Fans of Studio Ghibli's stellar animated films are sure to be in for a fine treat with Ninokuni: Wrath of the White Witch, set for release in North American early next year. We managed to snag a Japanese version of the game and play through the first few hours of the game to test out a different range of combat skills.
The game puts players in the shoes of young Oliver, whose mother has passed away. When his childhood toy comes to life (a fairy-like thing called Shizuku), he's told that he can revive his mother in an alternate dimension called Ninokuni (or "Second Country" in English).
Basically, anything Oliver comes across in real life will become a fantasy version in the alternate world. Case in point: the pet cat owned by Oliver's mother's friend becomes an anthropomorphic cat king in a cat-themed village (complete with paw prints motif) in Ninokuni. Accompanying Oliver in his quest are the cheery Marle and the trickster Jairo, who come equipped with their own helpers called Imajinns. Serving as the antagonist is the White Witch, who oversees Oliver's actions from an undisclosed location.
Ninokuni adopts Pokemon-style party management and means Oliver and his comrades have an assortment of Imajinns to help them out in fights. Players can also raise them by feeding them all manner of junk food on the Nurturing Cage screen.
Feed the cape-bearing sword-wielding Imajinn a candy bar and their strength goes up; stuff them with a few ice cream cones and this will boost their agility. Some Imajinns are partial to certain foodstuffs--feed them their favourite food and they'll be happy, temporarily landing critical hits and dodging attacks during combat.
Combat in the game is handled in real time. When you go into battle, you choose which of your Imajinns participate in a battle. You can even have Oliver himself go into battle in place of the Imajinns. An Imajinn can only stay on the battlefield for a certain amount of time in combat before it becomes weakened, so switching between them tag-team style using the L1 button is a must.
Pressing the triangle or square button changes your party to either an offensive or defensive stance. Alternatively, you can select the party AI command in the combat options and choose how each individual party member handles a situation automatically on the battlefield.
Oliver can opt to go into combat himself, using his assortment of spells to fight off foes. Based on the first five hours of the game, his range of spells includes healing, fireball, and ice, which can sometimes stun enemies. As for Marle, she can cast the Song of Friendship, which can recruit enemies to your cause. However, this spell can only be cast on fallen enemies with a heart marker. She will have to cast it quickly before the marker's gauge is depleted and the target runs away.
Green and blue orbs sometimes fall to the ground during battle, either from damaged enemies or from Shizuku himself, thrown at random intervals. This is definitely a bonus, as a last-minute green or blue orb drop seems to make a huge difference between surviving a surprise onslaught with some mana intact, and seeing the game-over screen.
At rare times, a giant golden orb can also be put in play, and we noticed these after we landed a critical hit. When we commanded Oliver to pick it up, he cast a powerful spell that dealt a lot of damage to its target. This seems to be the game's equivalent of a Final Fantasy summon animation, so we wager that there will be other sorts of finishing moves for our protagonist later on in the game.
Based on our time with the game we can say we are just as excited as before about seeing more of the game upon it's North American release on the PS3 in early 2012.
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