'Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom' delayed until January 2018

Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch brought the unique beauty of a Studio Ghibli movie to North American PS3s in 2012. The gorgeous RPG was slated to get a sequel, Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom, this coming November, but it looks as if we'll have to wait a bit longer. In a video message on publisher Bandai Namco's Twitter feed, Akihiro Hino, CEO and President of developer LEVEL-5, explained the delay and apologized deeply to fans. It's not a huge wait, though, as the new launch date is set for January 19th of next year.

"We have decided that more development time is required in order to deliver the full Ni no Kuni II experience to our fans," Hino said in the video. "I deeply apologize to those who have been looking forward to the game's release. Please rest assured, however, that we will continue to strive to provide a deep and satisfying single player experience that our fans can look forward to enjoying."

Gaming delays are fairly common, especially with massive games like Ni No Kuni II. Rockstar's Red Dead Redemption 2 has been pushed back from a fall 2017 release to spring 2018. So has Monolith Productions' Middle-earth: Shadow of War, now set for October 10th of this year, a seven-week delay. It's better to have a fully-baked game after a bit of a wait than end up with a title released too soon, like EA's troubled sci-fi RPG, Mass Effect: Andromeda or DICE's war sim, Battlefield 4.