Familiars are essential to your quest in the PS3 game Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch. The right familiars can effectively be your sword, your shield, and even you magic. Each familiar genus offers different advantages and the specific creature type has set tricks and abilities. The Bestiae genus comes in nine different variations. Bestiae are amazing physical fighters, due to high attack, accuracy, evasion, and defense. Blaine is the most compatible with this genus and Bestiae prefer ice cream over all other treats. The following guide to Bestiae familiars will help you determine which is best for your team.
Ruffians – Ruffians are fast and feisty. They deal damage quickly, especially when you use the Psyche Up ability early in combat. They are very vulnerable to magic, so be wary around magic using enemies. In general, you don’t want to use the attack powers of this familiar, instead relying on quick, powerful attacks. In the final Gruffian form, this familiar can Psyche Up and use War Cry. Combined, you can give this familiar a ridiculous attack score and it has the evasion to stay alive. The one problem with reaching this final form is that a Ruffian has a woefully low evasion, which makes it hard to keep alive long enough to transform.
Rhinosaurs – This genus sacrifices evasion to improve magic defense. With both high defense and high magic defense, and at least a respectable evasion, it can pretty much take just about any hit easily. Unsurprisingly, it is very slow, but it has higher than normal stamina to make up for this deficiency. Every variant of this familiar has both low accuracy and low magical attack. This means you don’t really want to use it for either close combat or tricks. Instead, the best use is to keep it in reserve and only switch to it just before a major attack. Let it defend and you will suffer almost no damage from a massive strike.
Jabberwockies – Extremely high evasion defines this type of Bestiae. Not only does it have a high evasion naturally, but it can increase the evasion of an ally with Pick-Me-Up trick as well. The magic attack of all Jabberwockies is nearly as high as the normal attack, though neither is particularly great. When upgrading to the final form, the Jabberguppy is slightly superior because it also has a trick that can improve ally attack. Treat it mostly as a support familiar and it should be helpful in tough battles.
Baas – A Baa is rather similar to a Jabberwocky, sporting almost identical stats, but without as strong a magical attack. This is unfortunate, because Baa have more direct attack tricks than Jabberwockies do and less support tricks. In fact, a Baa generally seems to be a less efficient version of a Milite and a Bestiae. If you are going to invest time into upgrading a Baa, you should always upgrade it to a Baabie as its final transformation. Almost every single trick that a Baabie has can apply debilitating status effects to at least one enemy, and often multiple enemies at once. You will need to also spend effort increasing the magic attack of your Baabie, but the final result is actually moderately effective.
Boars – With the exception of magic attack, Boars have amazing all around stats, with particularly high defense. This complete lack of magic attack, and the fact that nearly all of the tricks that Boars have are attack tricks, makes it almost completely worthless with magic. There is no reason for subtlety with this familiar. Use Psyche Up when you first release it and let it tear apart enemies. The slow attack speed of this familiar means you are better off using a Ruffian when you want to deliver an alpha strike, but when you need a slightly more equal mix of offense and defense, the Boar is your best choice.
Phants – Phants are a type of familiar that are amazing through the first two forms and then fall flat in the final transformation. A Phant has a monstrously high defense and magic defense, though a rather dismal evasion. In both the Inphant and Psychophant form, a Phant has a trick to draw the attention of enemies. This ability to act as a tank makes it quite useful in battle. Neither of the final forms has this type of power, at which point the painfully slow speed of the Phant becomes a major liability.
Tigers – During its first two forms, this Bestiae variant has absolutely ridiculous speed and evasion, very high accuracy, and otherwise generally good stats. Since it also starts with the War Cry ability, it can pretty much boost any ally and then disappear without taking a hit. You can also fight reasonably well with this type of familiar, but if it is hit, it doesn’t have great defense. Unfortunately, both final forms actually have lower evasion than many other types of Bestiae. Among the other stats, only accuracy remains high, while the rest are suddenly quite low. Either form of a Tiger can still perform buff actions, but fully upgraded Tigers are no longer really capable of fighting independently. The Elegantiger, with the ability to increase the magic attack of your main characters with Hocus Pocus, is slightly better than an Adamantiger, but unless you need that trick, you are better off without this familiar type.
Lemurs – Lemurs are another deceptively good type of familiar. The attack stat of a Lemur is high in the first form, the Thumbelemur, but falls behind rapidly. Of course, once you account for the Sharpener and Psyche Up abilities, Lemurs actually have a quite formidable attack stat. Combine this with one of the highest evasion scores in the game and a particularly high speed, and it is a nearly perfect specimen. The Dumbledur is particularly easy to use in battle, because the Blunt trick allows it to weaken any particularly threatening enemy. You may actually want to get two fully upgraded Lemurs, because both final forms are nice. An Aye-Aye Sir has the highest evasion and can attack the attention of enemies, while an Aye-Aye Catcher has a wide range of healing powers.
Sasquashes – A Sasquash hits like a truck and can take a hit, too. It is very slow in combat, but makes up for this by having no low stats until its final two forms, where magic attack and evasion fall behind. Even despite the slow speed, the first two forms are excellent for most of the average fights you encounter in the game. The potentially massive damage of a Papa Sasquash makes it worth keeping in your party once you reach the final form, but the Mama Sasquash is much less impressive, only offering a healing spell to slightly make up for the notably weaker stats.
