After many long years of waiting and wondering if this game would ever make an appearance on an Xbox, today is the day that the dream has finally become a reality. It has been announced that the once PlayStation exclusive Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch Remastered is now playable on Xbox via Game Pass.
If you’re one of the people that has played close attention to this game over the years, you’ll know that it has always alluded to the Xbox, with it first being released on PlayStation before then being made available for PC before finally being made into a Nintendo Switch title. It’s almost like a fever dream–is this really happening? You’d better believe it is.
The news was announced today (September 15) during this year’s Tokyo Game Show that Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch has been made readily available on the Xbox Game Pass. The other breaking news is that the sequel, Ni No Kuni 2: Revenant Kingdom will also be zooming into the Xbox world, but that won’t happen until next year, unfortunately.
Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch is a role-playing game developed by Level-5 and published by Bandai Namco. The game is actually a hugely improved version of Ni no Kuni: Dominion of the Dark Djinn, a game that was released for the Nintendo DS in Japan back in 2010. Wrath of the White Witch was then birthed from the ashes and first hit the PlayStation 3 in Japan the following year – it wasn’t until 2013 that the game graced these Western shores.
More about the game though: Players control a young boy called Oliver, as he sets out on a journey to search for a way to resurrect his recently deceased mother – now, if my years of gaming and film-watching experience have told me anything, then it’s that this will only end badly for young Oliver. The game itself is played from a third-person perspective and the world can be traversed either on foot, by boat, or on a dragon, which begs the question: why would you ever use the boat?
Players must navigate Oliver throughout this gorgeous little world, while other characters can also be controlled during battles against the various enemies that you will stumble across on your journey. These battles give players the perfect opportunity to use all of their magical abilities, as well as the ability to call for the aid of creatures known as “familiars,” which can be captured and tamed.
The first you will notice about this game is the beautiful aesthetic that it has, an art style that closely resembles the work of Studio Ghibli. That’s not a coincidence though because the famed animation studio behind Princess Mononoke also produced each of the game’s animated sequences. So, for that alone, this game a definitely worth trying.
