Kingdom Building Elements
One of the most unique aspects of Ni No Kuni II comes with its kingdom building features. Evan has to rebuild his kingdom from the ground up, and that’s literally what you do in the game. As you travel around the world you’ll meet a number of NPCs that need help with their problems. Help certain NPCs out and you’ll be able to recruit them for your kingdom.
Back at your kingdom you can place a variety of different buildings and assign different villagers to them. Buildings and research can grant you bonuses like new weapons for your party, or improve your exploration skills. Each villager has their own set of skills, and you’ll want to assign the right people to the right buildings. Doing so can bump up the time it takes for research; for example, a 60-minute piece of research can take 45 minutes if you have the right person. A resource called kingsguilder is what you need to build things or do research, but it’s not unlimited. During the course of the game you’ll need to make some choices on what you want to invest in. A recent Kotaku article compares the kingdom building in Ni No Kuni II to the Suikoden series, which is about the best thing a JRPG fan can ask for.
