Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom Prince’s Edition Review – A Flawed But Fun Port

Back in 2018 the first true sequel to the cult PS3 JRPG Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch came out in the form of Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom. While this was the West’s first experience with a sequel in the franchise, it was actually already a longstanding series in Japan with Wrath of the White Witch actually being a remake/enhanced port of the DS Japan-only original title, Ni No Kuni: Dominion of the Dark Djinn. After Revenant Kingdom’s PS4 debut, Wrath of the White Witch would go on to be ported to many other systems, including the Nintendo Switch in 2019, and now it is the sequel’s turn to follow in those footsteps. Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom – Prince’s Edition was developed by LEVEL-5 Inc. and published by Bandai Namco as a way of porting both the base game and all its post-launch DLC onto the Switch.

For those who were never able to play the original game, the story of Ni No Kuni II follows the journey of Evan, the young king of a fantasy kingdom who gets deposed on the eve of his coronation, and Roland, the President of the United States who gets isekai’d into that same fantasy world after a nuclear missile strike destroys his motorcade. Despite that roller coaster of an introduction, the quest that the pair embark on together is simply for Evan to create his own kingdom where everyone can be happy. This adventure takes them and an expanding roster of party members all over the world as they deal with everything that entails.

While the game is an RPG at heart, it follows very few of the gameplay conventions set forth by that genre, especially with its battles. All of the traditional combat is done via hack-and-slash style encounters where the entire party and all enemies move and attack in real time. This allows for the use of combos, special moves, blocking, and dodging and generally rewards skillful play even if the numbers aren’t necessarily in the player’s favor. There are also larger-scale skirmishes that play out on the world map, also in real time, where Evan can use the broader military might that he has amassed to take on equally sized threats.

This port for Ni No Kuni II was always going to be an uphill battle considering the difference in power between the tech behind the PlayStation 4 and that of the Switch. With that in mind, the work that LEVEL-5 has been able to pull off is admirable, if not still inevitably flawed. While the game’s graphical downgrade is certainly noticeable even to the untrained eye, the amount of detail that has been preserved is considerable, and thanks to that the game still looks quite good.

However, this visual fidelity turns out to be a bit of a double-edged sword in some of the more graphically intense areas of the game, most noticeably the world map, where the system starts to chug a little and the framerate suffers. This can also occur outside of the world map, but much more rarely and only really when dealing with things like a significant amount of particle effects. The biggest detriment that this issue typically has on standard gameplay is during the world map battles, though it’s never extreme enough to actually cause any trouble.

Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom – Prince’s Edition is a more than serviceable way for audiences that haven’t yet been able to play the game to do so. The game itself is very unique and a lot of fun, and with the included DLC there’s even more of it to enjoy. Those looking for the smoothest performance and best rendering will need to look elsewhere, but the convenience of a portable variant of Revenant Kingdom is an appealing one that won’t be a barrier for those inclined to check it out.

Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom – Prince’s Edition was released on September 17, 2021 for the Nintendo Switch. Screen Rant was given a digital game code for the purposes of this review.

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