Ni no Kuni Wrath of the White Witch Remastered

It's Studio Ghibli Poke-DragonQuest. And it's kind of a modern classic.
The good:
The art design is fantastic. It's Studio Ghibli, what did you expect?
The music by Jo Hisaishi is epic and really puts you in that Miyazaki zone.
The animated cut scenes are just what you'd expect: charming and gorgeous.
The wholesomeness is off the charts. The giving and taking heart mechanic is unique, and provides an interesting way to grind upgrades - by helping people out with their emotional problems.
Drippy is the best annoying sidekick character in recent memory.
The Japanese voice acting is great, and what I've heard of the English dub isn't bad either.
The collectible fighting familiar system is fun.
Infinite inventory. Nuff said.
I finished the main quest in just over 50 hours, and that was really the sweet spot. Only one fake out ending, and it was not egregious.
The meh:
The side quests and bounty hunts can get repetitive, but if you don't do them, you're going to be underleveled and without a few important perks.
Grinding a bit is almost mandatory. Hint: There is a certain island that spawns a monster that will dump a ton of XP on you. Find it, and you won't need to grind for more than an hour or two to get where you need to be. But you didn't hear it from me...
The combat system can be a bit unwieldy, especially if one of your characters gets knocked out and you have to heal them on the fly. Definitely easier to deal with using a controller, so this is one of the few games I wouldn't recommend keyboard and mouse for.
Some familiars are just better than others. There are two or three that you will want to have in the late game, and finding an online guide of some kind will help you.
Oliver and his companions are kind of one note personalitywise. The downside of Ni no Kuni's family friendly feel is the lack of moral complexity or gray areas.
The verdict: If you like modern DragonQuest games, you'll like this. If you like Pokemon/Digimon monster training games, you'll like this. If you're a big fan of films like Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle, you will like this. At full price, it's a bit much, but if you see it for $20 on sale, do not hesitate.

Beautiful and fun JRPG to play with your kids, PG-rating appropriate with fun stories and dialogue to read out loud. Combat is fun, sometimes simple enough that young kids can do it on their own, but with bosses a parent might need to take the controller. This is a great "first RPG" to play through with your elementary school-aged children. There are enemies and fighting but no "bad guys" and no killing. There's no actual vulgar language and no weird sex stuff. The obstacles to overcome involve characters dealing with strong emotions and helping each other to make the right decision instead of acting without thinking.

TLDR: Good for Japanese learner(it has furigana)
I am a Japanese learner trying to find the best game to learn Japanese in a fun way. I chose this game because it offers furigana. Currently, I am at the N5 level, and I find it challenging because for every cutscene and dialogue, I need to look up almost everything. It took me 10 hours just to get to the first fight, whereas according to a walkthrough on YouTube, it should only take 30-40 minutes of gameplay. However, I did learn a lot. One thing that is a bit confusing is the fairy dialog, which has a different accent. Overall, it's a really good game for Japanese learners.

Top 10 games for me. I used to watch Stampy play this game all the time. It was an addicting watch and an even more addicting play. 10/10

My favorite game of all time. I played through this about 3 times when it first came out and I'm playing it again now for the first time since then and it's just as fun and cute as I remember. I just love this game so much. I even named my cat Cassiopeia and call her Pea. (Today is her 7th birthday!) <3

This is an excellent first game for learners of Japanese. Even if your vocabulary and knowledge of kanji is weak, literally everything has furigana, which makes it very easy to look things up. And even if you don't 100% understand a sentence by looking things up, the story is generally speaking quite self-explanatory fantasy stuff. A thing to note is that some characters speak using the Osaka dialect but that is almost unavoidable in Japanese media, so you'll just have to deal with it. The game is very hand-holdy so you will not get lost or not know what to do next, there was only one puzzle that I just couldn't figure out by myself and had to use external help. Absolutely recommended for Japanese learners.
- Stylistically gorgeous game
- Simplistic story
- Travelling across the world is slow until you gain flight
- Battle system is cumbersome, especially if you need to react quickly to something
- There is never enough MP, you better have a stock of MP items
- Your AI companions are dumb and blow through their MP in like 30 seconds
Frankly speaking I would have never picked this game up if I wasn't learning Japanese. It's hard to justify spending 50+ hours on a "childrens" game if I don't gain anything out of it. And there are real gameplay issues as well. I wouldn't recommend this to general gamers, unless you're a hardcore Ghibli fanatic.
I wish there was a 50/50 option on Steam. This deserves a thumbs up from me for its artistic and utility value, but a thumbs down for its flawed gameplay and basic story. For me, the pure utility value shines through so I will begrudgingly give this game a thumbs up.

I absolutely love this game, from the story to the lore. I remember watching Stampy play through this and always wanted to try this but i didn't have a PS3 when I was a kid, now with this remaster, I can finally play the game.
The art style is phenomenal and timeless, I mean Studio Ghibil worked on it so that makes a lot of sense lol, the story is heartwarming and nice. The gameplay is generally a 50/50, either you enjoy it or you're not the biggest fan. I actually do like the mix of turn based combat while having the ability to dodge and move around the arena freely, the Pokemon aspect of the game was also great, one thing though is that the game can be surprisingly difficult at times? I wasnt really expecting it from a game that looks like this but it is a good fun challenge. I did have to grind for EXP at a certain point in the game ( When you get the Ship ).
Overall I think its a great game, and I think its absolutely worth a shot, I'd give it a 9/10, (just wish there was more post-game activities or even a dlc)