but since it is such an obvious choice, I also wanted to briefly discuss one of the biggest crimes a sequel can commit.  For me, anyway.  We’ll see if you agree.

Ni no Kuni II: A Review

Christmas is always the best time for catching up on all the games I missed, and one such game that I was able to obtain thanks to Christmas of 2018 was Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom.  Though I was a big fan of the first game on the PS3, I’ll admit I was rather doubtful as to how the newest entry in the series would turn out.  As far as I could tell, none of the first game’s original cast of characters was returning, leading me to believe from the start that this game would be a bit…different.

Trusting the Story

Occasionally, I like to look through the list of games on current or recent consoles to see if there are any obscure games that sound interesting.  Back when the Wii was still part of the “current” category of consoles, I came upon a game called Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon.  If you have been following my gameplay series for it on our Youtube channel, then it will come as no surprise that I did finally get around to playing the game.  In actuality, a big motivation for buying the game was due to the fact that it looked like an interesting game to test out my brand new Live Gamer Portable capture card.  It wasn’t too long, so it wasn’t a big commitment, and it looked a bit spooky, which could create some good reactions.  And the $20 price tag on Amazon helped a lot, too.

Nevertheless, I heard some negative things about the game before I bought it, namely the issue with weapons randomly breaking and monotonous levels later in the game.  While I can largely agree with these complaints, neither of these issues were the game’s greatest crimes.  But, I’ll get to that soon.

UWG Expands to Youtube

In the past, I believe I posted a few, well, posts about some videos I had uploaded to Youtube, namely some gameplay videos of me screaming as I got pursued by Slender Man.  Yeah.  It was scary stuff.  It’s also possible I posted about some readings I did of some of my fan fiction, but it’s possible I didn’t.  If not, forget I said anything.  Seriously, don’t watch those.  They’re rather…not that good.

Top Songs from Ni no Kuni

I recently had the immense pleasure of playing through a truly spectacular RPG, Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch.  This game excelled in storytelling and characters you could really feel attached to.  The graphics were beautiful.  And the music, well, it all fit perfectly in this amazing world and served to enhance something that was already truly special.  Behold, my top five songs from Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch.

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.