Ni no Kuni: Cross Worlds Has Replaced YouTube On My Second Monitor

Usually I like to have YouTube open while I’m working, because it drowns out the tinnitus and I might learn something — I watch a lot of video essays about comic books. But while playing Ni no Kuni: Cross Worlds I realised that I could work and play a game at the same time! If you’re unfamiliar, the game is an action-RPG by Netmarble and Level-5, due to release on Android, iOS, and PC.

I’ll be honest, when I first started playing a preview version I was taken aback by how hands-off Ni no Kuni: Cross Worlds seemed to be. Since it’s also a mobile title you can have it automatically move from one location to the next, and auto-battle too. So long as you click (or tap) to go through dialogue the game is happy, barring a few sections where you have to manually do things like walk around a giant monster or avoid traps. There may be more examples, but for a title with about 12 months of content since its Japanese release it’s absolutely huge and I obviously haven’t seen them all yet.

To prove just how hands-off Ni no Kuni: Cross Worlds can be, I accepted a quest and as my character ran off I went into the menu to polish (AKA upgrade) a weapon or something, and perhaps took a bit longer than usual. As I closed the menu, my character was jogging back over to the quest giver, and I received my reward. I’ve no idea what my character did from leaving to returning.

As another example, I accepted a different quest and went to make a sandwich. Upon returning with my lunch, I was already back speaking to the quest giver waiting for me to click dialogue away. Did I get into a fight? Move some stones? No idea!

So, I decided to have the game running on one screen while I worked on the other. I’d click through dialogue, do upgrades and such, but while moving or fighting I was free to do what I needed to do on the other monitor. The game was running for about five hours and I achieved a number of real-life tasks while finally progressing past the “beginning” area.

Did I learn anything new about superhero comic books? No, of course not. But I did get a mount, level up a bunch, and discover how to open the map in Ni no Kuni: Cross Worlds. I often play a couple of mobile games that have auto-battling in them, but they’re nothing like this fully-fledged action-RPG.

The only drawback to my approach is that you really should be exploring areas. There are hidden treasure chests that the game will not open by itself, so I know that I’ve missed some already. But on the plus side, I will wind up returning to those areas eventually, running errands for Swift Solutions to get my dailies. Also, to be fair, it’s a pre-release version and I’ll need to do all of this again once Ni no Kuni: Cross Worlds releases on 25th of May.