Update 6: A King I Am (Not)
From this point on, we control Evan rather than Roland while outside of battle. We can actually ditch Evan from the main party in battle - once we find a third party member, that is. Ultimately, we’re probably going to want to choose between either Evan or Roland because both of them use swords and there really aren’t enough good swords to go around. I’ll show it a bit later on, but Roland has higher base attack stats than Evan does, while Evan has slightly better defensive ones.
: “There’s no Ding Dong Dell where I’m from. And no view like this either…”
: “Hm. I guess it’s… ahead of this world in some ways… and behind in others.”
: “Nella used to tell me a story, you know. When I was little…”
: “It was about another world. One very closely connected to our own…”
This is one of the few nods they give to Ni no Kuni 1 existing, back when the magical isekai kingdom was more like Narnia without all of the Christian symbolism and wasn’t a generic isekai anime.
: “I always imagined it was just a fairy tale, but… I suppose there must have been some truth to it after all.”
: “So I got… lost between these two worlds and wound up here? Does that mean there’s no way home?”
: “What did you do there? In your world?”
So honestly, I think this game would’ve been way more interesting if it was the other way around, with Evan winding up in a modern-day Earth. They could’ve used the whole “what happens in one world effects the other” thing again and it would’ve been a much better and more direct sequel.
Roland, worst president ever. Michael Wilson this guy is not.
: “What?!”
: “Well, a president. It’s kind of the same thing.”
: “Which means I have a little experience when it comes to running a country.”
I think it was about this point when I realized that Roland reminded me a lot of Clancy from Deep Fear.
: “Really? Then perhaps you might be kind enough to share some of it with me? Things may not be the quite the same here as in your world, but still…”
: “What exactly are you planning? A quiet life in the mountains might not be such a bad idea, you know.”
Roland, truly the best president ever. This is one of the things that really bugs me about this game. From here on in, Roland is treated like an expert statesman when he failed so badly as a president that New York got nuked on his watch. You’d think he’d at least feel a scrap of regret.
So now, Evan tells us we need a Kingmaker. You might ask, “Wait… aren’t those just the Primals from Final Fantasy 14?” and you’d be absolutely right because that is quite literally what they are… minus the theme songs.
So now, you might ask, where is Evan’s giant demon thing?
Pretty much exactly where you’d think it would be. You would think that Evan would have mentioned this thing’s existence or tried to secure it before he left. You’d also think that he’d have seen a twenty-foot-tall deer unicorn thing on the way out.
So now that we’ve got a destination, it’s time to set out…
: "So what are we waiting for? Let’s go!’
: “Ahh… just one second!”
Evan… puts on a short cape. This is somehow all he needed to be able to fight. We now have access to Evan as our second party member - but there’s a bit of a problem.
So, to understand what I did here: I unequipped Roland of all but one weapon that does roughly the same amount of damage that Evan’s default weapon does. He’s still a full level ahead of Evan and will probably remain that way for the foreseeable future.
In contrast, these are Evan’s stats. Evan comes with a single piece of armor which I removed for this shot.
It’s not obvious right now (mostly because Roland is higher level) but Roland tends to have slightly better stat growth on level-up in his attack stats (top two) versus Evan who is more of a mage (middle stat). The problem is that they’re both sword users… and there aren’t really enough swords to go around. We could keep both of them in the party: I finished the game the first time I played it without even using zing at all, but there’s generally going to be a huge gap between your best weapon and second best weapon for any given category… so we may want to consider getting rid of one or the other later on.
Since my LPs usually don’t allow for a large degree of audience participation, I’ll allow you, the viewers, to pick which one we get rid of… or if we keep both.
These are Evan’s specials. Kingspin is essentially the same as Roland’s Flatliner skill - except instead of getting a second vertical slash when at 100% zing, it instead reaches a wider area and also does fire damage. It’s hard to get a screenshot of, but you’ll see it next update.
On the way out of the mountain area, we also run into our first warp point. These make the first part of the game, where we’ll largely be going between places on foot, much faster.
And now we’re on the world map. The game has auto-switched us to controlling Evan in combat, though we can change back to Roland at any time. The world map is a lot like Earthbound’s, where enemies are on the screen and will aggro when approached unless your level is way higher than theirs. There are “sneak attacks” if an enemy hits you from behind - this removes any zing you have built up but otherwise doesn’t change much.
Here, we meet one of the handful of enemy types we’re going to run into: Whamsters.
At this point in the game, Whamsters are almost entirely melee-based… except for the blue ones, which are casters. They’re pretty easy to knock down, and don’t have a whole lot of health. Later on, they typically have more casters and add archers into the mix, which can be annoying if there’s a ton of them.
We also run into a second enemy type: dogs. They’re much harder to knock down than Whamsters are, and have more health on average… but spend a lot of time growling, like that one on the right edge of the shot. During the growling animation, they’re wide open to melee attacks.
You can see the yellow market on the map telling us where Cloudcoil Canyon is… but what’s this house? We’ll find out next time, when we get introduced to Ni no Kuni 2’s mascot characters and gain access to our final major combat mechanic.