A little boy and a weird lamp-esque creature that follows his every move. It may sound weird, but it appears to have been a very successful combination. I am talking about Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch, the first game that sprung from the collaboration between Level-5 and Studio Ghibli. This year we will finally get a sequel to it, that thankfully will be released in Europe a lot quicker than the many years it took Ni No Kuni to arrive.

A huge advantage of The Revenant Kingdom (which is the name of the second Ni No Kuni) is that there are not a lot of big changes in the development of it. The game is made by Level-5, that is famous for Professor Layton, Inazuma Eleven, Fantasy Life and Yo-Kai Watch. Mainly games with an anime-like look and story, which is definitely the case for Ni No Kuni too.

Even though Level-5 is excellent at making games with good storylines and gorgeous anime graphics, on this particular game they work together with another Japanese company that specialises in those two: Studio Ghibli. Ghibli, that is also known as the Japanese Disney, is famous for movies like Spirited Away, Arrietty, The Tale of Princess Kaguya, Whisper of the Heart and My Neighbor Totoro. These are all movies that were highly appreciated by the audience and that are famous for their dreamy, unique style. Studio Ghibli working with Level-5? That must be magical.

Wrath of the White Witch puts you in a gorgeous anime setting and takes the time to tell the adventure in spectacular cinematic cutscenes. And it is not just a nice exterior, as the fighting system is so good that it will entertain you for many hours. If you did not have any time to play Wrath of the White Witch yet, then playing it before this sequel comes out is definitely recommended. It is not yet clear when The Revenant Kingdom will be releasing, so you will have time to play Wrath of the White Witch, which will take you forty to ninety hours.

The sequel was announced during the PlayStation Experience at the end of 2015 and it instantly became the biggest news of the event. That is not surprising, as an amazing trailer was included in the announcement:

 

In the trailer we already learn a little bit about the story of the game. There is a whole new cast which means there will hardly be any familiair faces in this game. I hope you are not a fan of Mr. Drippy (he is sooo cute!), cause he will not be showing his adorable strange face in The Revenant Kingdom. You might wonder: what is this game about then? Well, it is about a nasty king that banishes king Evan Pettiwhisker Tildrum of Ding Dong Dell off the throne. Evan gets help from another world (Roland) to fight this evil king and reclaim his throne. However, as he won’t be able to do that from his castle anymore, he needs to travel places and meet all these villagers to claim his land back bit by bit.

Claiming his land has to be done through fighting and the weirdest creatures are created to challenge Evan. Remember, this game is a collaboration with Ghibli, which means that the enemies are made up fantasy animals mixed with real animals. In other words, you will be fighting creatures that seem to have walked out of a strange dream.

Unfortunately this is about all I have at this moment. There has been hardly any reveals about this game and that means I cannot discuss the fighting system or any buddies you will have on your journey at all. Frankly I am not even sure if this game will be third-person again, and if it will entail RPG elements again (but it probably will though, as it was shown to be very successful in the first game).

But even the things that we think we know, are not certain. For example the platforms it will be releasing on. The trailer says it will be exclusively on PlayStation 4, but Sony director Shuhei Yoshida said this game might release on other platforms in the future. That would be interesting, cause the first game only came out on PlayStation 3.

This all sounds a bit unsure, so let’s end this blog by saying that at least the soundtrack will be awesome again. Joe Hisaishi, who composed the music for Wrath of the White Witch too, will be back for The Revenant Kingdom. Good news, cause atmospheric melodies from Ni No Kuni were amazing. They were performed by the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra and are simply great to listen to. Hisaishi is already known for his work with Ghibli by the way, as he worked on the music for Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away, two top movies from the Japanese movie studio.

 

Let’s hope that we will find out more about the new Ni No Kuni soon, and let’s hope it will not consist of as many backtracking as Wrath of the White Witch did. 😉