Hi there, haven't been posting much on here but I think with what I've been doing for the last little bit I thought I might as well put some thoughts down on this particular project I've been putting off until recently.
For the last year or so I had considered doing a nuzlocke after watching other people do one too. It looked like fun to make something like a monster collecting game into a challenge on if you can keep them "alive". But I don't have any Pokemon games to do a typical nuzlocke run (at least not in a way that's considered "dubious"... don't ask), so I took a good look at what I already had in my arsenal and I thought "well, I don't see many people do a nuzlocke of Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch, and it has a monster collecting mechanic. What if I did a nuzlocke challenge with it." And that's what I ended up doing
Now note, I don't have a lot of concrete rules for it yet, save for the two original nuzlocke rules of naming your creatures to get attached to them and if they get knocked out they're considered dead. But I added an additional rule for myself and this is more because since it's my first nuzlocke of any kind I didn't want to make it too difficult on myself, and that is if the human party member dies it doesn't count as a loss as long as a familiar wasn't out when it happened. Now if someone like myself wanted to spice it up I could make it so that it did count and you made it so that you couldn't use the character anymore, or that you could roll a randomizer and have it pick which creature would end up getting the boot from that party member's arsenal. But again, I didn't want to make my first one too difficult yet and it's better to have three human party members on hand anyways. I'll go more into the system concerning party members because one particular one is integral to the entire run later on.
You probably have also noticed that I don't have a clause concerning getting only a certain number of familiars per route and that's because it's routing system is a little less as linear as Pokemon from what I can gather. So I decided to ditch that rule entirely. That and it's actually a lot harder to tame creatures because you have to actually meet certain requirements to be able to do so for certain ones in order to tame them, so unless you want to really make it hard on yourself for some reason it probably wouldn't do any good to have it in there as a rule. I also have another rule in that I couldn't start the run officially until I was able to capture familiars since the person in question that could do it isn't available until you get to a specific place and do the things necessary in order to be able to tame familiars
With that out of the way, let's get into the story itself because the way I wanted to approach it is interesting to say the least.
Our story begins when we take control of Oliver, the titular main character of the game. After his mother dies, he's sad and depressed about it and remembering a fond childhood memory concerning her, cries over a doll his mother made for him and those tears transform it back into a fairy spirit named Drippy. He details how Oliver could potentially save his mother and tells him he's THE Pure Hearted One that can save the world that this lantern nosed little guy is from from the dark lord Shadar, a sorcerer that had taken over the world and spread fear and ruin all over.
After these explanations, Drippy instructs us (Oliver) to check the fireplace, where we get our Wizard's Companion and write our name in it. Because I was starting out I had originally planned on making it so that your human party member's first familiar would be bound to their soul and you couldn't lose it no matter what, so I named it Soulbound. But as I continued playing it I ditched that idea entirely because it seemed a little too easy for me. Don't get me wrong, I still wanted it to not be so difficult it was unplayable to me. Maybe it could help someone else that wants to do it as practice.
So as a final post to this website, I have decided to put out this unfinished draft from when I attempted to do a nuzlocke in Ni no Kuni. At the time I had an actual Twitter account that I used, and Playstation integration was still a thing. Sadly that is no longer the case and this post has sat unfinished since then.
Still, I thought it would be neat to give people an insight on how I sometimes write when I feel like writing an essay. And who knows? I might try this Ni no Nuzlocke thing again, and post my time doing it somewhere else. In the meantime I'll archive this for reference
Well, this is Artie, signing off! And for the very last time, I can be found elsewhere on bsky @thislittlelog