Why We Need to See Ni No Kuni 2’s Kingdom Building Mechanic in More Games

I’ve just popped back to the idyllic ship-building town of Capstan-upon-Hull to see if any juicy new quests have become available. Sure enough, I spot a telltale ‘I’ on my minimap. A young lady asks for my help tracking down her father. He’s gone missing, but somehow she can pinpoint the exact location where he is. RPG trope: just go with it.

I hop on my airship, sweep to the marked location – a dusty cave – and trot in to find this guy. I’m ready to save him from a group of baying monsters, or perhaps have to fight him as a result of a misunderstanding. But I don’t. He’s dead.

His spirit asks me to retrieve a necklace from the monster that killed him. A tough fight later, I return to him, and in a poignant moment he asks me to return the necklace to his daughter.

Back in Capstan, I break the bad news to the daughter. I suggest that she come back to my kingdom to distance herself from Capstan’s painful memories. She agrees, the quest ends, and I have a new recruit.

Kingdom building is at the heart of Ni No Kuni 2, and for the most part it’s superb. Protagonist Evan’s goal to unite all of the world’s kingdoms in a peace pact is noble, if a little twee. To do so, he needs a kingdom of his own.

What starts off as little more than a wooden hut blossoms over the course of the game into a regal castle surrounding by buildings buzzing with industry. In order to access the final part of the game, your kingdom needs to be a certain level. In order to achieve this, you need to build facilities such as mining camps and lumberyards, and recruit citizens. In a clever move, many of Ni No Kuni’2 side quests reward you with citizens for your kingdom, prompting you to seek them out. It can be laborious at times, granted, but building a kingdom wouldn’t be a breeze, would it?

When you’ve solved another kingdom’s problems, many citizen side quests become available to you. The citizens then gather materials that you need to complete other quests, and make money for your kingdom, allowing you to build new facilities and conduct useful research. This in turn allows you to venture further into unexplored realms and encounter new citizens-for-hire.

Thus, the feedback loop is complete, and I find myself thinking one thing: why don’t more games incorporate a similar mechanic? There is something deeply satisfying about heading out on adventures in new realms in order to channel everything and everyone you find into building up your new home. The sense of progression is tangible, going above and beyond the simple, typical RPG desires to level up your characters and see the main story through to its conclusion. Often the overarching narrative in RPGs isn’t sufficiently creative and sturdy to support a player’s journey through the game for dozens of hours. Ni No Kuni 2 is no exception in this regard; its story needs a helping hand from its side quests and plethora of gameplay mechanics.

Ni No Kuni 2’s kingdom building, however, isn’t quite exemplary. It would be cool to be able to customise your domain a little more: add some cosmetic touches and have some control over the placement of buildings. I also would’ve liked a little more depth to each citizen’s story, since after I’d recruited about a dozen of them I couldn’t for the life of me remember who they were. That might just be my poor memory, though.

Despite a few rough edges, Ni No Kuni 2’s kingdom building gives the JRPG that moreish quality that keeps players invested for hours on end. Channelling all of your resources and progress into building your base is charming and deeply satisfying. I just dearly hope that other developers take note and consider if such a feature can be integrated into their games in such a clever, intuitive way as Level-5 achieved with Ni No Kuni 2. After all: home is where the heart is.