All the way through this game I couldn't decide whether to stick to the story or invest loads of my time into it. I think I landed more on the latter side and that's where Ni No Kuni 2 shines brightest.

Overall I think it's a slight step back from the previous game. The world didn't seem as whimsical or endearing. Ni No Kuni 2 deals with slightly more mature themes (it's still pretty childish) so I guess whimsy had to make way for this to work. There's plenty of other changes from the previous game too. Gone is the Pokemon-lite creature mechanics and combat is now more action orientated. You can switch to other party members at the press of a button but frankly, you rarely need to. I pretty much completed the game using just Evan and giving everyone the best weapons and equipment.

Traditional RPG-wise, there's nothing new here. The main story is a bit rinse and repeat as you travel to different countries in the world with the aim of unifying them. Arrive, the leader's corrupt, sort it out, fight with a monster, move on. Despite the repetitiveness, the game still manages to be enjoyable but mainly through the extra curricular activities.

The part of Ni No Kuni 2 that sucked me in the most was upgrading my kingdom. It's essentially like Simpsons Tapped Out and other similar games except you're not getting ads in your face or being asked to fork over more money. I think I spent the most amount of my time tracking down new citizens to populate my kingdom, setting up research tasks (these grant you extra skills/rewards for the rest of the game like better weapons etc) and developing new buildings. It was seriously addictive.

At times the game looks like one of the best on the Switch. It runs super smooth and really is gorgeous. Not being a frame rate buff I couldn't tell you what it runs at, but sometimes it looks fantastic. Unfortunately when the screen starts to get a bit busy it will stutter from time to time but what can you do?

Top it all off with a score by Joe Hisaishi and you've got a great RPG if you pick it up in a sale.

A easy-going that has some annoying fetch quests scattered throughout. It's an easy game to play but I often found myself sitting doing nothing in the game and sitting on my phone. Combat was pretty straightforward and spammy and i had more of a challenge playing the game 5-10 levels underleveled from the bosses. The skirmish battles were an interesting mechanic but I did not enjoy them too terribly much. The stor was fairly predictible, but then again it's a game made for kids and it showed. Still a decent playthrough but not a crazy RPG that I would recommend to everyone.