Playing new mobile MMO - Ni no Kuni: Cross Worlds

[cashew]

OK, you're probably thinking, "cashew, weren't you playing Another Eden not two months ago?".

You are correct.

I've completed part 1 of Another Eden and decided to take a break (signing in only long enough to collect my gacha gems — and sometimes not even), got sucked back into Ace Attorney, and now I'm taking a break from that to do some mindless grinding in Ni no Kuni: Cross Worlds, the newest mobile MMO.

TL;DR — I'm so disappointed. For a game that had art from Studio Ghibli and music from Joe Hisashi, it fails completely to live up to the hype.

Now, for the long version.

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When it was announced that Netmarble was producing this project for Level-5 studios, I knew things were going to be terrible. Netmarble is an old hand on the gacha scene, so it's not surprising at all that their MMO continues the grand tradition of locking every progress behind gacha. The thing is, I actually thought they weren't too bad when they made Marvel Future Fight, a decent action-based gacha RPG that allowed players to progress without hitting the paywall and didn't demand hundreds of hours of dedication to make headway in story mode, and there were always non-gacha ways of working towards whatever it was that you wanted.

This is not the case with Ni no Kuni.

Story

So, let's get the easy stuff out of the way first. The story is a barely there excuse plot to get the player from one point on the map to another and collect/battle things. This is further exacerbated by the writers thinking their writing is so good that they will make you sit through minute long FMVs to force you to listen to the paper-thin excuse of why you're collecting 20-50 different currencies to make equipment and familiars.

The general gist is that a nameless kingdom has been destroyed and you're tasked with traveling around the world looking for resources to rebuild said kingdom. Why was it destroyed? What's the socio-political conflicts in the world? What is the source of evil? How does the virtual reality isekai stuff fit into all of this?

Who cares? The developers certainly don't give two shits about any of it.

No, instead, you have to sit through tedious dialogue about how the blacksmith is too cheap to give away free stuff, or how you're incompetent because you haven't figured out how to enhance your equipment, or the nature of familiars that makes them hide from humans but also try to approach them and you have to feed them a bunch of different cookies to try to recruit them, but also there's this whole hatching thing...

Point is, there's a lot of pointless dialogue that's designed to drain your time and patience so that you'll just pay through the nose to play the gacha for higher level equipment/familiar/mounts/etc. So, let's skip over this and get to the gameplay.

Gameplay

The game more or less plays itself. There's a lot of different bells and whistles and tons of resources for you to juggle, but all of it is in service of CP (character points). CP goes up, you do more damage. That's all there really is to anything. So let's get to the details...

Stars

Everything in this game is ranked by the star system. Just know that you can pretty much ignore all the 1-2 star items/familiars/equipment/etc. You can increase the stars using the promotion system, but promoted stuff isn't as good as naturally high-starred equivalents. Thus, it's advised to just trash anything 1-2 star.

4-star is the highest possible base star level, but the drop rate is below 1%. Keep them around until the power creep makes them more common for now.

3-star is the most workable star level. 3-star has some extra perks with the awakening system and even when promoted to higher star level, will continue to use other 3-star as awakening material. They also have a 9% craft rate, so you're much more likely to be able to awake them. Which brings me to...

Awakening

Everything from weapons to equipment to familiars can be awakened. Awakening combines two of the same item to unlock extra bonuses (like extra stats and additional effects). 2-star and under only increase stats with awakening. 3-stars and up gives additional effects, like increased dodge, healing, reduced skill recharge, etc. Hence the advice to only bother awakening 3-star and up items.

Furthermore, Awakening is a gold drain. I made the mistake of spending all my gold awakening 2-star items and now have to set my character to AI farm to get more gold.

...ah, yes, let's get to that thing about AI farming.

Farming

The game has an AI farming system, because it's a grindy as fuck game and no one likes to grind. So the AI will grind for you. Stock up on healing potions, set your character in an area with mobs, then let the AI take over. A couple hours later, you'll come back to some rewards and shit. And you'll need it, because holy fuck this game runs on destroying stuff you craft over and over and over to drive you to go play the gacha.

Gacha

There is basically a gacha for every aspect of your character's stat stuff: weapons and armor, familiars, costumes. The gacha rates are slightly better and the only way to get natural 4-star equipment/familiars (outside of quest rewards). So if you want to actually min-max, you're gonna have to play so much gacha, because there's basically nothing you can do in game that will let you min-max your character.

And this is where everything predatory about mobile gaming comes in. MMOs at their core have always been about min-maxing your playstyle. However, it's pretty much impossible to max out your character in Ni no Kuni without touching the gacha. Of course, quests in the game reward you with gacha tickets to get you to pull on them some more, but it's not nearly enough for the amount of pulling you'll need to do in order to get anywhere.

And the tough truth of the matter is that this is a game where min-maxing determines if you can get through a level, because the controls are janky and gameplay barely existent. If you have enough damage, you'll breeze through. Otherwise, you'll just keep failing. Oh, and speaking of damage...

Zero strategy

So the reason this game can basically play itself is because there's no strategy to really speak of. Sure, there's a basic elemental system (fire > grass > water > fire, Light and dark counter each other), but that's about it in terms of thinking. Just make sure you've equipped the correct elemental weapon and let your character go. There's no skill tree, no skill point distribution, no real meaningful positioning in PvE because you'll get mobbed from all directions.

So it's recommended to grab a Mage (Witch) or Warrior (Swordsman) and select the correct weapon element and that's it in terms of meaningful choices. (I made the mistake of choosing Ranger (Rogue) and now have to babysit the damn AI by re-positioning the avatar every so often.) Set your character to auto-battle, load up on potions, and click on your quest list and let the game play itself.

And if you're wondering does playing a less auto-braindead character make it more fun, the answer is no. Because the camera is wildly unreliable and zooms at weird times, you will literally perform better on auto-battle than trying to do things manually.

Daily Check-ins

To keep you coming back, Ni no Kuni has daily check-ins, per MMO standard. There's many, many banners to click and things to collect, but it's never really enough to max your character out in a meaningful way. But freebies is still better than none, so.

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If it sounds like I'm unenthused by this game, it's because I really don't find anything particularly worth recommending about it. The customization system is bland (in order to maintain the Ghibli look), the story is blah, the gameplay is pretty much auto battle with the occasional intervention to re-position because your avatar got stuck. It's pretty meh all things considered.

I've had more engagement playing some gacha games than this thing, and I was definitely more engaged with Another Eden.

If you want something brainless that looks good, go ahead and give this a try. But honestly, even the Ghibli art and Joe Hisashi music couldn't keep my attention for very long. Thank goodness for AI farming.