Ni No Kuni 2 difficulty update fixes its biggest problem

Ni No Kuni 2: Revenant Kingdom is still one of my favorite games of 2018. As I said in my review back in March, it's a gorgeous, ambitious JRPG that keeps on giving, elevated by a simple but satisfying kingdom building sim. The only thing I didn't really like about it was how easy it is, so I'm extremely pleased to see its latest update add some advanced difficulty modes.

The aptly titled "Difficulty Patch" is out now and adds a hard mode and an expert mode above the default normal mode. From the looks of the patch video, hard mode decreases the damage you deal and increases the damage you take by around 30 percent. Expert mode looks to be around 50 or 60 percent—hard to know exactly without knowing the gear used in the video. See for yourself:

I reckon hard mode is going to be the sweet spot. Normal is way too easy, but expert mode looks a little too grindy for my tastes. Ni No Kuni 2's combat is enjoyable, don't get me wrong, but not so enjoyable that I want to spend 30 seconds whaling on every basic enemy. It's nice to have a super-hard option though, and the difficulty update couldn't have come at a better time: Ni No Kuni 2 is currently $35 (40 percent off) in the Steam Summer Sale.

Austin freelanced for PC Gamer, Eurogamer, IGN, Sports Illustrated, and more while finishing his journalism degree, and has been a full-time writer at PC Gamer's sister publication GamesRadar+ since 2019. They've yet to realize that his position as a staff writer is just a cover-up for his career-spanning Destiny column, and he's kept the ruse going with a focus on news, the occasional feature, and as much Genshin Impact as he can get away with.