Ni No Kuni 2: Revenant Kingdom is the sequel to Level-5’s beloved JRPG Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch. The game captured the hearts of its fans thanks to its charming cast of characters, its heart-warming story, and its beautiful visual aesthetic. Definitely one of my most anticipated games of this year. There’s a lot to love about Ni No Kuni 2 but like any JRPG filled with side quests, open maps and collections it can be fairly overwhelming. So we’ve come up with a basic guide on what you should watch out for before playing. Also watch out for mini spoilers.

Money Can Buy Happiness – Upgrade Your Kingdom’s Coffers

The story of Ni No Kuni 2 revolves around the young King Evan getting usurped by a bunch of (literal) rats. Not to worry though by the third chapter he’s gone and established his own Kingdom of Evermore, a haven for a peace-loving populace. Take that rats!

When you get there though you’ll realise the throne of Evermore looks upon a fairly spartan looking land and in order for your new kingdom to be a place of unity and joy, you’re going to have to get to building. This is where the whole money and happiness comes in. The people’s happiness is going to come in the form of barracks, shops, farms, guard stations etc. Build them, assign some worthy citizens to run said enterprises and bam you have have an economy in which you can collect tax from!

Make sure your main priority is leveling up your Kingdom and then increasing the size of its coffers. The coffers fill while you’re away, and every time they fill up and you’re not there to collect – because you got distracted trying to help a crazy hot sea queen, – you’re just throwing money down the giant rat hole.

“It’s A Trip… Door!” – Use Trip Door Waypoints To Warp Across The Map

Like most open world games Ni No Kuni 2 is going to be fairly large and while it’s fun to explore if you want to just get something done use the ‘trip doors’. You can activate ‘trip doors’ while exploring the world that will allow you to fast travel between activated trip doors, significantly cutting down on your journey time. You can warp from anywhere in the world, including inside dungeons, making this an easy way to complete quests and revisit locations.

So whenever you encounter a glowing blue spot, make sure to press X inside it so you can easily return to the location later. This will come in handy when you’re revisiting dungeons. Bonus tip some dungeons have areas you can only access once you’ve unlocked specific skills. Make note of any suspicious areas on your first run-through, and return to explore further once you unlock the skill you were missing.

“Yes, My Liege?” – Skirmish Early On

A King’s work is never done and Evan is going to have to protect his newly won Kingdom the old-fashioned way. Skirmish battles are compromised by warring factions scattered around the world, looking to take you down. Not to worry though because you are a mighty King and you will be commanding your troops in battle to defend your Kingdom!

It sounds relatively fun but the actual fighting itself functions more as a complex rock, paper, scissors battle. Every type of unit in a Skirmish battle with fight well against other units, and not so well against other types of units. For example, swordsmen are good against archers but not against hammer or spear units.

These Skirmish missions aren’t exactly optional no matter how mini gameish they might be. Eventually, you’ll hit a point in the main story where your tiny army is key to your ability to carry on, and it’s not fun if you haven’t paid any attention to your Military Might score since the first tutorial battles. You don’t have to spend hours on it, but do some of the lower level stuff as you find it, build the barracks in the Kingdom and keep them well staffed and upgraded, and you’ll save yourself a lot of trouble.

Feed The Support – Remember To Nurture Your Higgledies

Ni No Kuni 2 have removed the familiars that we’ve gotten so attached to in the first game. But instead have somewhat replaced them with Higgledies. Higgledies are cute little Pikmin type creatures that you can run up to and activate in a battle to give you all sorts of assistance depending on their ability. Higgledies are broken up into three color-coded categories: green Higgledies are the healing type, white Higgledies are the ones that will summon offensive weaponry, and purple Higgledies are ones that deal in magic.

They may be super cute, but your Higgledies are more than just emotional support animals. Work on nurturing a core team and they’ll become an essential part of your battle squad, especially when you’re faced with bigger foes. Just build the Higglery in the early days of Evermore and remember to check in regularly to feed your Higgledy squad their favorite foods like wild mushrooms and dollops of cream.

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star – Pick Up All Those Twinkles

Once you’ve been traversing the map for a while you might get a little tired of going out of your way to pick up another mystery glinting item, but you need it. The more you play the more people you’ll need who’ll want random items as part of quests, the more Higgledies you’ll be able to summon from the special shrines dotted around the world (unmarked, so it’s a real ovary-ache to remember where they are while you go off to find a particular mushroom) and then to level up the little blighters. Yes, your thumbs are tired and you promised to smite a tainted creature, but the extra few steps towards the twinkle will pay off in end.

Although Ni no Kuni 2: Revenant Kingdom is a sequel to Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch, you don’t need to have played the first game in order to enjoy the sequel, as they follow entirely different characters in different stories. Ni No Kuni 2 is available now on Steam in Malaysia for RM 239 and Singapore for SGD79.90.

As well as the PlayStation Store in Malaysia for RM 239 and Singapore for SGD72.90 additionally from now till April 19th, 2018 they’ll be offering some perks with purchase such as the: Royal Weapons Bundle, Proper Tidy Ring and the Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom Dynamic Theme.