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by Eric Halliday2 weeks ago Follow @Eric_Halliday • TWEET • SHARE • x • COMMENT Title: Ni no Kuni: Cross Worlds Developer: Netmarble Platforms: Android (Reviewed on), iOS, PC Release Date: May 25, 2022 As a long-time Studio Ghibli fan, the moment I saw a trailer for Ni no Kuni: Cross Worlds I’ve been filled with want. This mobile MMORPG looked absolutely incredible which, when using the Ghibli art style, should be a given. But here’s the thing, we’ve all seen a game that looks incredible and then turns out to be complete dog water. Hell, especially in 2022 when rules and regulations regarding false advertisement seem to have completely gone out the window. I’ve talked about this previously with games like Dislyte and the mobile market as a whole and it always sucks. So how does Ni no Kuni: Cross Worlds live up to its promises? Ni no Kuni: Cross Worlds starts you off with a table of five adventurers. From here you pick which one you want to play as. Don’t worry, there’s some customization to them so you won’t all look identical. I made this video here to showcase all the various characters so you can get an idea of the diverse gameplay styles they all feature. The five characters are pretty great. There’s the Rogue who, in addition to being an archer, has a variety of buffs he can cast on his teammates. There’s the Destroyer, a traditional tank class who uses his hammer to take out all enemies in range. There’s the Witch who has a really cool floating spear which she uses to cast spells. The Engineer uses guns and machines to fight, while also serving as a healer of sorts. Finally, we have the one fans of Howl’s Moving Castle are probably gonna jump all over, the Swordsman. With his big protagonist energy, fast swordplay and overwhelming charm, this is going to be a favorite for people who still don’t shut up about Gambit being their favorite X-Men. Once you start, you jarringly find yourself in a futuristic-looking company. Apparently, they figured out how to access the path between our world and the world of Ni no Kuni hinted about in the various games. They can actually send people there where they can use it as a sort of video game. Is this moral? Hell no. But you know what? We’re going to look past that. This actually does come into play a lot though as some of the real people of the fantasy world are confused by people calling them an “NPC” or people suddenly just fighting and acting stupid in the middle of towns. It’s a really interesting piece of storytelling that tales like Sword Art Online seem to gloss over. There are a lot of situations in which some of the “player characters” actively cause trouble that you need to stop in order to increase your reputation. The action itself is very similar to games like the aforementioned Genshin Impact in which you explore a large, fairly open world, by using the left corner for directions and the right corner for your various attacks, a standard attack and several special attacks that recharge over time. The attack animation for all characters is really well done and even my Destroyer, a character with no special moves other than swinging a hammer around in different directions, was exciting to watch. Now, as this is a mobile game first and foremost you might be asking yourself, “where’s the gacha?” Don’t worry, this isn’t the exception to the rule, it’s here as well. Instead of getting a hero to play as, you get a Pokemon-style creature that travels with you, fighting alongside you. Your first one is an adorable mouse with a bow made of grass that looks exactly like the player character from the game Moss. I love it. These creatures show up every time you start a battle and fight alongside you. Keeping a diverse range of creatures with you enables you to almost always have something on you that hits an enemy’s weakness. They can also cast buffs, debuff enemies, or even heal. They’re pretty great. You can witness your first attempt to summon one of these little guys in the video below, while also getting a look at how battles play out, how you summon creatures, how you navigate the world, and how your little buddies show up and fight with you. All in all, the game is almost exactly what I wanted. But there are some problems so let’s get into them. Firstly, the buttons for the attacks are ginormous. There were many times when I was trying to turn the camera around and activated a large attack by accident. It didn’t cause any negative effects in most places, but as there are areas where you can attack other players I see this creating quite a bit of misunderstanding — especially if you’re trying to keep a positive reputation in the game. Secondly, this boy is laggy. I get it just came out but there are a bunch of servers and there were times when I’d tell my character to open an item box and then put my phone down for two minutes until the game decided it was my turn in the command queue. I’m sure this will be fixed as time goes on though. The third one though