HomeFeaturesNi no Kuni: Cross Worlds
Look how they massacred my boy
To be fair, it’s not all bad. Some of it is great even, but I’ve jumped between loving and hating so many different bits over my last week with the PC beta that ultimately I’m just sad. There’s a wonderful glimpse of something amazing that just never materialises as the mirk of mobile-based gameplay is just too thick to get through.
Ni no Kuni: Cross Worlds Official Trailer
It’s set in the kingdom of Evermore - the same one that you helped set up with Evan Pettiwhisker inNi No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom, but hundreds of years later, so aside from a few shared locations it’s very much a standalone adventure. Unlike other entries in the series, Cross Worlds is a free-to-playMMO-like game filled with gacha mechanics a bit likeGenshin Impact.
While you control one main character you also have a team of cute or frighteningly feisty familiars to back you up. They come in all sorts of weird and wonderful shapes like floating otters and angry twigs, and many will probably be familiar to you if you playedNi No Kuni: Wrath Of The White Witch Remastered. You’ll meet and hatch a lot as you go, but you can also use in-game currencies to roll for rarer monsters, gear and costumes at a real-world price. The main gacha elements don’t feel too intrusive, but every time you hit any kind of big milestone you get advertised some kind of currency pack that will help you develop that part of the game at a cost. The way it pops up and has a timer on it feels like a sale you might miss out on and can be weirdly pressuring.
Combat is very flashy, but is more about managing your team of familiars and weapon loadout to make the best of elemental advantages. It’s not too bad as there are a lot of little things to upgrade and tinker with in menus so you’ll always be busy… but that’s all it is. Busywork in a cute wrapper. All you do is watch your character run between gorgeous vistas dealing with fetch quests and lists of monsters to kill while you occasionally switch out weapons or poke about in the menus upgrading things to make you fighty numbers go up. There’s very little depth here and I hate it. An amazing world full of imagination that’s right there in front of you, and you can’t interact with it in any meaningful way.
I haven’t had the chance to dive too deeply into the social features yet, but I really like what I’ve seen so far. You can join or run your own kingdom (which is essentially like a guild) that you can recruit other players to and slowly build up with amenities to aid you on your journey, or eventually band together to take on monsters or other kingdoms. It’s still too early on in the game’s lifecycle to see how this competitive element will shake out, but the simple passive co-operative elements of checking into your kingdom and helping out with quests feels like I’m working towards something bigger than myself.
I so desperately wanted to love this and ignore its flaws to frolic in its amazing fantasy world, but it’s impossible to interact with it in any meaningful way. The shallow gameplay might be fine on mobile, but when I’m at my PC I want to be able to immerse myself in it and that’s just not possible. I think I’m going to go back to replay Ni No Kuni II instead to cleanse myself of this disappointing mess.
