Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch Remastered

Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch Remastered is a remastered version of the Japanese RPG from Level-5, created in close collaboration with the famous animation studio Ghibli, whose fairy-tale, hand-drawn visual styling remains among the most impressive in the entire genre to this day. The story follows a young boy named Oliver, who, after suddenly losing his mother, travels through a tear cried into a plush teddy bear into a parallel fantasy world, accompanied by a talking and somewhat cheeky wizard named Drippy, in order to save the world and his own family. The combat system combines turn-based elements with free movement in real time and combat companions called familiars, which can be caught in traps, healed, fed, and gradually upgraded similarly to the well-known Pokémon series, while being freely swapped between fights depending on the type of opponent.

The PS4 remaster brought noticeably sharper textures, higher resolution, and more stable framerate compared to the original 2013 PS3 release, which let the hand-drawn environments, character expressions, and smooth animations in the typical Ghibli style shine even more, lending even ordinary battles a fairy-tale lightness. The music for the whole game was composed by Joe Hisaishi, longtime musical collaborator of director Hayao Miyazaki, giving the game a cinematic, almost moving emotional atmosphere that is fairly rare for the JRPG genre.

Ni no Kuni was repeatedly praised, both at its original release and at the PS4 remaster, for its visual side, music, and sensitive fairy-tale storytelling, which managed to appeal to both child and adult players across generations. It is still considered one of the most beautiful JRPGs of its generation and a textbook example of a fruitful collaboration between a game studio and a renowned film animation studio. The PS4 remaster, for the first time, allowed the game to be properly appreciated even by players who had for some reason missed the original PS3 version.

Why play: For players of all generations looking for a fairy-tale JRPG with gorgeous visuals and music, thanks to a collaboration with a renowned animation studio - and the remaster finally made it properly accessible to those who missed the PS3 version.