Ni No Kuni (PS3)

Soygen_sl said:

The monoliths suck it seems. Are they just for tanking? They do like no damage.

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Pretty much. His problem is swaine dying, so putting in a hard to kill familiar seems like an easy way to avoid that for the most part. I also give Esther the banana guy for a similar reason. Harder to kill than the blue caster guy without burning mp for heals.

Chopxsticks_sl said:

Any help would be much appreciated.

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You will soon get the ability to defend with everyone at once, which will help a lot. Aside from that, I've always had a healing familiar on both Esther and Swain and had tactics set to keep everyone alive. It has served me well throughout the game and I'm in the last dungeon now.

Lenas_sl said:

You will soon get the ability to defend with everyone at once, which will help a lot. Aside from that, I've always had a healing familiar on both Esther and Swain and had tactics set to keep everyone alive. It has served me well throughout the game and I'm in the last dungeon now.

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The only issue I have with the AI is that they will freaking heal ANYTHING. Is there some sort of 'gambit' command which controls what health percentage they'll start healing at? As is, they use up all their MP in a handful of random trash fights, and are as slow as a three tailed sloth when it comes to figuring out that blue glims are on the field and grabbing them.

You can steamroll the early shit but it actually sort of helps you a lot if you put swaine/ester on "Don't do anything" tactic later on. That way you can decide what they do from moment to moment. They will only do the actions you tell them when you switch to them and execute even if you switch back, but when they finish that action they stand around waiting.

Also, the tactic that tells them not to use MP helps a bunch for trash fights unless you are teetering on the edge (doing ice mobs with your Fire-endowed Mite means you spend a lot of time healing between battles or killing shit with other things) in which case you can use Ollie's healing to supplement in between.

The battle system and AI should have been thrown out halfway through development and started over from scratch.

The rest of the game, I don't know. I like the Ghibli art and cutscenes, but they obviously did not write the story, and I'm having a hard time seeing what's so special that so many people are fawning over it. Not saying it's bad, just completely unremarkable; I guess it's just not for me and I doubt I'll be able to force myself to finish the game at this rate.

It really boils down to the positional aspect of damage and that the "attack" command means you have to hope your familiar attacks from an angle that isn't occupied by something else, which in large fights means you spend most your time cancelling shit or just abusing the AE/ranged attacks, because melee is retarded.

The combat system could be improved exponentially by simply letting familiars/npcs clip through others, or have npcs automatically separate themselves along with player familiars having the AI capabilities of always being in "best" position. I like the game a lot, but the combat system and the AI that is forced to run with it are mediocre at best.

Tactics question: When you are in a battle and you switch to tactics to make your party do a certain thing.. is that specific to that battle?
It seems that if i change my party to "go all out" for example, then win, then go to another battle, they are back to default and i need to set the tactic again.
Is there a way to set the tactic for all battles somewhere, so if i wanted to do "Defend with everyone" it would stick in _all_ battles till i changed it?

okay, then i'll ask my stupid question now... the only tactics menu i have seen are _during_ the battles, like if i am Esther, i scroll over to tactics and pick how i want the party to act... where is the persistent tactics menu??

Intrinsic_sl said:

Those special activated tactics are time limited, so not the same as the "Provide Backup" and "Keep Party Alive" ones, etc... So after 15 seconds or so when "go all out" expires it will revert back to whatever you have set within the tactics menu. The setting in the tactics menu persists throughout battles, or at least always has for me. Nothing like running in to a boss or Bounty and realizing Esther and Swaine just stand there looking.

The largest complaint I've had so far (other than the down right abysmal AI during fights) is that I can't switch to a character and familiar. You have to switch to character first and then familiar, unless there's another setting that I've completely overlooked. For a game based around switching familiars for fighting it just seems like this was an oversight.

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Yeah, the fact that it unsummons the familiar when you change characters is pretty retarded. Loading into a character should put you in that character's exact moment, not "lawl this thing hits hard. OBVIOUSLY ESTER NEEDS TO BE DEFENSELESS WHEN I CHOOSE HER!" type retard mode. Granted, loading a familiar is basically instant, and can be done effectively instantly when you load into a character. But it is still an oversight and one that should have been corrected earlier in the game's cycle.

Intrinsic_sl said:

That is it, and the only location you can choose them. No menu outside of the battle. You may not be far enough in to have the ones you activate with Triangle or Square, that'll come later and there will be a tutorial associated with it so you won't miss it. My bad for not being more clear between the two.

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Ahhh okay, i'll wait then... I am on trial 3 of the sage trials, had to stop last night due to having to go to work. Hope i get the persistent ones soon. Thanks for the info!

I'm having real trouble with the combat system here. Whenever I set Ester to "Keep us Healthy" she wastes all her mana on damaging spells, whenever I set Oliver to "Keep us healthy" he wastes all his mana on Ward, rather than actually healing. The "All out defence" command only seems to work maybe 1 in 5 times.

Additionally, am I right in thinking that familiar melee is utterly retarded? If I tell one of them to "attack", or indeed if the AI does, they run on the spot like a mime to try and get to their designated target rather than just "attack".

The combat in this game is laughable. You're actually better off letting every one of your other party members die and just run around defending any boss abilities and waiting for a golden glim and casting spells with oliver. If you play that way every single boss is a joke and fights are completely uninteresting. Not to mention all the other problems people have mentioned in this thread with the combat.

I don't agree with all the praise this game gets. I find the story boring and ridiculously childish (I know it's a kids game but Spirited Away was not like this). The cut scenes.... jesus christ the cut scenes. I can't walk 5 feet without finding a new fucking cut scene or getting interrupted by that annoying fucking fairy. The side quests are ridiculous. One in 5 makes you actually go somewhere and do something. The other 80% are "walk 3 feet this way to get this guys heart and give it to the person you just talked to". Why even bother scripting shit like that? And the biggest problem, you literally get told exactly what it is you have to do every step of the way and actually CAN'T cast the wrong spell or go the wrong way. This is the first console game I've played in a long time, probably 5 years and I borrowed a friends PS3 just to play it based on reviews. I just made it to Hamelin and beat the robot thing. I don't know if I can continue playing, this game is mediocre at best in my opinion.

GorestabbCOE_sl said:

I'm having real trouble with the combat system here. Whenever I set Ester to "Keep us Healthy" she wastes all her mana on damaging spells, whenever I set Oliver to "Keep us healthy" he wastes all his mana on Ward, rather than actually healing. The "All out defence" command only seems to work maybe 1 in 5 times.

Additionally, am I right in thinking that familiar melee is utterly retarded? If I tell one of them to "attack", or indeed if the AI does, they run on the spot like a mime to try and get to their designated target rather than just "attack".

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I found this really annoying as welll.. but theres really nothing you can do about it unfortunately It would be nice if this game actually had the combat AI that the Tales series has

i dunno, i kind of like the story. the combat system is definitely awkward. i really don't like how stagnant the main characters are. swaine and ester are pretty mediocre and oliver isn't much better until he gets the final wand.