Or you can just say screw it and stand around listening to the score, a sweeping, brilliant set of tracks composed by Ghibli's Joe Hisaishi and performed by the Tokyo Philharmonic. I have spent way too much time doing nothing on the world map just to let the music play.

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Around 15 hours into Ni no Kuni, as I wrote last week, I thought the game was excellent. Now that I've spent more time with it—last I checked I'd hit around 32 hours—I think it's top-notch. It's fantastic. It's the type of RPG that everyone should experience. Kids, adults, boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands, wives. It's a game I want to share with everyone I know.

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That's not to say I didn't have gripes: your allies' combat AI is rather obtuse, moving around can feel a bit clunky until you get used to the fact that Oliver likes to walk for a second before he starts to run, and there's a whole lot of tedious, unnecessary menu-digging. But during those little moments of vicarious heroism—helping a merchant control her appetite, diving into a fairy tale and changing the ending, teaching fairy comedians how to tell jokes again—all I could think of were those adjectives. Whimsical. Charming. Beautiful.

There's nothing else like it.