We're a bit delayed in our verdict on Namco Bandai and Level 5's Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom, but we have a good reason: it's bloody long. That being said, it's also bloody good.

The game borrows heavily from JRPG blueprints of the past, but also breaks tradition the deeper into the experience you get to forge its own unique path, which helps set it up as one of the better JRPGs out in gaming world at the moment (or even for the past little while). Here's a snippet from our review:

Naturally presentation here is king. This is collaborative design with Studio Ghibli, after all. But the high level of graphical polish in Ni No Kuni II is only a quarter of the picture. The game’s combat, as mentioned in my intro, is one of the game’s most engaging pillars and is something I’ll get to in a moment. The other quarter is its charm. And it’s not an expected charm because of the game’s outlandish Japanese storytelling or characterisation, it’s because the English translation of the game has gone above and beyond to add to the oddity of it all. Different regional groups and characters have unique accents that include various levels of English in the cockney space, Aussie, Scot, Welsh and more. And they don’t hold back on this at all.

The final piece of this whole is in the length of time it takes to get the full gameplay picture on offer. Our review is incredibly delayed for two reasons: One, the game kept us in effective tutorial mode beyond the 20-hour mark. Because JRPG. This meant in order to review the game properly, I had to put in the serious hard yards. And the second reason is because a few other, less time-intensive distractions also required precious review and play time. Oh woe is me.

Click here for our full Ni No Kuni II review.