Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch

Level-5's PlayStation 3 RPG with animated sequences by Studio Ghibli and a Joe Hisaishi score.

Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch is an action role-playing game developed by Level-5, a significantly enhanced version of Ni no Kuni: Dominion of the Dark Djinn for the Nintendo DS. Released for the PlayStation 3 in Japan in November 2011 and in Western regions by Namco Bandai Games in January 2013, it features animated sequences produced by Studio Ghibli and an original score co-composed by Joe Hisaishi.

Quick Facts

Developer

Level-5

Director

Ken Motomura

Producer

Hiroyuki Watanabe

Programmer

Yasuhiro Akasaka
Mamoru Itagaki
Yusuke Hashimoto

Artist

Nobuyuki Yanai

Writer

Akihiro Hino

Composer

Joe Hisaishi

Series

Ni no Kuni

Facts from the source article.

Background

Players control Oliver, a young boy who sets out to resurrect his recently deceased mother; after his tears bring his doll to life as the fairy Drippy, he travels to another world ruled by the evil wizard Shadar, meets Esther and the thief Swaine, tames creatures called familiars and learns that his mother was the great sage Alicia. The combat system blends turn-based and real-time mechanics, and the world is explored on foot, by boat or on a dragon.

The collaboration began when musician Naoya Fujimaki introduced Level-5 president Akihiro Hino to Studio Ghibli president Toshio Suzuki; Ghibli had just finished Ponyo and its animation team had no ongoing project. Studio Ghibli treated the work like making an animated film, starting in July 2008 and taking far longer than the predicted three months. Ghibli's Yoshiyuki Momose served as director of animation, staging scenes, directing the motion-capture actors and drawing character designs and storyboards, while the team watched Ghibli films constantly during development. Critics praised the art as worthy of Ghibli's own films, and the game sold over 170,000 units in its first week in Japan and over 1.1 million copies worldwide by March 2014. Switch, PlayStation 4 and Windows versions arrived in September 2019, and a sequel, Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom, in March 2018.