Ni No Kuni 2: Revenant Kingdom will not be arriving in November after all. Game director Akihiro Hino, the CEO of Level-5, broke the news in a video message to fans. It was announced at E3 that Ni No Kuni 2 would launch on November 10 on PS4 and PC, but now fans will have to wait until January 19, 2018, to get their hands on the colorful Japanese role-playing game.
“We have decided that more development time is required in order to deliver the full Ni No Kuni 2 experience to our fans. I deeply apologize to whose who have been looking forward to the game’s release,” Hino said.
Hino made the personal video message, shown above, for reasons beyond just the game’s two-month delay.
Despite what we thought we knew, Ni No Kuni 2 will not have a multiplayer component. If you’ve been following the game’s development closely, you may remember that during an E3 interview with publisher Bandai Namco, Hino claimed that the follow-up to Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch would include multiplayer features for the first time in the series. In response to a question about multiplayer, Hino replied, “Yes, there will be multiplayer. You will be able to play online with your friends in various capacities.”
In the video message, Hino clarified his earlier statement: “I misunderstood the interview question, thinking it was asking about online content in general, and my answer referred to online announcements of in-game events. As a result of this, I wrongly gave the impression that the game features multiplayer content.”
Ni No Kuni 2 follows Evan, the boy king of Ding Dong Dell, 100 years after the events of the first game. At the start of the game, the mouse townspeople believe that Evan is too young to lead, and thus stage a coup to bounce him outside of the kingdom. From there, Evan will set out to prove he was worthy after all by building his own kingdom from the ground up.
Although Ni No Kuni 2 retains the Studio Ghibli aesthetic and music, the game will deviate from its predecessor in a number of ways. First, the Pokémon-esque “familiars” that players capture in Wrath of the White Witch will not be featured. The biggest change, however, and the one that we were most interested in at E3, concern the kingdom-building aspects of the games. As Evan’s new kingdom grows, with the help of the “Kingmaker,” he will assign jobs and tasks to the townspeople. The king-building element was designed to replace the capturing and training of the familiars.
Ni No Kuni 2: Revenant Kingdom launches January 19 for PS4 and PC.
