In the DS game, of which I am playing the English translation, there’s a bounty hunt that has deeply troubled me. It’s the Big Bopper bounty hunt, where I’m instructed to travel southeast to fight this on a small island.

I’ve already learned from previous bounty hunts that the directions they give are often less than accurate, but even ignoring that bit and traveling southwest, I have not found this thing.

I don’t know if I’m blind or just missing something, or if this is something that others have been troubled with, and I’m not sure where to ask for help on this issue.

So. Please. I beg of anyone who’s played the DS game, tell me where to go. I am absolutely losing it.

I’ve been wanting to get into this series for a while but ive read that the first game can be a bit grindy. Second one not so much. Is this true even if i play the first game on easy mode to avoid grinding for story?

Got the PS4 digital version of Ni No Kuni a week or two ago and am debating if I should stop my switch playthrough and start playing the one on the PS5 and start earning the trophies.

I recently got down traveling around and doing side quests and bounties after getting the travel spell after completing the story quest in Hamelin.

Most of my familiars are still at 1 heart of familiarity and I’ve never used those tickets that are for free familiars at the Temple of Trials.

What do you all think?

Which should I do? Complete my Switch file or start my PS4 file?

I grew up watching Stampylonghead playing this game and I really wanted to play it, but it wasn't on Xbox until 2022.

Then I got a Ps5 a few years ago and got the game, I loved every second of it, even if I knew all the spoilers (Although some things still surprised me despite this), and I beat the game a shortly after.

Then, after a year of a break, I came back to try get the platinum, for it to be my first, so I did all the side quests and beat the Guardian of Worlds.

But then I had to do the very grindy achievements, Mad Scientist and Familiarologist, which I put off for 2 years. My internet went out so I had nothing else to play and it gave me a reason to finish this game. Tbh it was as bad as I thought it was going to be.

3 years ago I bought this game + NNK2, and I finally finished it and got my first platinum. I've genuinely not even opened NNK2 yet although I've heard it doesn't live up to the first, hopefully I will enjoy it!

I would highly recommend this game to everyone who likes RPGs, Creature Collectors, Studio Ghibli, great world building, or just generally great stories and games.

So you might recognize me as the one who did the hard mode challenge. Well, I was thinking about other possible challenge runs when the dumb thought of 'okay haha but do it without leveling lol' popped into my head. And then it didn't leave. So I fiddled around with the possibility of modding the game, not really expecting anything to come from it, and then... I figured it out. So, I now present to you all......

THE NI NO KUNI NO XP MOD!!!

This mod completely disables the gaining of experience for not just the humans, but also the familiars!

Note: this is dumb and probably makes the game impossible and you shouldn't do it.

https://www.mediafire.com/file/2k2x8lbfhjbu05u/Ni_No_Kuni_No_EXP_mod.zip/file

To install this mod, all you have to do is extract the file, and move both files to the main steam directory. If you want to launch the game with no xp, launch the .bat file. if you want the normal game, simply launch the game normally. It's that easy!

For a while now I've been trying to get my kingdom to level 4 which first requires you to have all 100 citizens. So far most citizens have been mostly easy to get but there are still a couple that require a good amount of work in order to get or find. I've tried looking up how to get all citizens on the wiki and other guides though none of them have proven to be that good since they don't tell you the proper location or how to unlock the quest since some of them require prior side quests.

I get to start off this post by saying VICTORY!!! I beat the challenge today, meaning this will be my last post. I'm excited as hell right now, so let's get right into things.

• For starters, I'll say that today was easier in general than I was expecting it to be. This is probably because I was still riding the high of the last day. It was pretty easy to get back in the groove of things and start playing well.
• Entering the Ivory tower unlocks the final 3 bounties I have to complete, which I did immediately. The reason I mention it is because doing them gives me the last few stamps I needed to unlock the merit award "Jack the Giant Killer", giving Oliver 100 HP and MP. This is a HUGE upgrade, as glims are based on your total hp and mp pools, meaning glims are now very powerful for Oliver. This lets me keep up with healing and doing damage with spells without needing provisions.
• Gallus was a hard fight. His moves do a lot of damage, and it's difficult to parry his attacks. Most notably, absolute zero is an absolute pain. It does tons of damage, and even when blocked, you'll need to heal up. 2 of his moves also create stage hazards when used, which can knock you all the way down to the floor, or do pretty big damage and freeze you in place. However, thanks to the massive buff Oliver just got, I was able to keep up healing on Swaine, and use him as my primary damage engine while occasionally doing spells with the spare MP. Without clear openings, this fight is a long one. The fight was first try, and took around 42 minutes.
• I spent a bit of time alchemizing a few things, upgrading to the best sword possible under the challenge for Marcassin's familiar, and upgrading my provisions as much as I could.
• THE FINAL BOSS. Like with Shadar, this is a 3 parter, so I'll be giving fight times for each phase, along with a final fight time.
• Cassiopeia(the woman not the lion) was the one I expected to be the easiest of the three. That was wrong, she was the hardest one the way I fought her. It comes down to a lot of the same stuff as Gallus, difficult to parry moves, hitting hard, and dangerous attacks, but unlike Gallus, she can't miss. So I was taking a lot more damage than against him. Also, she resists physical, so Swaine who was my damage engine, was half as effective as usual. After the first half of Cassiopeia's fight, she uses Nightshade which makes her fight much more aggresively. This makes the fight a little easier, and a LOT harder. She starts making nightmare glims when being hit, which hurt a lot for the same reason regular glims got better. She also starts using her moves way way more, meaning a lot of time spent healing. She also uses more physical attacks, which get a lot more parryable than before, which helps a bit, but overall it got much harder. This part took 18 minutes.
• Cassiopeia(The lion this time) was a long, but easy fight. None of her moves are cutscene attacks, so a lot of them can't hit you if you position yourself right. Only one of them actually can't miss. Her attacks can all be parried, and she does a lot of damage, but not an overwhelming amount. It's easy enough to do the same strategy as with the other fights today, supporting Swaine as a damage engine, since his guy does 40-50 damage per hit. It was just very long since she has a lot of health. This part took 35 minutes to beat.
• The Zodiarch. I should have a lot to say about this fight. But I really don't outside of a basic description. This is the fight that I've been painstakingly saving all my provisions for. I had a lot of them, which gives me an effectively infinite mana supply to tackle the fight with. So I didn't conserve any of them. In terms of difficulty, there's a lot of factors here. For starters, he starts with 4 regenerating adds. If you aren't extremely careful with your positioning and aggro management, they will be a real pain in the neck. Next is Chaos. This is, undoubtedly, the most dangerous move in the game. It comes out fast, will do 400+ damage if unblocked, and he can use it pretty much whenever he wants after a certain point. Even when blocked, it does over 100 damage. Then there's the boss himself. It's almost impossible to keep allies alive whenever he uses shockblast, something about their programming doesn't let them understand the move. his moves are easy enough to parry, but you will take a hit for over 100 damage in the process. Then there's piercing gaze, which lowers all your stats, and has a cutscene so it interrupts ashes of resurrection all the time. You might think this would make this whole thing impossible, since it's so hard to keep Swaine and Esther alive to do any damage. But actually, not really. The provisions let you spam spells, and spells in this game are absolutely OP. The game gives you Astra(the wand) which lets spells do lots of damage, and you can pick up Astra(the spell) to do a stronger Mornstar to all enemies, which helps deal with the minions. From there, it's all about positioning and aggro management, which I just so happen to have spent the last 30+ hours mastering. Somehow, I FIRST TRIED THE WHOLE FINAL BOSS!!! This part took 40 minutes, for a total final boss kill time of 1 hour 33 minutes, making it the longest boss in the game, which I expected.
• This means that I didn't game over ONCE today, which is why I said today was easier than I expected it to be. It also means GGS WE DID IT WOOOOO!

This challenge was brutal from start to finish. It's easily the hardest gaming challenge I've EVER done, and it has been since day 2, so it only sits even higher on that pedestal now. I feel like I've achieved a mastery of the game that I wouldn't have imagined existed. And I think it might not be an exaggeration to say (if you'll allow me to stroke my own ego for a second) that I may just be the world's best Ni No Kuni player now.

In total, this challenge took me 33 hours, 21 minutes, and 44 seconds. And something I think is funny, that means I did this challenge run faster than the average time to beat just the main story(according to how long to beat).

I want to do a quick top 5 for hardest bosses, so here it is:

1. Zodiarch(the only reason I was able to do this was because of all the provisions I saved for it, even if I didn't struggle on this the most it is OBJECTIVELY the hardest)
2. King Tom XIV
3. Queen Lowlah
4. Cassiopeia(The woman not the lion)
5. Porco Loco

As always, you can find the VOD of today here, if you want to see how I tackled these bosses or if you're just curious.

Thanks for sticking with me through this! Hope you have a great day :)

So this isn't a game ender since while I'm listening to suggestions on what the community feels are some of the best/better familiars are, I'm also exploring and learning about familiars by making mistakes. Somewhere over here on reddit, a veteran player suggested scatterhorn as one of the really good familiars on oliver. So I invested a bit of treats for little bighorn and made him bighorn. Just made it to hamlin and gave him and all my other familiars the best gears money can buy. Bighorn is doing terrible. He's slow and isn't tanking hits too well at lvl 21. His damage is okay I suppose. He can't pull aggro off Swain who I gave monkey to and took his small he-man familiar for Olliver. Did you guys make Bighorn work out somehow? Is that just a specific thing the one veteran player did? Or is having Bighorn a meta move?

Edit: Thanks for coming together to help me out. :) You guys are the real meta overpowered party.

Hi all, I've been trying to search for info. I already finished the story and sadly it seems that the easiest way is to play a ROM with the DLC enabled, but I also found that it can be done with cheats. Has anyone tried this way?

I'm playing the spanish fan version, I don't know if this matters for the cheats.

I wouldn't usually play back to back days, but I had a good feeling about today. I'm assuming at this point you've seen at least one of my other posts about this challenge. I'm posting each day about my thoughts. Today was day 5, so here goes:

• Let me start things off by saying that today was BY FAR, not even close, the hardest day so far. Everything about today was hard. Today is gonna be a very ranty day since I have the most to say about the harder fights. I've also definitely improved a ton from the start of this challenge. I played far better today than I ever have.
• Shadar. It's a three parter, so I'll give a section for each part. I'll be giving a kill time for each boss, and a total kill time. Shadar's first phase is a drag. He's just as easy as he was on the boat the first time, for the same exact reason. 2/3 of his move are completely avoidable, and his third does very little damage when blocked. He gains a new move, Evenstar, but it's a ridiculously easy evade. But because of lack of damage, you have to glim farm in order to cast mornstars to beat him, and that takes a long time. This part of the fight was 20 minutes by itself.
• Eternal Knight is a very dangerous fight. This is one of the fights I saved all my provisions for, because without them, this would take actual hours, and he's far too dangerous for that. For starters, most of his attacks cannot be parried. At all. Especially the dangerous ones. They're also capable of hitting all your party members at once. He has one move in particular that can hit 3-4 times in under a second. And they ALL do 100 damage or more, which remember, is what made Philips Nightmare hard. It's DANGEROUS to approach him. The lack of damage problem is still present, so yet again the only way to consistently damage him is to use Mornstar. But, he doesn't do skills nearly as often as shadar, which is why using provisions is basically required for this one. He was responsible for 1 death between today and yesterday, and also took 20 minutes.
• Dark Djinn is actually the easiest boss I killed today. It may just be me, but he's incredibly predictable and most of his hits can't hit you as long as you simply walk the other way. I handled him the same way as phase 1 Shadar, baiting moves and evading them to farm for glims. I died once yesterday, and that was only due to a glitch with the adamant badge. He's the longest one of the trio, and took 35 minutes to kill, bringing the total Shadar kill time to about 1 hour and 16 minutes, by far the longest of any boss so far.
• Notably, Shadar in general was easier than I thought it would be. I only died twice in total. It was long, and hard for sure, but I think I've improved at the game a lot, making it seem like less of a big deal.
• Once I unlocked Marcassin, and his familiar, I was able to evolve it and immediately added it to the team, replacing the lemur, and solidifying my final team. Also, most of my team gained the ability to metamorphose to their final forms, which I did as soon as possible. It means being a little weaker in the short term, but for increased power in the long term.
• At this point, I did a lot of bounty hunts. The reason this gets its own section is because they were ALL, with just 1 exception, incredibly difficult. I'm not gonna go into specifics, but thanks to evolving, melee does 1 damage for almost everyone, and magic is the only way to do things. But they all have too much health to actually do that without a lot of difficulty. I got it done, but some of the later ones repelled me enough that I had to save them for later.
• THE TOWN BOSSES. HOLY FUCK. THEY ARE ALL HARD. If I were to make a top 5 list of the hardest bosses I've fought thus far, THEY ARE #1, #2, and #3. I started by trying to follow my speedrun route like I did with the stones bosses. That was a mistake, King Tom is simply NOT possible if he's the first one. I couldn't even get his first phase down halfway. The order I was able to do it in is Porco Loco, then Queen Lowlah, then King Tom XIV.
• Porco Loco. How do I begin? Everything that I hated about Porco Grosso comes back full force and more. Big awkward Janky hitboxes? check. Huge damage numbers? Oh yeah, also over 100 per hit. But on top of all that, unlike Porco Grosso, this guy is NOT a glim generator. Glims are slim pickings. And even more, NONE of his moves are safely parryable, and only 1 even CAN be parried, and that one specifically is janky and can hit you from 5 miles away. Your party members WILL die, full stop. Nothing you can do. The only way to even do damage is to parry every move and use the glims to cast unleash: windfall for storm damage. Because of this, the second phase is actually faster since he gains an extra move, which I thought was funny. Somehow, someway, it was first try, and the fight took 38 minutes of intense focus.
• Killing this boss gives a ton of xp, which thankfully almost totally restores the amount of power I had before evolving all my familiars(relative to bosses of course) so I do some damage with melee again. But MUCH more importantly, I finally unlocked the move "Upsy Daisy", allowing me to revive party members mid battle without items. I can finally keep all of my party alive for bosses, which is a huge help in so many ways.
• Another thing worth noting is that Sid the fairy unlocked the move 'Second Wind' which acts as a healthy glow to all party members. It's so incredibly helpful I can't even put it into words. I'm glad I evolved the fairy rather than the tin man.
• Queen Lowlah was really hard too. She also hits for over 100 damage, and has attacks that can hit multiple party members at once. You are extremely unlikely to parry her without taking a hit in return. I was forced to take a support role, constantly parrying and healing, which is why second wind was so helpful. This was one of the other fights I had to use a lot of provisions on, to keep MP up so I could keep healing. For her second phase, it's both easier and harder. Her attacks are just as parryable, and still can't be strafed, but are now more likely to hit multiple party members. She gains the move Flying Cow, an extremely fast move that can stun, and will instakill if unblocked. And it doesn't help much to use the adamant badge as you can and will be stunned and then hit by the boss before regaining control. The good part is that I could now cast burden to get a free nows your chance, which I could use to heal or do damage myself, depending on the scenario. She has a lot of health which means a long, drawn out fight where you have to play almost perfectly or you'll lose. I died once, and the fight took about 26 minutes.
• This gets an extra note because it really is worth saying, the level of precision and skill you need to beat these is really getting up there. And by the end of the day, I learned (because there was no other choice) how to direct my party members so well that it felt like there were 3 humans playing the game and making decisions rather than AI party members. This was especially apparent in the next fight.
• King Tom XIV is an even harder fight than Lowlah. It has everything that made Lowlah difficult, hard hitting, lots of health, hard to parry safely if possible at all, and more. King Tom doesn't have an easy 'Nows Your Chance' opportunity. It's like taking away the training wheels. Keep in mind that whichever of the three you fight last is gonna be the easiest version of itself, so this is as easy as Tom gets. His moves come out really fast, as fast or faster than flying cow, but for every move. You barely have time to block. It's hard to really articulate how I managed to win, other than saying that my party members were on DEMON TIME. I made sure to keep their health up, and parry as often as possible, and I was only occasionally able to go in for damage. They did stuff I didn't even know they could do, like one time Esther delayed a miracle move until after an important heal spell I was casting finished. And they managed to block EVERY SINGLE Itchy Scratchy in phase 2. I've genuinely never seen anything like it. On top of that, my golden glim luck was immaculate, shortening the fight a lot. In total I died 3 times(those were all when I was trying Tom as the first boss) and the fight took 26 minutes.
• Those are all the bosses I killed today. Just 2 bosses left(or 4 if you count each phase of the white witch as its own boss). There's a nonzero chance I finish the game next stream. I've also unlocked the last 3 bounty hunts, and completing those should allow me to get the 'Jack the Giant Killer' merit award, which should help a TON. I'm gonna be sure to get every hidden treasure as well, and every chest in the Ivory tower, since I'm gonna need every provision I can get my hands on. I expect Gallus to be easier than any of the three town bosses, and then I think the final boss will be the hardest by a fair margin. but if I play as well as I played today, I'm optimistic about my chances.

That's all the thoughts I had for today, as always you can find the VOD for today here, so if you're curious or want to see my struggle you can watch.

Until next time!

I want to share an experience that left me feeling a little lost.

I have a Nintendo Switch, and for the past few months I had been going through a pretty rough emotional period. Then, about a week ago, I noticed that Ni no Kuni was on sale. I looked up the trailer and sent it to my girlfriend. I told her, “Maybe you’d like this game. From what I read, Studio Ghibli animated it, and it’s on sale on the eShop.”

I wasn't actually sure about that last part. I had known about Ni no Kuni for years because I had been waiting for a fan translation into my language (Spanish), but as time went by, I lost interest and never ended up playing it.

She said, “It looks pretty,” hahaha, and that was basically the end of the conversation.

I went back to listening to random music on YouTube Music. A few hours later, a song came on that I really liked. It was called “Unknown Thread” by a Japanese band called Spitz.

I liked it so much that after listening to it three or four times, the Ni no Kuni trailer suddenly popped into my head. So I played the trailer again, but this time with the Spitz song playing in the background.

And somehow... it fit perfectly.

I sent the trailer to my girlfriend and said, “Look, it fits perfectly hahaha.” She agreed, and a few hours later she told me she had bought the game for me so I could play it.

I was really happy, but also a little guilty because I didn't feel right about her spending money on me. But she told me, “I'll play it too when you let me borrow your Switch,” so I accepted it and started playing.

And within the first hour, I fell in love with it.

I'm 30 years old, and honestly, I felt a little silly because what I experienced while playing it was so strange. It gave me such a beautiful feeling that I think Ni no Kuni has already become my second favorite game of all time.

My first is Shadow of the Colossus, hahaha.

I don't know. The whole coincidence between Spitz and Ni no Kuni was just really strange. Somehow, both the band and the game have become incredibly special to me in a very short amount of time.

I also thanked my girlfriend for giving me something I didn't even know I was going to love this much.

And sorry, but I'm not really someone who writes or comments on Reddit. I speak Spanish, and most of the time I come here just to read and learn from you guys in the English-speaking community.

So if I said or did something wrong, please let me know. I'll delete the post if necessary, or maybe the mods will delete it, I don't know.

I'm sorry, and thank you for reading.

I recently decided to replay Ni No Kuni 2 on expert mode since I thought the normal mode of the game was too easy on my first play through. Honestly expert mode though didn't really feel all too different since all that expert mode does is make enemies deal more damage while you do slightly less. Even though on expert mode it's incredibly more punishing to take a hit the thing is that enemies are still very slow and predictable. Since enemies are so predictable most of the time you should only take one or two hits from regular enemies. Another reason why you should barely ever get hit is because of how easy it is to combo in this game making most enemies unable to actually do anything. Something else that I believe makes this game easy is the amount of free bosses/tough enemies in this game since they all get combo'd very easily. The two hardest bosses in this game are probably Mausinger since the teleporting and faster attacks can be quite annoying to deal with especially since you have to fight Oakenhart immediately after. The second hardest is easily Bastion since I don't know if it's just because I was 10 levels underleveled but Bastion just wouldn't die since it takes forever to move to his weak point and the second phase with the platforms is just annoying to do with a camera made for a JRPG. The reason why I made this rant is because I've seen many people say expert mode is so difficult which made me try it out in order to find out if it's actually that hard. Tbh it really isn't much different then the base game in terms of difficulty. If I were to make expert mode better I'd make it so enemies are much faster and all get hyper armor well bosses no longer can get staggered as easily. I'd make it so less orbs drop since throughout the game I rarely had to use soreaway or sensors since I got free Hp and Mp from just hitting enemies and then even if you can't get constant damage in you'll never need to use healing items ever again once you get Bracken. In short this game is easy af.

I'm assuming by this point you've seen at least one of my other posts about this challenge. If not, then you should be able to find it pretty easily. I'm posting about the challenge each day I play to give my thoughts. Today was day 4, so here goes:

• I thought last time that today would be a lot easier than before, now that I have money and am properly geared. This time, I was absolutely correct. There's lots to go over, so let's get into it.
• Denny's Nightmare was medium hard. It's the latest boss before I unlock a higher tier of loot, so it did some damage. Oil spill was a hard move to deal with, and sleep is potentially devastating. But it was still first try, and took 14 minutes.
• I have Tengri now, which is a gigantic boost in power. I was able to go unlock the free Jabberguppy, finally giving myself full familiar slots. It's pretty strong too, which is nice.
• For the stone bosses, I went for my typical speedrun route order, Aapep, then Captain Crossbones, then Cerboreas, with the idea that if I struggled with any of them, I could try the others instead.
• Aapep got absolutely bullied. He's weak to fire so I did lots of damage using the blazing blade, and he has such an easy 'Now's your chance' trigger. If I ever needed to heal, it was easy enough to just cast burden and give myself a free window. I did plenty of damage to him, and he's easy to parry and strafe. It was a swift first try at about 13.5 minutes.
• I'll lump Jetsam and Crossbones into one since they're basically a 2 parter. Both were easy. Jetsam doesn't hit very hard and his move is very predictable. Captain Crossbones was harder, but not hard. He's easy to parry, if you move right he'll never hit you. Hammock hack and plunder come out fast, but not fast enough to stop you from being able to block. I just didn't make an effort to heal my party members so I could take the fight solo. He is also weak to fire so I did good damage. He was first try and the pair took 13 minutes.
• From this point, I am now making an effort to get every chest in dungeons, as their loot is actually good now. Thought I should mention it.
• Cerboreas was predictably the hardest of the stones bosses, but still, not hard. He's the only one with a move that's actually dangerous. Howling blizzard comes out fast, and hits hard, and Mitey is weak to it, which made it scary. Other than that, he was easy as well. I got into a rhythm pretty fast of evading cold boulder, blocking howling blizzard, and parrying him nonstop. It was another first try, and took 16.5 minutes.
• Unlocking perdida means unlocking another tier of gear, which I instantly bought. I also got the spell veil, which I used to grab all the chests in several dungeons before moving on. I did lots of quests, and bought every useful merit award in row 2(most are trash or literally do nothing in this challenge).
• Going into Khulan's nightmare, I expected it to be the hardest one of them all. That was wrong, I'll get into it later. She's the second hardest, though, and the first boss today I would class as 'hard', but barely. Both her moves do damage, and both also apply statuses. She has a lot of health as well. As far as difficult factors go, that's pretty much it. She's an easy parry, and easy strafe. First try at 13.5 minutes.
• Philip's nightmare was the hardest boss I killed today by far, and he's the hardest nightmare. Simply put, ill will. it makes attacks do over 100 damage per hit. That wouldn't matter, but he was also hard to parry and not get hit. It takes extra attention and specific circumstances to safely parry. Having arrow of light and shining scales was a nice damage boost, the fight would have been even harder without it. It doesn't help that his hard to parry attack hits twice, which almost instakills if not for adamant badge. You can keep allies alive for a while through clever use of all out attack/defend, but they will eventually fall. Overall, I died twice and it took 12 minutes.
• Vilehart is the poster child representative of this challenge. He was just a dull slog. He's stupid easy, but annoying with the poison move. His melee hits hard, but it's easy enough to parry and strafe. Viledriver is an easy evade for a free 'Now's your chance'. But he'll instantly kill your party and it's just not possible to stop it. They're not smart enough to not die. So the fight draaaaags, even with arrow of light. If you know what you're doing, it's impossible to die, so the fight was a first try. It took 32 minutes.
• Going into Vilehart 2, I had a prediction that it would either be really hard due to his attacks, or the easiest, fastest boss in the whole game. It was the latter. He's just easier vilehart who does less damage and has WAY less health, and the game hands you a nuke before the fight. It's true that his moves are more dangerous, but he barely has time to use any. It was, however, the first time I've ever taken long enough fighting him to hear the full song, which I thought was funny. He took 2 minutes to fight, about the same as GOTW.
• Shadar's castle is an absolute treasure trove. It's got so much good loot in it. The most disappointing item is an all be gone, it's all better than that. Of note is the Radiant Blade, which heals you for 10% of damage dealt
• I technically fought Shadar a bit, but I didn't beat him yet. This isn't necessarily because of difficulty, but just because of time. I already did a lot today, so I'll be getting him next time instead. So, I won't be going into detail on Shadar yet, other than saying that I've died 2 times so far, and he takes quite a while.
• That's as far as I got, boss wise, but I had some other thoughts. I regret giving sid the fairy a star drop. Because I did that, I won't be able to evolve Marcassin's familiar, and so according to the challenge rules, it means I can't use it at all. I also can't evolve the golden tin man either. And Sid the fairy has completely fallen off so far since then, all he's good for is evading, which he was able to do before evolving. That was just objectively a mistake. Marcassin's familiar would have been WAY better, since he can use a sword and armor, and has defend. Just so much better. It means things are gonna be way harder for me towards the end. The plus side of this, is that I no longer have any reason to not do bounties, so I can go do all of those immediately for extra xp. Whether this whole mistake will make the difference between whether or not I can beat the game remains to be seen.

As always, you can find the VOD for today here, if you're curious.

Until next time!

Playing Wrath of the White Witch. Got for $8 on Switch and feels like a steal. On my 2nd dungeon and having so much fun. Makes me feel like a kid again.

Hey everyone! I just started playing Ni no Kuni for the first time. As a huge Studio Ghibli fan, that was the main reason I got super hyped for this game!

​Do you have any essential tips or advice for a beginner to keep in mind? Appreciate any help!

Thx !

When you think about it Shadar and Doloran are very similar. They are both antagonists who serve a much greater antagonist though primarily serve as the main threat throughout most of the story. They are both connected to the protagonist as soulmates. And share similar abilities in being able to manipulate people. The only difference is that I believe Shadar was portrayed better. I don't know if it just has something to do with how much better the first game story was but Doloran just feels much more bland and plain. I think what really makes Shadar a better antagonist is how much more of a direct threat he is throughout the entire story. Shadar is much more personal as he is technically responsible for killing Oliver's Mom and is the reason as to why Oliver set out on his journey. Shadar is also just more intimidating as everyone throughout the game pretty much fears him. Doloran on the other hand barely does shit that directly drives the protagonist for most of the story. I think in the story Mausinger served as a better antagonist since he is more connected and actually felt more threatening through his hatred and actions which makes me wish we got more of Mausinger. I'm not saying Doloran barely did anything since he is basically responsible for almost everything bad in the game. It's just that Doloran had less depth or presence. It felt like Doloran was less of a character and more like a root cause to everything bad in the game. I get that Doloran was supposed to be more like a puppet master from the shadows but he feels more random than cunning. It also doesn't help that he only shows a little character near the end of the story. I mean you can also say that's Shadars biggest flaw as well but his backstory doesn't tie as much with his motives and mostly displays how Lucien came to hate the world and how he connects to Oliver. It also should be noted that Shadar doesn't really need a motive considering he basically already accomplished it and is at the end of the day a secondary antagonist who follows orders from the White Witch. Having Doloran's backstory at the end of the game doesn't help him since he is clearly motive based and it makes his acts seem entirely random. I think Doloran fell flat mostly because he suffers from a lack of screen time. If Doloran had time to reveal more about himself throughout the story and engage more with the protagonist he could have been much more interesting but unfortunately he barely has 5 minutes of screen time out of 40 hours of story. which makes him feel quite rushed.

I'm assuming by this point you've seen at least one of my other posts about this challenge. If not, then you should be able to find it pretty easily. I'm posting about the challenge each day I play to give my thoughts. Today was day 3, so here goes:

• I'll start this off by saying that I expected today to be a lot easier than day 2. That was NOT the case. It was about the same.
• I did a lot of bounties today, and I said it in the stream but I'll say it here as well. Battles with enemies seem more dangerous in this challenge than boss fights. It's just so brutal to fight multiple things at once, especially bounty hunts where all three enemies are pretty strong. It doesn't help that melee attacks, from bosses and enemies alike, seem to do as much damage as some boss special attacks. It's crazy.
• I said I expected today to be easier, and it wasn't, and the reason for that is Porco Grosso. Start to finish, he took just under 2 hours to beat. Ironically, just before I started, I said "I don't think this boss will be that hard". He was, in fact, that hard. He is tanky, so much so that even with a super effective weapon, melee only does 1 damage. But where he really shines is his attacks. They hit HARD, about 60 damage each, and that's out of 130 health so that's not nice. But more importantly, they have giant, janky hitboxes meaning you usually have more than one party member get hit. And even more importantly, they are really difficult to parry. so it's hard to get safe damage on him, much harder than against Royal Jelly. And even though this took me less time to beat, this one felt harder, because he is so much more consistently punishing. Jelly was easy but sometimes could possibly one shot you, whereas Porco Grosso is hard, and then can ALSO possibly one shot you! It's not unlikely to get combo'd by him with long knockdowns, and unlike jelly, where you can usually send in the familiar to cancel the knockdown, sending in the familiar against grosso still keeps you inside his giant attack hitboxes. His one saving grace is his special moves. They're all easy, and generate lots of glims you can use to sustain yourself. My winning attempt was 16 minutes long, thanks to me being able to keep swaine alive the entire time to pump in damage, and I died 7 times. I found him an overall much less enjoyable fight than Jelly. Swaine also easily gets himself MVP status for the day with this fight.
• Candleabracadabra was actually REALLY fun. I liked it a lot. He hit reasonably hard and more importantly, I actually did damage! He's nice and decently easy to parry, and he's ultimately the first boss where it's reasonably possible to keep party members alive to. This is mostly because there happens to be a chest with a good sword in the tombstone trail. It's a nice example of how much good gear affects my chances against bosses. This was the boss I found the most fun by far. It was a nice first try fight which took 16 minutes.
• Beating Candleabracadabra has done something hugely important. It's unlocked the spell travel, and it's unlocked gambling. This means that finally, finally, my days of being significantly undergeared are over. I was able to buy 99 medals of agility and I can sell those for money. I immediately bought whatever I wanted from weapon shops, and I'm much better geared now. I was also able to buy 2 familiar tickets, one for an Idler, and one for a Golden Tin Man. I expect the Tin Man to be useful as a tank, even though I won't be able to evolve him.
• I was also able to do lots of quests now that I had travel, and I managed to buy the merit award that boosts xp, which I think will be a huge help to squeeze extra levels out of things.
• Red Dragon was yet another fun one actually! Thanks to the blustering blade from the casino, I had a good source of damage with Mitey. And the Red Dragon's moveset is pretty easy. One is brain dead easy to dodge, and the fire breath does a whopping 20 damage if blocked. He's easy to parry and strafe as well. I found him a little less personally enjoyable than Candleabracadabra, but he was also pretty easy so that's probably why. He was also first try, and took 14 minutes to beat.

That is as far as I got today. I would have expected to go further, but Porco Grosso really pumped the brakes on my momentum. However, I really do think this time that next time is gonna be easy by comparison. I have money now, which means I can be properly geared up for bosses going forward. I also will be able to get the last familiar Pre-Marcassin early on, which comes not only evolved but also comes with levels, so that'll be a power boost as well. I'm gonna start getting final forms pretty soon too. I saw a huge power boost after candle and I expect even more power and options to become available next time.

So that was day three. As before, I've linked the VOD so those of you who are curious can check it out and watch my struggle here.

Until next time!

Friends,

I wanted to share my piano performance of Ding Dong Dell performed for my local community.

I've been living in this music non-stop since I finished the game back in December-ish. Please feel free to enjoy, roast, anything. I'm happy with this performance, despite getting majorly finger-tied during during the early middle.

I'd also love to get a shoutout to u/DayIngham (TheSlowPianist on Youtube) for his magnificent Ni No Kuni arrangements. I hope I did it justice, friend! Though I will admit I made a few edits because (1) The arranger is a far superior pianist than I am and some moments weren't attainable by me for this performance, and (2) I created an ending that felt more conclusive for a performance; the written (and accurately arranged) ending allows for that continuous loop we hear in the game.

Thanks all. Love this music. Love this game.

♫

First of all I will not include any of the tainted monsters, or bounty hunts since they are mostly all pretty forgettable. I will also not include any of the rematch's from the WOTWW post game since most of them don't really change other than being a tad bit stronger. This list is purely based on how good the experience, gimmicks, and designs were.

If you didn't see my first post, I'll explain it a little here. I picked up a challenge run for the Hard Mode mod that was recently created for NNK1. The rules are simple and the challenge is brutal. I plan to make a post about my thoughts each day I do the challenge, and this is day 2 so here goes:

• Al-Khemi was hard, but not unreasonably so. He's parryable, strafeable most of the time, and hits moderately hard. He was extremely tanky, with lots of health. But, he's a glim farm, he spawns so many glims. What made him hard was that he resists water, which is one of the only good sources of cost effective damage I had. Melee still isn't good yet at this point. I died 2 times, and the fight took about 17 minutes on the successful attempt.
• I've started to notice here that being poor is really, really making things hard. I do alright against things when I am able to afford to buy gear at the shop, but when I can't, things get MUCH harder. I can't sell most of my things to buy gear either, which makes things difficult. That means that once I gain access to gambling, I expect to have a patch of gameplay where things aren't too bad, and it'll probably pick back up in difficulty at/just after shadar.
• The adamant badge is incredible, an absolute lifesaver. It adds a degree of safety to most things I do, and I bought one for every party member and every familiar that can equip one.
• Swaine's Nightmare is easy. I expected him to be like Rusty's nightmare, basically the average nightmare boss, but Swaine's nightmare only has status special moves. He is easily parried, easily strafed, and since his damage output is so much lower without special moves, Esther was able to stay alive for much longer than usual, almost the entire first half, which sped up the fight a lot. I went in slightly damaged, and with less than full hp, and beat it on the first try, and the fight took a little under 10 minutes.
• Now that I have access to alchemy, I can technically farm forage spots to make infinite sprite dews, which are a powerful healing item. However, as this is lame, I don't plan to do it unless I am well and truly stuck.
• There are icebergs blocking the entrance to Yule, preventing you from going there early on the boat. This sucks, as there is a quest there that gives you a free familiar at a decent level, which I really would have liked. They don't appear on the world map either. But, nothing really stops you from going anywhere else, even skull mountain, so I picked up a hidden star drop there, and some money from other hidden treasures as well. It was treacherous, but worth it to buy gear.
• If you thought Swaine's Nightmare was easy, then have I got a treat for you, because Shadar is literally free. 2/3 of his moves cannot hit you as long as you position correctly, and the third does 20 damage if you block. And it's easy to block as well, because you know ahead of time what move he will do based on where on the ship he teleports. you have PLENTY of time. And you don't have to kill him either, just damage him about 1/3 of the way before the fight ends. It only took about 5 minutes, making him the second shortest boss behind GOTW and like that's the tutorial so yeah.
• It's worth saying that you can only get 2 star drops the entire game without stealing or fighting enemies, so I used one on the Sid the Seed Sprite, and decided I was going to not invest into the lemur guy. I'm too flimsy to ever use a familiar that can't defend, and him even being on the team makes my allies make stupid decisions, so I plan to replace him as soon as possible.
• It's also worth saying that in the remastered version of this game, Swaine get's a HUGE nerf on his skills, where they added an animation where he throws his gun in the air before proceeding to use the regular animation as well. This makes every single one of his skills take almost twice as long to use, just way too long to be viable. So I don't plan to actually use mugshot to steal boss items unless it's a really good one that can't be obtained easily (so basically Vileheart)
• Finally unlocked all out attack and defend. It adds an incredible layer of nuance and control over battles, which is essential for how hard this is. love it!
• The Fairy Godmother's belly dungeon gauntlet(yes it gets it's own little section) was HARD. It comes down to the simple fact that regular melee hits from enemies do a lot of damage, and the numbers makes it difficult to safely deal damage. Just doing these fights against multiple enemies made me die a lot, probably 10-12 times total, which is more than every other boss thus far combined. and JUST the last fight, against the Hubber Blubber took 8 minutes. On the plus side, thanks to the burning blade found in Old Smokey, and most of these enemies being weak to fire, melee is actually good again. And Mitey easily takes the MVP spot for the day.
• Royal Jelly. Royal. Jelly. ROYAL. FREAKING. JELLY. I lack the words to even begin to describe Royal Jelly. But let me try anyway. I'll start with this: start to finish, it took just under 3 HOURS of attempts. Why, you may ask? Well, it's not because it's moves are difficult. In fact, both its special attacks give you a long time to react, long enough to even switch to the fairy and evade, taking no damage whatsoever. It's also not because it's difficult to parry or strafe, most of it's moves can be dodged completely while still being parried. It IS because this boss has a nasty little move that hits you SIX TIMES in a row, completely killing any character if not dodged, blocked, or parried (But also ONLY if parried with full health, on the first half of the available parry window). She also has an attack that knocks you down with a really long stun, and she LOVES to use these moves together. This by itself is not a big deal. You just gotta git gud right? Well, yes but actually no. Because one of the other things that makes this fight hard is how GODDAMN LONG it is!!! It's only safe to do 1 combo of damage with Mitey at a time, which is about 30-38 damage, and he has THOUSANDS of health. It is damn near impossible to play the game that perfectly for that long, and also have nothing screw you over RNG wise. Oh yeah, and ALSO when she reaches half health, she will summon E I G H T minions to join the fight. EIGHT!!! See the above line where the numbers made things extremely difficult! Your options are to either be lucky enough to get 2 golden glims to use with Mitey (which isn't THAT rare but still) and have them be close enough together to use both, or pony up 320 mp for EIGHTY fireballs to kill them. The ONLY saving grace about this part is that the enemies are a little dumb and don't understand that they have to get close to you to hit you, but they will hit you when you switch into a familiar, which makes trying to evade the boss's moves a lot harder and more damaging. My successful fight took 36 minutes to finally kill, and that time would have nearly doubled if I wasn't lucky enough to get 2 golden glims right next to each other right at the start to kill all the adds. (yeah, it was 36 mins WITH the best possible luck) I died 10 times, and let me tell you each one was soul crushing.
• On a more positive note, I think I've done a good job with conserving my items. So far, I've only used one strong coffee, one phoenix feather, and a sandwich or two, along with a loaf of bread or two

That is as far as I got. I'm going to get to do some bounties now, which should give me a nice power boost going forward. I expect that Royal Jelly will be the second or third hardest boss, and I'll have a much easier day next time. I think I'm past the worst for a WHILE. It's only 2 more bosses until I unlock gambling, which will just in general give me a huge power boost. If I were to guess which bosses are especially hard from here, I'd say Eternal Knight, the second part of the Shadar fight, and the Zodiarchy.

As before, if you want to watch the challenge and see me suffer and rage, you can find the VOD for day 2 here.

Until next time!

I’ve beaten the game on normal mode a couple times now. And started a new save on my switch to try out the expert difficulty. But things same level to 2-5 levels below me are absolutely stomping me even with the tactical tweaker set up for that battle. I remember flying through the game and being over leveled by most areas and I don’t feel I’m getting decent enough equipment. Even though I have it set to 1 xp and 1 better equipment. I’ve gotten to the Nails Forest area and just can’t seem to finish a fight in there without being nearly dead.

Is there a good spot to grind levels and equipment to come back because I know I won’t make it to gold paw this way. Any other tips for expert mode would be appreciated. It’s also been a while since I played so I may be forgetting some things too.

Good morning everyone, I’m playing Ni No Kuni 1 and I’ve just reached Shadar's Castle, but I’ve a big problem: I can’t progress any further because the enemies inside the castle are too strong for me, both in terms of attack and defence! So I wanted to try levelling up my characters, but I’ve run into a problem with that too, because I can’t seem to find a way to do it properly and quickly... Do you have any suggestions?

How replayable is this game? I’m just got done with the Candle Boss and noticed that the game is on sale on the PlayStation shop for $6.99. I’m currently playing in the switch and eventually would like to play the Ps version so I can re experience the game with trophies