Ni No Kuni

Finished the main storyline! Such a fantastic game *u*
minor spoilers below

all images via. Too many awesome fanart to choose from. Scrolled through the entire archive and squealed whenever a toko image came up xD They're the most adorable bundles on exp ever. Like 3x the final boss' and even more than the optional final boss.

Plot: tbh I found the ending weak compared to the beginning/middle. They told the backstory of the main bad guys too late for me to feel much emotion for them. But Swaine and Marcassion's story, omg, so touching. And also little Alicia with Lucien, adorable. To tie in with characters, Drippy is fantastic. His accent (which is Welsh from the forums that I've read) is hilarious, and is always doing silly things especially when a serious cutscene happens.

Details: this is where the game really stands out to me, well other than the amazing design by Ghibli. So much care has been placed even in the tiniest of things, for example:

• Reflections and shadows sync with your movement perfectly
• Characters look miserably cold when you first step onto Winter Ilse, and is soon given a proper set of clothing
• Footprints appear in the snow when you're walking around, water splashes when you across streams

Gameplay: lots of good and some bad

• AI: gosh this was frustrating. The ai does not do a good job of controlling party members. They spam too much skills, and not even the useful ones either. "Hey this monster is weak to storm but lets use a light spell that cost 30mp!" MP is preeeecious.
• Traveling: tengri the dragon is like chocobos but so much better. It was annoying having to walk between locations, which was always far away from each other, in early game. But once you get the travel spell and the dragon, moving around becomes a breeze. Thankfully, because most of the late to postgame quests involve a lot of different locations.
• Familiar system: aka gotta catch 'em all. Having 3 familiars per character allows greater flexibility when party building. For someone who's slightly obsessed with planning, this resulted in spending a week worth of evenings reading up on the "best" combinations. But choosing the best doens't really matter since you can just as easily beat the game using the ones that you like (aka look pretty). It was frustrating at times trying to catch the more elusive familiars, but on the plus side I didn't have to do much additional grinding.
• Quests: hurray for the sidequests! Think Ni no Kuni pulled this off really well. In addition to the usual hunt-this or gather-these, there's the give-and-take-hearts and other elaborate quests (mostly postgame). All of the dialog are interesting to read (oh the puns, so much puns in the text), and most importantly, the random spells that you get are actually put to use in the quests. 

Art and Music: it's studio ghibli, enough said haha. Disappointed at the lack of cell shaded cutscenes though :( There's only like 5 in the entire game boohoo. However you are treated to their gorgeous watercolour stills near endgame and in the credits.

Apparently the watercolours were included in the LE wizard's edition, which I so regret not buying. Would have loved a physical Wizard's Companion ;__; Now they're going for like $200 on ebay wahhh.

Debating whether to platinum this or not. Completing alchemy and taming 250 familiars is a giant pain "orz

Oh and here's my main familiar, a pirate kitty! :D

Quite OP with radiant blade (heals % of damage dealt) and restoration cloak (heals % damage received).