Ni No Kuni II: Strength of Kingdom tied to Evan's strength

Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom is set for release in January next year on PC and PS4. At Bandai Namco's pre-TGS event we caught up with Stephen Akana and Shintaro Noda from Bandai Namco to learn more about the intriguing new JRPG from Level-5.

The discussion started with the story, the details of the TGS demo, before landing on the Kingdom mode that adds something a little different to the Ni No Kuni formula:

"In Kingdom mode, just like a real king, he's going to have to bring in more people and as he brings them in he's going to place them in different roles," says Akana. "That's going to open up new opportunities like item shops, blacksmiths, and magical research and a bunch of different places that we haven't revealed yet. But it's very tied to your progression throughout the game so the strength of your Kingdom is directly tied to the strength of Evan himself."

"The reason we're not teaming up with Ghibli this time is purely because Ghibli's business scheme has changed a few years ago(...)," says Noda. "It's all because of that, but still we're having the same artists from the previous game so if you're a huge fan of Ni No Kuni 1, don't worry, we have the same art style and even better, this time we have the full 3D computer graphics cutscenes instead of the handdrawn art animations."

Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom is set to launch on PC and PS4 on January 19 and if you want to learn even more about the game you can check out our interview with director and CEO of Level-5, Akihiro Hino, from Gamescom, down below: