FantasyGameFan

I absolutely love this game, and have put in enormous sums of money to buy skins and champions. I have played well into many thousands of hours (and matches) and it never ceases to bore. My favorite champion is Teemo, who I have played over 630 games in Ranked Season 3. It took a long time to slog my way out of Silver 1, but now that I am in Platinum I am soooooo happy. The new League System works and it is wonderful. Many of the complaints of "poor community" and "imbalanced game-play" are a constant work in progress, admittedly, but for the most part after Silver community really improves dramatically. Maybe 1/20 games will there be an afker/flamer/leaver/troll etc (in Plat). The game is more balanced when facing other skilled opponents. In Platinum it is very clear that your teammates and opponents are on very similar skill-levels, and every single match is a battle of sheer force of will and logic. New champions are not generally imbalanced lately, and every single champion in the game has a counter or method of defeating them. Above-all, this game DOES reward advanced game-playing techniques and strategies in the higher Leagues. Most games do not stall past 40 minutes unless both teams are simply so good that it is rather difficult to break through the opposing force. But those are the best games, since when you finally achieve victory (or suffer defeat) you are still happy to have been a part of the glory. For an absolutely free and fairly balanced game (you cannot get ANY advantage through payments) LoL merits a 10. I've experienced 1000s of hours of unadulterated joy from this game, and LoL is a part of my life as much as reading, eating, exercising etc. is. It is a fun hobby.

As a long-time fan of the Harvest Moon Series (ever since I was gifted a copy of Harvest Moon N64 way back when, one of the (relatively) few copies shipped to the North American market) this game has been my favorite Harvest Moon since the N64 version and my favorite hand-held since Friends of Mineral Town. It has EVERYTHING I could ask for from a Harvest Moon game and then some. The start had me cringing, but if you stick with it past the first month the game goes absolutely bonkers in a snowball effect of things you can do. I absolutely LOVE the competition/festival system (you can win due to categories! IF you work very very hard). I also truly enjoy the fact that there are achievement awards for practically every major (and some quite wacky) action you take. Let me put it this way. The first two hours into the game I wanted to take a hammer to the cartridge and call the entire series quits. After the customization stuff actually came into play my mind was blown and this game has become one of my favorites on the DS and on any handheld system ever created. The game just gets better and better the more you play it. It is truly impressive. There is also an enormous sense of accomplishment every time you do anything significant. For anyone new to the Harvest Moon series, I'd say pick up this game and run with it. Don't surrender after the first couple of weeks because the pay-off is huge. For returning fans, this is the crystallization of 15 years worth of input and it finally gives a return as a true "New Beginning" for the series. Definitely pick up a copy for your collection, it is much much much better than Tale of Two towns.

Having played this game through and being an enormous fan of the genre, I rate this game a 10 because it is a marvel. I'm an enormous fan of Studio Ghibli, and the artwork was spectacular. The story was definitely fun, and all of the tasks were rather enjoyable. However, the reason I give this game a 10 is because it REALLY gets going once you finish the main story-line. I absolutely love it when games have fulfilling "after-game" aspects, and Ni No Kuni really did a good job here. I won't give anything away, but what I can say is it is very worth it to play this game out, I enjoyed every single minute of it.

I finished the game on Hard, and it was absolutely fantastic, though since it was such a short amount of time for the main story (20 or so hours, when I'm accustomed to getting at least 40 hours out of RPG type games I pay such high amounts for) I normally would have only rated it an 8 or a 9. However, I just started a new game on Survivor, and it is even more glorious. Survivor mode is what earns this game the high reviews it has received and it is what is earning the 10 score from me. Survivor mode is a true gaming experience with reduced requirements of cognitive dissonance. I say this because lower level difficulties give you extremely useful but overpowered tools to get through the game. My biggest gripe with lower level difficulties is that you can essentially hear everything around you. Not so in Survivor mode! You CANNOT use echo-location to hear where your opponents are and how they are moving. This fact raises the tension through the roof and makes every single encounter an experience in and of itself. When you're in a room with 10 clickers and you cannot track their movements through superhuman hearing, the realism of the danger really digs itself in and you experience moments of sheer and utter panic at not knowing what is coming from around the corner at you, and this lack of an out forces you to plan your actions very carefully. I will list what I see as the PROS of this game and the CONS of this game in order to explain my exuberance at this piece of art. PROS -Immersive and believable post-apocalyptic world, with an extremely well-researched and developed backstory and framework. - Stellar graphics, truly amazing, look around and in every single moment you will find yourself enjoying the view and the effort that was made to make the environment credible. -Every single action taken regarding combat decisions is a battle in and of itself -Extreme prejudice is required in order to survive from one encounter to the next -The most excruciating gaming experience I ever encountered was when I ended an encounter and had to survive without enough medical supplies to last to get to the next encounter. This game forces you to think very hard about the consequence of every bullet used. - The story is one of the best I've ever encountered in both literature and media of this nature. The intro is a real hook, and the emotional involvement and attachment that the player develops for the characters is bar none some of the most impressive character building ever. When the end comes there is a real connection to the choices that are made by the storytellers and a clear understanding for why the ending makes sense. - The cinematic quality of the game: I love movies, and this game feels like you are playing the protagonist of a very long film. CONS - Cognitive dissonance heightened in lower difficulty levels - As others have complained, the lack of a credible melee weapon is rather unfortunate. It makes no sense that the protagonist doesn't have a knife or machete or something that doesn't break after a couple of hits. Yes, melee weapons and upgrades are great, and yes it is another part of ensuring careful shepherding of resources, but it was still rather irksome. - Ammo is really scarce, though your opponents seem to be able to blast you like crazy. Really concerning when you are killing soldiers and somehow they don't have any ammo for you to gather. This is both a pro and a con, as it raises tension and forces innovation in combat situations but is still super annoying. - Lack of narrative choice the story is extremely linear and though it is wonderfully told and the ending is truly incredible, I am still disappointed that choice wasn't calculated to make this a far more realistic game. - Bugs, though not game-breaking, there are still some that are really bothersome if you encounter them (but easily fixed through going back to a checkpoint, though it gets annoying if you have to go back after 30 minutes of fighting your way through only to have to do it again). - The absolute scarcity of some necessary materials - No meaningful death: this is not a survival game but is instead a movie where you play the protagonist. I gave this score based solely on the primary game, though I'm sure the multi-player features are wonderful. Since this game is in absolutely no way whatsoever effected by multi-player (as opposed to, say, Dark Souls, where multi-player is fairly important), I won't review it here. All-in-all one of the best gaming experiences I've ever encountered, and I've been around the block a few times (started playing video games/computer games back in 1992 on pretty much every major system that has come out)