Ni no Kuni™ II: Revenant Kingdom

good game

bought because i thought it was cool waited months did not read it was sub title only got annoyed i had to read so i gave up playing this game. if someone knows of a mod to have english speaking let me know

Ni no Kuni™ II: Revenant Kingdom – A Charming Adventure!

The Good

The Bad

The Verdict

just here for the thumbs up

It's a very good game for it's genre (jrpg/jaction-rpg)

It is NOT good for people expecting Western RPG / Open World

IMO it gets boring pretty quickly, although good, it lacks a lot of soul. 6/10 or 7/10.

Captivating storyline

the character designs are just straight off ripping off of ghibli studio, which already makes it a hard to justify title, but on top of that we are getting a very generic story from the start. the game wasn't really making me feel like a main character and for that reason i'm out

I really love this game, ghibli reference

Mezmerizing

Very Cool Very Fun Game.

As previously said in my ni no kuni 1 review, this franchise means a ton to me. I'm not gonna repeat myself too much but basically, ni no kuni 1 changed my life. Everything from the game's soundtrack to the wonderful characters really struck accord with me.
When I first played ni no kuni 2 I felt pretty negative about the game, swearing up-and-down that it was simply inferior to the first game. I didn't like the characters, I missed the familiars, and the story felt kinda stupid. I'm also pretty certain that a good chunk of my initial negativity comes from playing the game on nintendo switch, where it ran at a miserable, choppy 30 FPS. Even if I wanted to I could barely enjoy the game! After playing the game as an adult AND (arguably more importantly) on better hardware my thoughts are MUCH more positive.
I think ni no kuni 2 is a great game, nearly as good as the original. I do still indeed miss the lack of familiars and especially the ghibli animated cutscenes, and Lofty may not be as fun/iconic as Drippy but aside from those things I liked/loved everything else. I thought the characters were cute, especially Evan and Roland, I really enjoyed the kingdom building mechanics, I thought the combat system was very fun and satisfying, and the music is just as good as ever.
Even with all of these compliments I still can't help but feel like something is missing, something the first game had that this game doesn't. Despite that, I still adore this game and it's definitely one of my favorites, highly recommend it.

GREAT GAME

Ni No Kuni II isn't bad. I actually had a lot of fun at first, but then it got a little boring. I don't like the army thing, but I think I might give it another chance in the future and finish it.

The art and story are kind of interesting in a simple way, but the gameplay just couldn't grab me.

don't buy this game

I HATE NIGG

Very cozy jrpg although a tad shallow, story and game mechanics could use more depth. Story was ok, ending was good. Wished for better content after story was done though, stay around to max out city seems very pointless. Needs to be played at hard minimum, normal is more like story mode.

i want to build a kingdom where everyone can be happy SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP YOU CANNOT SAY THAT AFTER THE EXTREMELY SERIOUS AND DARK INTRO TO THE GAME WHAT THE FUCK GO AWAY YOU ANNOYING LITTLE SHIT

combat gets very repetitive and boring

"Boy gets yeeted out of his own kingdom, builds a new one from scratch, and makes friends with everyone along the way. Also, the president of the United States is here for some reason."

I came for Studio Ghibli’s art style. I stayed because I somehow became the actual king of a nation-building simulator wrapped inside an RPG. One moment, I’m slashing through monsters, and the next, I’m debating infrastructure policies like I’m running a fantasy version of SimCity similar to Slime Isekai.

Pros:
- The most wholesome protagonist ever. Evan just wants world peace, and you will believe in him.
- Combat is fast, fluid, and actually fun (no more slow-turn-based battles).
- Kingdom-building is surprisingly addictive. Why fight monsters when you can manage tax policies?
- Lofty. Just Lofty. Imagine Drippy from the first game but with 200% more sarcasm and a ridiculous accent.

Cons:
- The story feels like a fairy tale, which means conflicts get resolved faster than a kids’ TV show.
- The skirmish battles are there. That’s all I can say about them. They exist.
- Roland is literally the president of the United States, gets isekai’d, and just rolls with it. No questions asked.

Final Verdict:
Do you want an RPG where instead of angsty betrayal arcs, characters just support each other and try to make the world better? Do you want to build a kingdom, recruit weird and wonderful citizens, and spend hours micromanaging your fantasy economy? Then this game is for you.

9/10 would sign another peace treaty with talking mice.

I bought this because I loved Ni no Kuni 1. What a disappointment to find out that it's not a monster battler anymore, but an action RPG. Also, they force you to play as the United States president, and the only cool character I saw, the female governess/bodyguard, gets fridged after the first hour. The plot and characters definitely didn't draw me in, and the combat has some interesting ideas, but felt awkward anyway. I'd probably get better at it if I played longer, but I don't want to do that. Nothing about this game invites me to play it any further.

I love this series. Hopefully we get a third installment!

honestly horrible and a disgrace compared to the first game

I purchased this game, along with the DLC, when it was heavily discounted. I am only giving a positive recommendation if you do the same. I would not have been happy if I had paid full price. TLDR: 6.5/10

I'm writing this review after having beaten the games main story line, and I'm going to have some vague spoilers, so please keep that in mind. I played one save only for the 95 hrs I have in the game, beat the final boss, and closed the game. Higgledy-help-me.

I'll break it down into three parts, hrs 0-30, 30-60, and 60-90. I'm assuming some of those hours were just me AFK to eat and stuff. This wasn't all one play session, but I have been on a break from work... so it was pretty darn consecutive.

0-30 hrs:
This was the most fun and exciting part of the game. The world was fresh and vibrant and seemed very expansive. I played with all graphics settings maxed out, and the game shows some age but looks lovely. Lots of fun Ghibli-esque graphics and orchestral music. Reaching the kingdom building sections of the game made me very excited to keep playing. The games combat style reminds me of the Dark Cloud series, albeit within the shell of a Final Fantasy style "bump the enemy and engage combat" mechanic. In fact a lot of this game seems very, very much like the Dark Cloud games.
The military combat section of the game start here, I enjoy them at this time. All is well.

30-60 hrs:
The games orchestral soundtrack is very lovely, however orchestras are expensive. This means you will be hearing a lot of the games soundtrack over and over again. By this point in time I had begun hearing french horns in my sleep. I would say at this point in the game I was completely sidelined by building a kingdom. I had made a number of concessions with myself about this game. It wasn't exactly great, but it was fun. The kingdom building is very constrained, you do not get to design a town. At least Dark Cloud would let you build buildings freely on a grid. This part of the game is more akin to a mobile game. You put buildings in the one place they go. Then you need citizens, which is cool! I enjoyed collecting new people with new abilities to my town. I had no idea what a lot of the buildings did, but I was content to just build and collect people.
I did whatever main story line stuff I needed to do to unlock the next batch of possible citizens. This game has more fetch quests than I have ever seen in one game before, with citizens sometimes requiring 2 or 3 different fetch quests before they will join you. If this game was the only thing to survive an apocalypse, future aliens would assume that an Earth King's job was to bring people apples and cloth.

60-90 hrs:
I reached my tolerance with the game. Unlocking the late game travel option was not fun. This is the part of the game that falls flat for me. My fresh and ever positive outlook began to wane. Eventually I found that there is a LOT of empty content to this game. I feel like more was planned, something happened to this game. There are vast parts of the over world that have little to nothing to do with the main game. Previously unreachable areas, like the desert and frozen lands, are only ever briefly visited and contain no cities, villages, or much of anything other than the same mix of ~15 enemies this game has. There is a massive and interesting set piece in the frozen land that has nothing to do with the game. I would have thought there were cool quests to do with it. Nope.
I reached a point where it was either keep building my kingdom, or complete the main story line. I had several of my categories at S rank, and so I thought, well time to finish it. I did most of the final missions in one go. It was incredibly underwhelming. There's a frustrating military section. There is another large city that's completely empty of citizens or interesting lore. A series of mini boss battles that were easy despite me being under leveled, and then some very nice cut scenes that wrap everything up.
Don't get me completely wrong, I enjoyed a lot of the end game story line, but there were just so many things I did that didn't matter at all. Most of the kingdom building didn't matter. I don't feel the Higgledy guys mattered much, other than being adorable and fun to have around. I could have cut my play time in half and finished the main story, I didn't use most of the party characters. Lots of little things. Decent fun if it's 90% off and you want a feel good JRPG (just don't buy the DLC).

Overall: 6.5/10 Great play value/dollar only when on sale. Great for younger/teen audience as well.
Graphics: 7/10 It's a mixed bag, the over world looks like RPG Maker, but a lot of the art is nice.
Lofty & Higgledy's: 10/10
Music: 8/10 But after the 2,000th time, I think I could transcribe the sheet music from memory.
Game play: 5/10 Very basic combat, lots of re-used gimmicks and sub plots from other Level 5 games. The military mini-game is as other reviews say, confusing. I also couldn't find a way to level the military up enough to do about HALF of the later game quests. I ended the game with my squads at around Level 22. Citizen gathering starts fun but gets tedious. A lot of this game starts fun and gets tedious. Puzzle sections are frustrating too, or anything timed.
Story: 7.5/10 Decent story, fun cast of characters, lots of nice citizen dialog. Very full story early game, but kind of saves all the last cutscenes for the ending.

If you are thinking of buying this, just don't. Decided to complete the whole game including the dlc before writing a review but i'm done, just not gonna suffer through the ridicilous colosseum witch this game absolutely DID NOT NEED.
First of all let me say couple of things. Have liked some of their previous games a lot, as in Rogue Galaxy is still one of my favorite games of all time. Second I dont mind hard games but just being hard for hardness sake alone is just dumb. Now in to the game itself.
I purchased this upon release but when I started it the first time I encountered my very first hurdle, which stopped me from playing this more than once. I might have some level of ocds so when the text bubbles are in the screen less than a second I have no chance in hell to read most of it. This "feature" of the game stopped 3 of my attempts to play the game, and how this "feature" of the game passed initial play tests is mind boggling and it seems it is not something they have any intentions to fix. I finally managed to force myself to just ignore the issue so if there was actually something important or useful, I would have no idea 99% of the time.
Next, the game is riddled with bugs, lots of minor inconviniences or some that made me chuckle, but quite a lot bigger issues as well. None that I encountered wrecked my game, as in I could not continue the save, but plenty that broke the game, so prepare to relaunch the game every few hours.
Now for the content itself. The story is fine ish, ain't anything mind blowing but wasn't expecting it to be either. The absence of studio Ghibli is very obvious, so no animated scenes, just static images. Voice acting is again nothing amazing and when used in full, works just fine I guess. But how they switched between using it and not is jarring. And more often than not when only used in one word to express a whole ducking sentence is dumb.
The game play itself is mostly just tedious. There are quite a lot of game mechanics jammed in to this but most of them feel gimmicky at worst and just unfinished at best. Most of the game combat is so easy that it's just a speed bump but a tedious one at that. I don't mind the difficulty myself but there was very little of interest in the combat itself. And the "army battles" are just wasted opportunity. Just a bare bones idea witch boils down to rock-paper-scizzors, and was personally glad when I was done with them. I get it that more grandeur strategy fights are not for everyone but just how they distilled it to such a farce lose all my interest in it. Same with kingdom building, its bare bones at best. And once you were past a certain point it became pointless. Again I play actual kingdom builders myself so this "lite" version just becomes a chore to get over with.
The games main quest is fine for what it is, but side quests are lackluster in my opinion. There are some actually fun and interesting quests for sure but 90% is just bloat, dumb or both. And actually couple fundamentally infuriating quests just for a joke at the end. Also the whole idea in the game is build a kingdom from scratch and fill it with people, but the more you do that the emptier the rest of the world gets, sort of hollow. Also the enemy types are far less than I expected there to be. Most are just reskins of previous ones and even bosses are usually random roaming enemies after couple hours.
They implemented quite deep item system in this which was fun, but nothing really used them in a meaningfull way. Sure the crafting used them but most of the game you don't need to craft, enemy drops were more than enough to equip your party. And once you absolutely NEED to craft witch is in the dlc it becomes an absolut seizure of a grind. Now consumables are profanely different. Sure you could amass a hoard of consumables but in each fight there are limited number of uses fore each, which again is barely worth a mention in the main game, but dlc is a different beast entirely.
So for the main game all and all, its tedious slog but not impassable. So if you absolutely must, its still playable. But do not for the love of god even look at the dlc. Every single one of them is more grinding than the last and I would say that worse than the last. There is in fact extremely little actual content in each of them, most of it is just grind after a story clip after grind after story clip after grind. Now if the combat would be interesting and fun I would not mind grind but in this game it is not so. And finally the pinnacle of actual stupidity is in the last dlc which implements moronic end game colosseum that this game absolutely DID NOT NEED. Even if it included only challenges through 1 to 20 I wouldn't mind. Tedious again for sure and some even little bit of fun and intriguing challenges. But its after that, when the brown stuff hits the fan. I admit that I quit in 22nd challenge of the "Solosseum slog" but I refuse to torture myself over something so absurdly ridiciolus as this, without actual worth or prize in the game. And I have beaten other colosseums in other games so I dont mind the idea.
I beat the base game around 120 hours and even then it overstayed its welcome. The dlc added about 80 hours of endless and pointless grind to a game I just wished to be done with. I truly tried my best to satisfy my sick mind and complete this 100% but just not worth the squeeze. Save your sanity and do something else. I know I didn't, and I am more dumber for it.

The game just kind of drags, I had a bit of fun hack and slashing my way through but honestly theres just too many different game mechanics that are boring and annoying.

Theres a mechanic where your castle makes a different set of currency which only accrues over time (real time, things take hours) and i got around this by leaving the game running while i did other things and coming back to lots of money so that i can actually advance the smithery and such.

I really didnt like the 'skirmishes' a dynasty warriors style fighting except its dumbed down to the simpliest degree, I feel like they shouldnt have put skirmishes in at all. There arent that many in an upward level advancing way that makes sense.

it was extremely frustrating that skirmishes were required in the final boss, I had never leveled them up at all because most of the game it hardly felt mandatory.

theres like a billion side quests that dont have any meaningful dialogue.

I could go further but i literally gave up when i had to do a multi stage skirmish just to initiate the final boss battle, only for the final boss to have a board wipe skill that insta killed my under-leveled skirmish squad because i had virtually no incentive to level it up through out the game.

I hate skirmishes, and being forced to grind it for the final boss just made me give up.

about 40 hours of my gameplay time is AFK farming the castle currency to build up the castle so i can actually smith good gear.

It should have been six chapters instead of nine. It gets too repetitive and boring. But overall its a good game.

The superficial elements of this game have a lot of charm. The entire art style is excellent and the game is great to just look at, and the corny Ye Olde Englishe accents everyone except Roland speaks in are downright funny.

That's it for the positives. The actual GAME is painfully mid, and way too long about it, owing in part to the lack of a Sprint function and the player stuck bumbling through every town and dungeon and even fight at a slow jog. The normal combat is probably the strongest part, and after you've played an hour you've basically seen all it has to offer. Instead of polishing and deeping that, it appears Level-5 just went down the Standard Japan Corpo Checkbox For Standard Game Standard and marked the boxes as they went. Gotta have PARTY MEMBERS (even though any three that aren't Roland or Evan are pointless). Gotta slap some BASEBUILDING MECHANICS on there. Gotta have MAP BATTLES. Protag gotta be a middle schooler for some reason. And because it's Level-5, gotta have piss boring procedurally generated hallways of trash mobs that are about as engaging as the dentist's waiting room (fortunately optional for the main plot, but required to recruit every citizen). Dropping all of these mechanics in out of an apparent sense of obligation meant none of them could be honed to actually being good, so each is pretty shallow.

All of that is still serviceable enough to be carried by a good story. But the story is garbopoopy, easily the worst part of the game. It's godawful by even the already abysmal standards of JRPG stories. After the prologue, a 13 year old literal child sets out to get every nation to join his ghey little Fantasy United Nations because "WAAAAHHH WAR BAD" in a plot only the most midwit of leftist Japanese office drone that has never touched a weight heavier than 10 lbs in his life could think is interesting or deep. After everyone tells him that doing so will be super hard and epic and blah blah blah it is very easily achieved by just going up to their respective leaders and asking twice if they'd like to join globohomo. Then everyone does and there's no downside after the fact at all. Actual communist propaganda is less shameless in its complete disregard for how things actually work.

While that's going on, the most obvious super villain of all time (he is green and wears some ridiculous gold cobra helmet google Doloran if you want a chuckle whoever designed him is a madlad) is popping up to steal wacky eldtirch power and Evil Laugh about it. In response to this, the heroes, our idiot babyfaces, just kinda go "oh wow that sucks we should look into doing something about that" and then they don't do anything about it for forty bloody hours. This clownitude directly allows to the Obligatory End Of The World Crisis (which does have a few spectacular cutscenes, the game does LOOK good the entire time) to happen.

Those are just the huge plot points that are idiotic. Many smaller details are also sheer clowniun. It's a tale told by an ADHD buffoon that can't hold one thought in their head for more than two scenes, full of colors and fury, signifying terrible leftist hippy kumbayah globalist bullhonky propaganda.

And I got this game for $3 on the Winter Sale. If I paid full price for such dreck, I'd be LIVID

Pretty good.

Makes me relive ARPG lke in my childhood

The plot is very primitive and banal, as if it were a fairy tale for 6-year-old children, but a bad fairy taile without normal humor or anything good (all the characters, their motivations and dialogues are obvious and stupid), but at the same time the gameplay is more difficult than plot, kids 6-10 clearly won’t figure it out how to play without help. Also gameplay is a peace of dirt, because you just need to running arround, defeat monsters, take a lot's of useless equip ( +1, +3 atk each time of new grade of weapon and same for armor\bows ) and move forward the stupid plot. Yeah, you can upgrade your own castle and buildings, it's kinda fun a little bit, but there nothing special, this part is kinda like in mobile strategies.

Example of a plot:
Protagonist - "i want to build country whitout war", everyone others "hurray, we wil follow you". And every evil guy is turning into good one after taking defeat from you even if he or she is dictator ( childish verioun of dictator ) who squized all juices from their peoples.

Do not play in that "game", even for free. It's waisting your time i'm promise.

It was quite good

I regret buying so so so much everything about this game is just awful there is literally nothing good about it.

i was gud

I don't know where to begin. If you like cats, guns, cute little spirit friends, adventure, friendship, community, and tasks; you've arrived. thank you

amazing game

Fun JRPG. Upgrade your kingdom. Grind materials. Repeat.

Game sucks

I started out loving this game. At first, it felt like I was playing something truly special. The kingdom-building aspect is highly motivating, and the cities are well-designed and charming. However, the longer I played, the more its flaws became impossible to ignore.

Here’s my rant:

- You fight the same enemy models at Level 1 and Level 150—they just change color. The same goes for the dungeons, which lack variety.
- The overworld system is boring and feels like a downgrade, reminiscent of Final Fantasy VII from 1998—but worse.
- The party characters are dull and lack engaging backstories. Even after 100%-ing the game, I can only name two of the party members.
- The DLCs are absolute garbage.
- The fantastic animated cutscenes from the first game are entirely missing. Instead, the game features sparse, lackluster cutscenes with almost no epic or bombastic moments.
- There are barely any voiced lines, which makes the story feel less immersive.

Overall, this isn’t a bad game, but I decided to give it a negative review because I simply wouldn’t recommend it to a friend.

Cute game with beautiful Ghilbi-like graphics and friendly to ear OST, although quite easy and boring on the long gameplay.
It's good to pick it up for short-time play sometimes (the game itself is long though).

After seeing all the mixed reviews, I was hesitant to pick this game up. But thanks to a Black Friday sale, I decided to give it a chance—and I'm so glad I did!

From the very start, I fell in love with this game. The graphics might not be the best I've seen, but they create a world so cozy and inviting that it feels like home. There's a charm to this world that made me genuinely smile while sipping on a cup of hot chocolate.

I also adore the variety in gameplay. The mix of real-time combat and strategic skirmish battles is refreshing, and neither feels overly complex. Once you get the hang of things, it's smooth sailing—no unnecessarily punishing difficulty here, just pure fun!

And the story? It’s heartfelt and brave. Guiding a boy as he strives to become king and build a kingdom feels genuinely rewarding. Every step of the journey, from exploring beautiful cozy places to meeting lovable characters, made me feel like I was helping him and his friends achieve their dreams.

If you’re looking for a game with heart, charm, and a mix of gameplay styles, don’t hesitate - this game is so worth it!

I'm about to install this game again. To play it through a 3rd time. It's like... what if a Tales of X game was good.

You are in a Ghibli World, what do you want more?

Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom is a charming RPG that blends whimsical storytelling with engaging gameplay. Players follow the journey of Evan, a young king seeking to build a new kingdom and unite a divided world. The game features a vibrant art style, inspired by Studio Ghibli, and a rich, fantastical setting.

The gameplay includes dynamic real-time combat, kingdom-building mechanics, and exploration of beautifully crafted dungeons and open areas. With its heartfelt story, memorable characters, and a perfect mix of action and strategy, Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom is an enchanting adventure for players of all ages.

The characters are cute, the world is neat but the gameplay is boring as hell and the story just isn't enough to carry it.

If you can pick this up on a sale, I say go for it. A decent-ish RPG with all the usual trimmings, like party management, equipment, and items. I like the world and the graphics, as well as the bits of gameplay that go beyond the typical RPG fare (skirmishes, for example - basically real time strategy elements where you command small groups of fighters).

That said, I do not care for the music - it doesn't fit the visual vibes of the game at all. I ended up turning it off and just play my own music alongside.

By far the part that irks me the most about this game is the voice acting, or rather the synchronicity between the voice acting and the written dialogue, which is beyond ridiculous. A character will say: "You don't say... And you mean to... Tame one of these things?" and the accompanying audio is a drawn-out "Well now". There is basically a finite number of short soundbites that accompany each line of dialogue, and after the 30th "EXCUUUUUSE ME!" or "Gosh!" that gets really tiring.

All in all, an alright game to pick up on a sale, but audio and music really ticked me off.

I really enjoyed this game.

I didn't have the courage to finish the adventure because the gameplay loop until the end of became too repetitive. This often happens to me in this kind of game.

A japanese A-RPG that may be too easy for some, but is really fun and actually well done.

I played the first Ni No Kuni and loved it and this one adds to the franchise that just makes it even better, I am still learning the kingdom making and gaining subjects but will get better as it as I learn.
One thing I am noticing is the leveling takes a bit longer and exp is a bit slow after level 20 unless you fight higher levels which is doable but can be a bit scary at first cause you really don't want to die.
I have to say though so far its been great and will update this as I go and finally will make my final when I play through the whole game.

A weak follow up to the original. The studio Ghibli animations are gone, instead everything is rendered in game. The characters are pretty boring and the story your typical hero saves the world from big baddie. Main combat is hack and slash instead of turn-based. There is army combat which is paper rock scissors and pretty bland. Tons of side quests to do. The performance on the deck isn't great. Major slowdowns in the main world but doesn't affect game play. The audio cracks and pops after being resumed from sleep mode. Overall, it's hard to recommend. But if you really loved the original and can find this cheap, it's probably worth it.

A decent, sweet JRPG. Revenant Kingdom is nowhere near as good as the original Ni No Kuni, but it's worth a play through for sure. You play as young King Evan who is forced out of his kingdom. He decides to build a new country of his own with the help of his friends, but soon realises the realm is at risk of being destroyed by a powerful monster. The gameplay is more action based than the first game, and I enjoyed the combat despite it not being turn based. I didn't like the skirmishes too much, but just did enough of them to get through the story. The city building was okay, but it's very grindy. I finished the game way before having my city completed but I guess it gives players something to do after endgame. The characters are sweet but lack depth and backstories (apart from the main two characters) which was a shame as I'd have liked the chance to get to know them better. The enemies are very repetitive and you see the same monsters throughout the world, with different variations eg fire, ice etc.
Overall a decent, shortish (40 hours without sidequests) JRPG with a pretty artstyle and lovely music. There are better JRPGs out there but if you liked the first Ni No Kuni, give it a shot.

A worthy sequel