Ni no Kuni: The Curse of the White Queen

Ni no Kuni: The Curse of the White Queen
Original title	二 ノ 国 白 き 聖 灰 の 女王
transcription	Ni no Kuni: Shiroki Seihai no Joō
Studio	Level-5
Publisher	Bandai Namco Games
Senior Developer	Ken Motomura
composer	Joe Hisaishi , Rei Kondoh
Erstveröffent- lichung	PlayStation 3: November 17, 2011 January 22, 2013 January 31, 2013 February 1, 2013 Windows, Switch, PS4: September 20, 2019
platform	PlayStation 3 , Windows , Switch , PlayStation 4
genre	role playing game
Subject	Fantasy
Game mode	Single player
control	DualShock 3
medium	Blu-ray disc
language	Japanese , English with German subtitles
Age rating	USK PEGI

The video game Ni no Kuni: The Curse of the White Queen ( Japanese original title 二 ノ 国 白 き 聖 灰 の 女王 , Ni no Kuni: Shiroki Seihai no Joō , literally about "The Second Land: The Queen of the White Holy Ashes") is a role-playing game , developed by Level-5 in collaboration with Studio Ghibli for the PlayStation 3 console and released in Japan at the end of 2011. In Europe, it was launched by Bandai Namco Games in early 2013 . A version for the handheld console Nintendo DS appeared at the end of 2010 only for the Japanese market under the title Ni no Kuni: Shikkoku no Madōshi ( 二 ノ 国 漆 黒 の „ ," The second country: The pitch black magician ").

It tells the adventure of a boy named Oliver, who after the tragic death of his mother can switch back and forth between the real world and a magical parallel world. The game was received positively by the critics.

action

13-year-old Oliver grows up alone with his loving mother Ally in the fictional American town of Motorville. His hobbies, which he shares with his best friend Philip , are mechanical handicrafts and the construction of technical devices. One night he secretly sneaks out of the house to try out a motorized vehicle built by the two of them. This leads to an accident in which Oliver threatens to drown, but is rescued by his mother, who woke up from a nightmare and followed her son. Oliver himself is fine, but his mother has a heart attack from which she dies soon after.

Three days later, during which the inconsolable boy refuses to leave his room, a doll that was given to him as a small child by his mother, wakes up there, drenched in his tears, and presents itself to him as a droplet, great Grand Duke Fairies ( シ ズ ク Shizuku ), before. Droplets tells of a parallel world , the other world , whose inhabitants are connected with the people in Oliver's world through kinship , but are threatened by the dark genie Shadar . Oliver himself is the pure-hearted , whose destiny it is to save the other world. But only when Droplet tells him about the great sage Alice , who was captured by Shadar, and recognizes Oliver's mother as her soul mate based on a photo, does the boy willingly follow him to the other world, hoping to defeat Shadar and thereby his To be able to save mother.

Having arrived in the other world, Droplet gives Oliver the advice to seek out the great sages , powerful magicians who could teach him important skills without which he would have no chance as the chosen savior against Shadar. Many inhabitants of the other world suffer from the fact that Shadar has stolen parts of their hearts (Japanese kokoro , which in addition to heart also means "soul, spirit, feelings, understanding") and they are therefore now, for example, listless, depressed, embittered or are completely apathetic. But as the pure-hearted, Oliver has the gift of healing their hearts, as is the case with Esther ( マ ル Maru ), the daughter of a great sage, and with Sven ( ジ ャ イ ロ Jairo ), a former thief, who then both accompany the boy.

In all of his actions, Oliver is monitored by the White Queen Cassiopeia , who, together with her Council of Twelve - the so-called Zodiarches , who determine the fate of the world - resides in a castle in heaven, far removed from the world. Shadar had voluntarily taken on the task of executing the White Queen and tried to stop Oliver, whereby he initially completely underestimated the boy's abilities and therefore fell out of favor with the White Queen and her advice. Shadar himself is only vulnerable to a special magic wand, the morning star , which he has already destroyed. Oliver gets unexpected help from two sides: On the one hand in Motorville from a little girl named Pia ( コ コ ル Kokoru ) with special magical abilities that only Oliver can see, and on the other hand from Gallus , a council member of the White Queen. Gallus sends Oliver's group back in time so that they can get the still intact morning star there.

Oliver learns from a henchman of Shadar how the confrontation between the Dark Djinn and the Great Sage Alice actually went: the magician could neither convert nor defeat Shadar because he had eliminated his own soul mate. She was not captured by him, however, but traveled to the real world, gave birth to Oliver there and raised her as a normal boy. So she is not his mother's soul mate, but was his birth mother and died. The boy is completely desperate at first, but Pia appears to him in a dream and reminds him of how many people he has already helped, which gives Oliver courage again. During the final confrontation with the Dark Djinn, Oliver now realizes that he is the reborn soul mate Shadar and fights him with the help of his friends, although he knows that he will die himself if Shadar dies. After Oliver's victory, he and his soul mate are torn into a kind of in-between world, where Shadar - ultimately still converted to goodness - saves Oliver by breaking the connection between the two.

After the celebrations for Oliver's victory over Shadar, the boy wants to return to his own world when suddenly a kind of white ash falls from the sky: The White Queen now wants to personally destroy the world and works the powerful magic Manna , which turns the inhabitants of the cities into zombie-like Monster transformed. Again Oliver gets help from Pia in Motorville, who tearfully confesses that she is to blame for everything and therefore accompanies him to the other world to make up for her mistakes. There it turns out that the little girl has an even stronger spell than manna , with the help of which it is possible to gradually free the residents from the curse of the White Queen. Kassiopeia's prehistory also comes to light: after the early death of her father, the magician king , she had to succeed him as a little girl. The actual rule, however, was exercised by the Council of the Twelve, who almost disempowered her as the shadow queen. Cassiopeia wanted to help the people, who were suffering from hunger and war, with a powerful spell, but thereby inadvertently killed everyone, including the Council of Twelve. In the following millennia of loneliness and despair, she re-created living beings in her mind and also the twelve Zodiarches. In an eternal cycle she is now destroying the world and recreating it as she sees fit. Pia is the incarnation of the good and innocent part of herself.

When Oliver and his companions set off for the final confrontation with the White Queen, they again receive support from council member Gallus, who reveals himself to be the ghost of Kassiopeia's father and wants to help his daughter. The group can advance to the White Queen and defeat her in a fight. Cassiopeia and Pia merge again and the ruler who has been converted to good helps Oliver to destroy the Zodiarches, who have now developed their own will as beings created from their spirit. After the fight, the queen decides to turn her castle into a happy place full of flowers that everyone likes to visit. When Oliver returns to Motorville, he finds that he has learned to get along without his mother, but will always keep her in his heart.

Gameplay

Game world

As with many computer role-playing games, the game world consists on the one hand of towns and villages, in which the player can shop in stores and thus improve his equipment, and on the other hand of so-called dungeons such as dark forests, caves and dungeons. In these mostly labyrinthine sections, which are called dangerous places in the game , the aim of the game is to fight your way to a final boss and defeat him. These sections are connected by a world view in which the character is shown from a bird's eye view , has to be steered to its next destination and also meets opponents in the process. In towns and dungeons, the camera of the player character follows in the third-person perspective , however, the players also do in the first-person look.

Pawns

Soon after the plot begins, the main character Oliver meets two other people, Esther and Sven, who support him in the fight. Towards the end of the game, another person joins the group. In addition, similar to the well-known Pokémon role-playing games , there are numerous monsters that Oliver either receives during the course of the story or can be tamed and captured after defeating. These monsters, called confidants in the game , can be used in combat, similar to the human characters, each of which can lead up to three confidants into combat. Three additional confidants can be kept in reserve, the rest are kept in so-called loopholes , whereby the player can keep up to 400 monsters in possession at the same time.

Oliver is also accompanied by the little mythical creature Droplet , who does not actively intervene in the game, but introduces the player to the game world and gives hints on how to proceed in a dialogue.

struggle

A fight begins when the character in the world view or in a dungeon touches one of the visibly wandering opponents, and is presented in a separate fight screen, which shows a three-dimensional view of what is happening. Through commands such as physical attacks or the use of magic, the human characters or their confidants can be instructed to fight the opponents and receive experience points , items and money after victory . Were collected enough experience in this manner, the game pieces rise in its level , wherein a in the mitkämpfenden monsters from certain level values evolution can take place in a more potent form.

Other elements

An important topic in the game are emotions , which are not only reflected in the plot, but are also integrated into the gameplay. Oliver has a vial in which he can collect feelings from non-player characters who want to share them with him. These emotions can be passed on to others: for example, with the excess enthusiasm received from one person, the player can help someone else who is listless or depressed . There are eight different types of emotions in the game that can be distributed in this way. Sometimes there are other complications with this system of emotions: For example, some people who have had part of their heart stolen have their heart closed to protect it from further injury. In this case, the player must first help that person's soulmate and only then can he heal their heart. Also, characters who have been robbed of an emotion are prone to nightmares that must first be defeated in a battle before the person can receive the emotion.

Another motive is magic : Oliver becomes an increasingly better magician on his travels, whereby the spells he has learned can not only be used in combat, but also to solve puzzles or to help other characters. A comprehensive book is available to the player for this, the Magical Companion , which not only contains magic spells, but also a lot of background information about the game world and its inhabitants.

development

The graphics and animation of Ni no Kuni are from Studio Ghibli and follow its characteristic style. The animation was directed by Yoshiyuki Momose, who has worked on films such as The Last Fireflies and Pom Poko . The story is told partly in hand-drawn two-dimensional scenes and partly in the three-dimensional game graphics itself. Using the cel shading display for the latter results in a uniform graphic style.

The music for the game was composed by Joe Hisaishi and recorded under his direction by the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra . The title song Kokoro no Kakera was interpreted in the original version by Hisaishi's daughter Mai Fujisawa and in the English version Pieces of a Broken Heart by Archie Buchanan. Hisaishi's soundtrack is named in a review as his best work since he wrote the score for Spirited Away .

Reception and sales

Ni no Kuni was received positively to very positively by the critics : According to Metacritic , it achieved an overall result of 85 out of 100 out of 89 evaluated reviews. The graphic and animation style of Studio Ghibli, the scope of the game and the plot were particularly praised. The game mechanics of the combat system and level advancement, which can have some frustrating moments, have been criticized in part.

To date (as of July 4, 2014) around 1.4 million copies of the game have been sold worldwide, around 452,000 of them in Europe. In the UK, it was the top selling game in the week it was released, ahead of FIFA 13 and Call of Duty: Black Ops II .

Awards

• Video Game Awards 2013 (VGX)
  • Best RPG

continuation

At the PlayStation Experience 2015 the successor Ni no Kuni II: Fate of a Kingdom (English subtitle: Revenant Kingdom ) was officially announced. The role-playing game was developed again by Level-5, Studio Ghibli was no longer involved in the development, but several employees of the animation studio are involved. After several postponements, Ni no Kuni II was released on March 23, 2018 for PlayStation 4 and Microsoft Windows .

Web links

• Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch. Official site of Level-5. Retrieved June 10, 2013 . 
• Ni no Kuni: The Curse of the White Queen. Official German-language site. Retrieved June 10, 2013 . 
• Ni no Kuni at MobyGames (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ni no Kuni: Shikkoku no Madoushi. In: GameSpot . Retrieved June 16, 2013 . 
2. ↑ Achim Fehrenbach: The fabulous world of "Ni No Kuni". In: Zeit Online . Retrieved June 28, 2013 . 
3. ^ Andy Corrigan: Ni No Kuni and Coping With Depression. In: IGN. Retrieved July 13, 2013 . 
4. ↑ Lukas Pitz: Ni no Kuni: How Level-5 and Studio Ghibli work together. Developers' video diaries. In: IGN. Retrieved May 3, 2019 . 
5. ↑ Marco Häntsch: Ni No Kuni - The curse of the white queen: role-playing art. In: Computer Picture Games . Retrieved June 27, 2013 . 
6. ↑ Matt Kamen: Ni No Kuni: Wrath Of The White Witch - Behind The Scenes Interview. In: NowGamer. Archived from the original on December 21, 2016 ; accessed on May 3, 2019 . 
7. ↑ Joe Hammond: Ni no Kuni - The Sorcerer of Darkness - Original Soundtrack. Review. In: Game Music. Retrieved June 7, 2013 . 
8. ^ Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch. In: Metacritic . Retrieved June 11, 2013 . 
9. ^ Colin Moriarty: Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch. Pokemon Meets Tales with a Studio Ghibli twist. In: IGN. Retrieved June 11, 2013 . 
10. ↑ Kevin VanOrd: Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch Review. In: GameSpot. Archived from the original on October 9, 2013 ; accessed on June 11, 2013 . 
11. ^ Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch. In: VGChartz. July 4, 2014, accessed August 21, 2015 . 
12. ↑ Nick Cowen: Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch becomes UK top seller. In: T3.com. February 4, 2013, accessed August 21, 2015 . 
13. ↑ Elton Jones: VGX 2013: The Full List of Video Game Award Winners . In: heavy.com . Retrieved December 6, 2014.
14. ↑ Andrew Webster: The new Ni No Kuni isn't technically a Studio Ghibli game, but it still kind of is on theverge.com, accessed on February 25, 2018.
15. ↑ Sebastian Zelada: Ni no Kuni 2 - JRPG postponed to March 2018 to gamestar.de, accessed on February 25, 2018